The History of Krynn

The Age of Dreams

Volume 5

All Stories ©1984 TSR, Inc.

©2012 Wizards of the Coast LLC

The Dragons – First published October 1996

“Storytellers” – First published in The Dragons at War May 1996

“The Best” – First published in The Dragons of Krynn March 1994

“Quarry” – First published in The Dragons at War May 1996

“Easy Pickings” – First published in The Dragons at War May 1996

The Legend of Huma – First published April 1988

“Silver And Steel” – First published in Tales Volume 3: Love and War November 1987

The Kagonesti – First published January 1995

“Kaz and the Dragon’s Children” – First published in The Dragons of Krynn March 1994

Kaz, The Minotaur – First published July 1990

Land of the Minotaurs – First published January 1996

Cover design by Dead^Man

Cover and ebook design by Dead^Man

Cover pictures used for this collection are from various sources around the net. Sorry, most sites do not credit the original artists. Thank you for the wonderful art, whomever you all may be.

These ePub  and Mobi/K8  editions v1.0 by Dead^Man December 2012

First release December 2012

Table of Contents

Copyright

The Dragons

PART III (continued)

Storytellers

The Dragons

PART III (continued)

The Best

The Dragons

PART III (continued)

Quarry

The Dragons

PART III (continued)

Easy Pickings

The Legend of Huma

Silver And Steel

The Kagonesti

PART II

Kaz and the Dragon’s Children

Kaz, The Minotaur

Land of the Minotaurs

The Dragons

PART III (continued)

CHAPTER 28

SILVER LORDS

(ca. 1400 PC)

The wild elf maiden was a blur of laughter and speed. Arms and legs pumping, silver-white hair trailing in the breeze, she sprinted like a deer along the forest trail, ducking a mossy limb, casting a merry smile over her shoulder as she put on another dazzling burst of speed. She leapt a mossy fallen trunk, ducked around a tight corner, and without hesitation splashed through a gravel-bedded stream. Silver drops of water sparkled in the sunlight, and her bright cry of delight rang in harmony with the trilling of the water as she sprang onto the far bank to fly onward with a pounding of bare feet against the path.

She was a creature of exquisite beauty, this fleet elf of the forest. Muscles rippled in her limbs, yet her body possessed a lush fullness that made her doelike speed all that much more astounding. Her skin was a pale, almost translucent pearl, now a white blur in the semidark shadows of the forest floor. The small strip of foxskin girding her loins did little to preserve even a semblance of modesty.

Not that modesty had any place in the mind of the one who chased the elusive maid through the forest. Harder footsteps thudded behind her, and a wild elf brave came into view. Head low, he dashed forward with single-minded determination, leaping in a single bound the stream that had slightly slowed his alluring quarry.

The warrior’s body was covered with whorls and leaf patterns of black tattoos. A trailing horsetail bound his shock of long black hair, a plume that, suspended by his speed, floated like smoke in the air. He, too, sprinted with an easy grace, a fluid rippling as the trail straightened and he slowly closed on the elfmaid. Like the female, the brave was unarmed, though he bore the horn of a great ram on a silver chain around his shoulder. He lacked even the limited clothing that encircled her waist.

Head down now, drawing deep and measured breaths through his flaring nostrils, the runner seemed unaware of the woods passing in a blur on either side. He was blinded by the beauty, the scents and sounds and sights that combined to draw him after his exquisite quarry. Now he was desperate to catch her, to bring her to ground.

With another teasing refrain of laughter, the female elf darted through a blossomed bower and sprinted into the clear. The brave followed, eyes fixed upon her lush form, mind blinded to all thoughts except this alluring maiden that led him so tantalizingly onward.

“Hargh! Heads up! Looks like we’ve got some prizes, me lads!”

The bark of alarm, harsh and deep, was the elves’ first clue that the clearing was already occupied. Huge shapes stirred to the right and left, rushing from the shady bowers along the meadow’s fringes. A pair of brawny, two-legged figures, each bearing a heavy, knotted club, advanced to block the path of the two Kagonesti, while more of their hulking comrades closed in from all sides.

“Ogres!” gasped the maiden in quick recognition, skidding to a halt as a dozen or more brutish cohorts rushed to join the two blocking her path through the clearing. The brave whirled to see more of the monsters charge from the far sides of the sun-swept meadow, blocking any attempt they might have made to return the way they had come.

The elfmaid spun in a swirl of silvery hair, casting looks to either side, placing her back to the brave’s. The two Kagonesti stood barehanded, facing at least two dozen of the burly humanoids. Clubs raised, drooling tusks exposed, the brutes closed in for an easy kill.

“I dislike the odds,” murmured the lean warrior, with an attitude of mild concern.

“I agree,” replied the maiden, nodding as she frowned at the encircling ring. “Do you think we should change them?”

“Immediately.”

Silver scales swirled into view, coiling around the place where the two wild elves had stood, as a pair of huge serpentine bodies took their places on the ground. In a flash of reflection, mighty wings flapped and grew, driving gusts of wind, dust, and debris into the faces of the startled ogres. Many of the brutes shrieked in terror, turning to flee from the pair of menacing silver dragons that suddenly loomed before them. Others fell to the ground, wailing and groveling, begging for mercy or trying to claw a place of concealment into the hard soil.

Only one displayed the courage, or foolishness, to continue the attack. This was a brutish chieftain who hurled himself at the male dragon and was met by a savage, darting snap of those great jaws. Lectral bit hard and felt the crunch of sturdy bone. He killed the ogre instantly and, with a contemptuous spit, hurled the burly body into the faces of its companions.

Heart’s blast of deadly frost exploded from her silver jaws, a white cloud of death roaring outward in a magical blizzard, expanding with hissing violence through the warm spring air of the clearing. The dragonbreath froze a dozen ogres in the garish postures of instant death even before the brutes realized they were being attacked. Still more of the monsters threw themselves onto the ground, and the wailing of their abject fear echoed through the woods.

Lectral pounced, crushing an ogre with each forepaw, snatching up another in his great jaws. Breaking the muscle-bound body in a crushing bite, he tossed his neck and sent the creature’s remains tumbling into a pair of fleeing ogres. His silver tail lashed around, crushing several more of the monsters, sending the great, brutish warriors tumbling like children’s toys.

Smashing with his great body, the silver dragon settled heavily downward until the desperate thrashing underneath him was crushed into stillness. Whipping his head toward a band of the brutes huddled beyond his left wing, he belched a cloud of killing frost. The lethal breath expanded through the clearing, freezing flowers and bees in the same swath that slew a dozen fleeing ogres.

In an instant, the rest of the monstrous band had vanished into the forest. Terror wafted in their wake, an acrid stench in the air. Lectral saw that many of the brutes had even cast their weapons aside, shrilling cries of utter panic in their haste to reach the imagined shelter of the forest paths. Abruptly four or five more broke from a nearby clump of brush, lumbering toward the trees, casting terrified glances behind.

Heart’s jaws gaped again, and she expelled a cloud of white gas, a forceful explosion of her breath that gusted strongly toward her targets without the roaring destructiveness of her deadly frost. Nevertheless, the monsters saw the mist churning toward them and screamed in panic, sprinting desperately to get away as the vapor swept forward and enveloped them.

When the mist dissipated, the remaining ogres were scattered across the ground, limp and motionless – except for the slow rising and falling of chests stirred by deep, placid breathing. Eyes wide, those ogres lucky – or unlucky – enough to be lying on their backs stared in mute horror at the two serpents looming overhead, masters of this sun-swept patch of meadow. Others, facedown, grunted and groaned but were obviously unable to move a muscle.

“Why didn’t you kill them?” Lectral asked, with a raised eyebrow. Like all the metal dragons, he and Heart possessed a nonlethal breath weapon as well as their deadly expulsions. Still, he was surprised she had used it on the ogres. He prodded one of the motionless brutes with his foreclaws, rolling it onto its back to inspect the tusked maw, which now gaped slackly, allowing a copious spill of drool to soak the ogre’s chest. “They’re just paralyzed.”

Heart shook her great silver head, though her own expression was also a trifle puzzled. “I didn’t have to kill them, so I didn’t. It seemed a good time to show mercy.”

“Well, as Regia says, we dragons could kill all the ogres, and the humans and bakali, too, if we wanted. But why waste the breath?” Lectral replied.

“Our golden sister is too inclined to think in terms of the abstract. It’s more that the threat is gone now … and I don’t feel like killing any more.”

“That sits well with me as well,” Lectral agreed. He leaned forward, trailing his head along Heart’s neck. “In any event, Regia is not the female who concerns me just now.”

The silver male’s lids drooped lazily over his eyes as he reared back and regarded the supple curves, the shimmering scales, and gleaming wings of the silver female. He squatted before her, ready to pounce, waiting for the flick of her tail that would recommence the tantalizing game that had just been interrupted.

But Heart shook her head. “No, Lec … let’s fly, together.”

He was about to protest, but he knew she wouldn’t be swayed by any argument he could make. Too, with the passing of her teasing manner, his own excitement had rapidly faded. Heart seemed to him once more as she had always been: a silver nestmate who had grown to adulthood at his side, a friend and comrade during the hundreds of winters through which they and their kin-dragons had ruled the skies of Krynn.

Callak had been their sire, and their matriarch, Daria, had raised them in her lair, deep in the mountainous wilderness of western Ergoth. For the first century or two of their lives, they and their silver nestmates had been alone in the world, insofar as they had known nothing of other dragons. They had, of course, engaged in social intercourse with elves and humans, and both had formed strong friendships – particularly among the Kagonesti, in Lectral’s case. Heart had enjoyed the company of the wild elves, but also displayed fascination with humankind, most notably the armored and heroic knights who ruled the realm of Solamnia.

After Callak had grown old, he had given Lectral the clan treasure: the horn of the great ram that he now wore on the silver chain around his neck. The silver dragons had grown to maturity with an understanding of the deep bonds between the Kagonesti wild elves and the dragons of argent.

Only after reaching adulthood had Heart and Lectral encountered dragons of other colors – first in the person of the sociable brass dragon Kord, scion of Dazzall, who seemed to know everybody and everything. He had become a good friend to all the silver nestmates, and in turn had introduced them to the less extroverted wyrms of the copper and bronze clans. Lectral had developed a grudging sense of respect for a copper male, Cymbol, who had once demonstrated great speed and quickness in stealing an elk that Lectral regarded as his rightful prey. Eventually the two wyrms had reached an understanding, and Lectral had learned that Cymbol’s barely contained fury was a constant thing, a drive for vengeance against the chromatic dragons that had been inculcated in him by his sire, Tharn. Unfortunately – at least, so it seemed – neither of them had ever encountered one of the Dark Queen’s dragons. To all appearances, they had ceased to exist during the time of their sire’s early life.

The bronze, Bolt, had been less hostile initially than the copper had been, but neither had he been overly friendly. Still, Heart, Lectral, and their nestmates had learned from Daria the tale of the grotto and its abandonment, and it had been good to discover for certain that the others of the metal dragons had also survived to breed.

Lectral had been impressed by the differences even more than the similarities between the five clans. One of the most different was the dignified and studious Arumnus, a gold of approximately Lectral’s age. Scion of Auricus, he was wise and thoughtful, if a trifle dull as a companion. And his sister, Regia, had been only haughty and aloof.

Lately Lectral had been dazzled by the changes he had sensed in Heart as the two of them approached full maturity, a feeling that matters between them were progressing toward something magical. The thought of her elven form fleeing through the woods caused his silver scales to shiver, and once again he regarded her with a sidelong inspection, wishing that she would flick her tail or arch her neck in that gesture of invitation.

Instead, she spread her wings and crouched, ready to take to the sky. With a sigh, Lectral, too, stretched wide, scooping downward as he leapt after her, dragging himself slowly into the air. The grasses of the meadow swept by, and finally he had enough speed to pull upward at the edge of the trees.

The two silvers steadily climbed, moving into the clear skies of late spring. A perfect day, thought Lectral, for flying, or hunting, or doing any kind of living at all. But still, as they flew side by side through summery skies, he pondered the questions of Heart’s strange allure and the mood that had been shattered by the bothersome presence of the ogres.

Of course, the brutes were no real threat to a nearly mature silver such as Lectral or Heart, save the unlikely circumstance of a bunch of ogres coming upon a sleeping dragon. In fact, the world of the two nestmates’ lives contained nothing that was a real threat.

“I wonder what it was like when the evil dragons still lived,” mused the great male, pensive as the measured strokes of his wings carried him forward. “When there was real danger in Krynn … threats even to mighty dragons.”

“Perhaps those old stories were just to scare us,” Heart replied, teasing. “Have you ever seen a dragon that wasn’t gold or silver or one of the brown metals?”

“Regia and Arumnus believe in those old legends!” Lectral replied, rising to the bait. He shivered, unwilling to admit that he, too, sometimes pictured in his dreams a vague, five-headed image, a being he regarded with considerable unease. “And how else do you explain the small number of our forefathers, the five pairs who escaped the great scourge of Deathfyre? Or the wild magic that wracked the land, that caused the three brother mages to be hunted down and killed by vengeful elves?”

“Good stories, all of those. But I still think those gold dragons spend too much time in libraries!” Heart declared. “They should get out and fly once in a while!”

“There’s nothing like flight to clear one’s head,” Lectral agreed, relishing the sweep of wind across his face, his wings, and his scales.

“Oh look – there’s one of the knights!” cried the female, with a sudden dip of her head toward the brown plains. Lectral looked down and saw a great war-horse with a fully armored rider. The knight was trailed by a retinue of a half-dozen squires and pages, each mounted on a lighter, smaller horse. The party was riding across the dragons’ path of flight, and apparently none of the humans had yet noticed the serpents.

“Come on, Lectral! Let’s go talk to him!”

“Not again,” groaned the male, knowing it was useless. Heart had already dipped her wing, sideslipping into a gliding dive that would carry them to ground out of sight of the riders, allowing them to land behind a screening line of tall pines.

By the time Lectral had settled to the grassy turf, Heart had changed to the form she preferred for these increasingly frequent encounters. Cloaked in the body of a tall, beautiful human woman, garbed in a typical noblewoman’s silks that were perhaps a trifle more revealing than modesty would require, she strode forward into the roadway. Experience had shown her that an appearance like this would invariably bring the armored rider to a halt, no matter how pressing his business.

Lectral barely had time to assume his own disguise. In the form of a severe warrior, avuncular of appearance yet still strapping and capable in physique, he followed Heart as she waited for the rider to approach. The male dragon reflected that, if Heart’s appearance was certain to get the knight to stop, his own stern and glowering visage was calculated to prevent the human from lingering for too long.

“Ho, my lady!” cried the warrior, lifting the visor of his helm with a gauntlet-covered hand. “And your honored grandfather as well!” he added hastily as Lectral advanced protectively at Heart’s side.

“Greetings, Sir Knight!” The shapely maiden dipped into a polite curtsy.

“Stand your horses there, men,” the rider directed, sending his followers into a nearby meadow as he dismounted.

“It is a pleasure to encounter you,” Heart declared breathily. “I see that you bear the mark of the rose.”

“Aye, lady. Methinks you know somewhat of the three orders that make up our ranks.”

“Indeed I do, brave sir. And I know that, though crown may be mighty and sword strong, it is the rose that is most pleasant upon the senses.”

“Indeed!” The knight positively beamed, the tips of his curling mustaches rising with his expression. “Er, is there a matter upon which I may be of assistance? Ogre trouble, perhaps? The brutes are reported to abound in this area.”

“We have seen ogres, but they’re dead now,” Lectral replied grimly.

For the first time, the knight regarded the strapping form of the maiden’s escort. Lectral’s gray eyes met the human’s frankly, and he allowed the sinew to ripple along his arms.

“No mean feat,” admitted the armored rider. He hesitated, but Lectral made it clear that he wasn’t about to wander away.

“Quite. Well, er, if your matters are in hand, there is business that calls me to Dargaard, else I would be certain to linger,” he pledged, with a deep bow to Heart.

“Wait!” she cried as he swung back into his saddle. “Would you carry this … for luck?”

She lifted a scarf of shimmering silver, so light that it seemed to float like a spiderweb on the gentle breeze.

“It would be my honor, fair lady!” cried the knight, clearly moved.

Heart kissed the plume of silk, then handed it to the rider, who wasted no time in lashing it to the tip of his lance. By that time, his retainers had mounted, and with a cheery farewell, the band took to the road. Only after they were out of sight did the two dragons change shape and once again wing into the sky.

“Why did you do that?” grumbled Lectral, strangely disturbed by the memory of Heart’s flirtations.

“Oh, Lec, it was such fun! And it’s harmless!”

“It’s not harmless. It’s mischief!” retorted the glowering silver male.

“What about you and the wild elves? You’re always talking to them, traveling among them. Don’t tell me they all know the truth of your identity.”

“That’s different,” Lectral declared. “You know of the special bond we have with the Elderwild, going all the way back to Darlantan and Kagonos.”

“Now you sound like an old fuddy gold!” teased Heart. To punctuate her words, she dipped a wing and dived away from Lectral, flicking her tail teasingly across his belly as she began an upside-down loop, then dropped into a straight plummet toward the ground.

He plunged after her and had to work hard in order to catch her. Wingtip to wingtip, they glided toward the dusk, relishing the rosy expanse of sky as the last rays of the setting sun glimmered off their scales.

They came to rest on a high ridge of the Kharolis, knowing that a teeming nation of dwarves dwelt below them. Yet it was still one of Lectral’s favorite places, as it had been for years and years, and had been for the generations of metal dragons preceding them. Aloof and removed from such concerns, the mighty serpents watched the growing swath of rosy purple, deeply content as the sunset expanded to encompass the western horizon.

CHAPTER 29

HEIR TO A QUEEN

(ca. 1300 PC)

Deathfyre stirred, awakening in the depths of his fiery chasm. Over an immeasurable time, the spell of suspension that had entrapped him was gradually weakened, allowing the mighty crimson head to rise with glacial deliberation. The Dark Queen’s summons was a faint and distant knell, and only slowly did the red dragon become aware of the keening, pervasive call. He puffed a slow exhalation of dry air, unaware of the ashes that wafted from his nostrils or the soot that layered his crimson scales.

Suspended thus, he had slept for a dozen centuries while the metallic wyrms of Paladine had grown complacent in their superiority on the surface of Ansalon. Deathfyre had grown larger and more terrible during his torpor, yet in his awareness, it was as if little or no time had passed.

He knew nothing of his old rivals, Callak and Auricus, nor was he aware of the spreading presence of humankind. Beyond the mountains, more and more lands of ancient wilderness, as well as realms once held by ogres, elves, or dwarves, had been claimed by the relentlessly energetic race of men. Closer by, the Khalkists remained a region of raging fire and eternal smoke, but even here the presence of humankind was penetrating with relentless determination.

Through the murk of his long suspension, Deathfyre was vaguely aware that all of his kin had been slain. The magic of the brother mages had been an irresistible force, and the proud dragons of Crematia’s mighty horde had been swallowed by the bedrock of Krynn, where they had withered and perished over the passing centuries.

At the same time, he could not know of the convulsions caused by the violent magic of the three arcane sorcerers. It would have pleased him to learn that the trio of wizards had been relentlessly hunted by the elves, eventually forced into magical banishment or killed outright. So devastating had been the wild magic unleashed by their great casting that elven historians regarded them as villains of the same scope and wickedness as the dragons of Takhisis themselves.

And only Deathfyre had been spared, by fortune, magic, and the blessing of his five-headed mistress. As the epic forces of unnatural magic had wrenched the world, pulling the other chromatic dragons into captivity, he had been dragged to the same cavern in the bowels of the Lords of Doom where Crematia had sheltered more than a millennia before.

Deathfyre’s matriarch had emerged from that hibernation to loose a flood of destruction across the face of the world, commencing a nearly triumphant campaign for the mastery of Ansalon. Soon her descendants would be ready to do the same, but the Dark Queen had learned a lesson from Crematia’s arrogance and knew that her dragons would not be able to achieve a swift and easy victory.

Instead, Deathfyre’s campaign would employ a new tactic, characterized by patience far beyond any Takhisis had displayed in the past. The plan itself filtered into the red dragon’s mind over centuries, instilled by long and repetitive dreams. These visions gave to him memories of blood and killing, of plunder and wealth, and they warmed him within as the fundamental fire of the Khalkists radiated against him from without.

Inside his cavernous vault, with its scorching heat and eternal fire, Deathfyre’s awareness was gradually restored. The Dark Queen’s message was clear, her scheme clever and complicated. Through the timeless centuries, he absorbed her wishes, heard her commands, until, with a shiver of memory, he awakened to the recollection of the sweet taste of fresh blood. Raising his head, feeling the hunger gnaw at his gut, the crimson serpent reflected upon his mistress’s desires.

A timeless interval later, after he clearly understood the wishes of Takhisis, Deathfyre took wing within the fiery chamber, circling many times over the lake of fire. He recalled the dreams, knew the path that had been laid out for him, and heard the reminders in the bubbling fury of the lava and the rising tumult of the flaming subterranean storm.

Finally his flight took him soaring from the mighty caldera, crimson wings once again spreading wide, claiming their rightful place in the skies of Krynn. Deathfyre exulted in his freedom and his flight, banking and soaring, slicing through the clouds that roiled and churned around the three volcanic summits. The red dragon longed to fly south, to wreak vengeance on the ancient homes of the elves, but he had heard his queen’s commands and he knew that this was not his task.

Instead, he would be patient and – for the first time in his long and destructive life – discreet. He limited his flight to the impenetrable murk surrounding the trio of summits, insuring that he was not observed from the ground. When at last he grew tired, ready to come to rest upon the firmament, he used his magic to change his body to that of a great vulture. The black-winged bird settled through the clouds, soaring unnoticed into a valley that had become home to a teeming populace of humans and ogres.

This place was called Sanction, Deathfyre remembered, for it had been founded before the brother mages had cast the wild magic and entrapped him. It was a city and a valley that figured greatly in his destiny. Rivers of fire scoured the streets, and buildings teetered at the brink of destruction as lava churned past, steadily eroding the landscape of the city. Yet new constructions were rising from the rugged slopes, and Deathfyre observed one swath of blackened ground – clearly a slum that had been swept by ruinous fire – where new shacks were already beginning to appear. Furthermore, temples to a host of gods, real and imagined, had sprouted like weeds amid the tangled alleys and byways. The peripheries of the city had become a chaotic nest of arsenals and smithies, while great stockpiles of coal were gathered in huge piles on the city’s eastern, mountain-guarded flank.

The tangled alleys leading through the teeming city’s darkened heart were lined with hovels and shacks of incredible wretchedness, many of these sprawling in the very shadows of splendid manor houses and palatial residences of prominent merchants and nobles. Within the slums, the population grew and swelled, expanding within its limited confines, building pressure that must inevitably be released in an explosion of consuming violence.

This was a perfect city for his purposes, Deathfyre saw, a place of murder and mayhem, of worshipers who hailed dark gods and practiced rites of grim decadence. It was a city that had a prominent place in his plans, and he would return here.

Yet for now, the wishes of his immortal mistress required him to journey to higher valleys, mountainous reaches much farther to the east. The condor veered with a shriek of arrogant disdain, a cry to subjects who did not know they had just heard the voice of their future master. His black wings trailed long feathers, like the fingers of a bony hand, as they cut through the smoke and murk with easy grace. Steadily he flew, up the valley leading into the mountain range, leaving the city of fire until a future time.

Deathfyre marked a course over a trackless tangle of mountains, soaring by memory to the lofty cave, a place Crematia had created in her prime. In her later years, she had shown it to her mighty son, and he had marked the place well. Now he approached the apparently featureless cliff, his keen eyes seeking the subtle shimmer of magic. The ledge was concealed by illusion, but the red dragon’s power was sufficient to part that disguise, and then to melt away the wall of stone that blocked the passage beyond.

Within the secret cavern, Deathfyre found the great treasure room that he remembered, a cavernous chamber with a floor carpeted by coins of steel and gold and gemstones of every color and size. He rolled amid the mass of treasure, allowing the metal disks to run through his talons, burying himself in a mound of precious jewels and gleaming coins. He searched for and found one particular item that he had remembered only vaguely, but here again he was guided by the images sent to him in the Dark Queen’s dreams. This was a fine leather satchel with a pair of latching handles, an item Crematia had tossed aside with almost contemptuous indifference.

Slowly and patiently the red dragon began to gather the coins and gemstones, scooping them into his massive claws and pouring them into the magical sack. Though it took him a day and a night, he was able to conceal the entire vast hoard in the single satchel, doing as he had been commanded in the dream sent by Takhisis.

Carrying this great wealth, he departed the secret chamber and came to rest on the valley floor. Deathfyre used further magic to take the form of a dwarf, and from there he embarked on foot into the realms of the great miners of the Khalkists. He traveled as a rich merchant, gradually acquiring a small caravan of fine horses, several stout wagons, and a retinue of loyal, well-paid servants.

He was welcomed among these dwarves as one of their own – more to the point, one of their very wealthy own. In the central cavern of their great underground city, the dwarven king himself hosted a great feast in his honor. The visiting merchant was introduced to the dwarven lords with high ceremony. Many of these worthies brought blushing daughters of marriageable age to meet the exotic visitor, though each of these overtures was met with polite disinterest. Instead, the dwarven visitor announced plans to embark upon an ambitious business venture.

With great expenditures, he bought the services of many a doughty miner, forming a large expedition of experienced delvers. He led this courageous band over rugged trails into the heart of the Khalkists, realms that a thousand years before had been the domains of chromatic dragons. Paying handsomely, as always, the dwarven entrepreneur divided his hundreds of workers into mining parties and set them to work in a series of lofty valleys, commencing a search for precious gems.

And there was added incentive, for the master dwarf was interested only peripherally in such baubles as diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. These finds were to be kept by the workers themselves, and many a dwarven laborer grew rich in the service of this mysterious stranger. Unfortunately, some of the workers also lost their lives, as is ever the way with mines, but the families of these victims invariably received generous compensation from the dwarven overseer.

As to his purpose, the master delver’s instructions were specific: He desired for himself only those rare stones that were perfect spheres, pure and unblemished in color. They were discovered in five varieties: black, red, blue, green, and white, and the rich dwarf paid handsomely for every sample brought to him.

When he had collected many dozens of each variety, the dwarven businessman organized another great expedition and made ready to march down from the Khalkists. He prepared to travel with a great caravan of wagons, announcing his intention to seek and purchase trade goods of all kinds. Of course, the party would also carry a generous selection of the rare, spherical baubles of color.

The dwarves who worked for him were hired for a new task now, informed that the caravan would spend years in making a great circuit about Ansalon, and they were promised that the party would return bearing fabulous profit for all. The master delver had proven to be a beneficent and generous employer, so once again he was greeted by many willing offers of assistance.

Eventually more than a hundred dwarven laborers signed on for the duration of the expedition, with the understanding that they might be gone for a score of years, or even longer. The caravan departed with a creaking of sturdy wagon wheels and lowing of oxen under the skillfully wielded whips of dwarven teamsters, with the fond farewells of a great populace still ringing from the mountain heights.

Trekking through rugged terrain, the dwarves carved a road where they had to, hoisting the wagons over mountain ridges, guiding them along precarious ledges above deep, rock-lined gorges. They progressed eastward for a long time, but – true to the master delver’s words – they at last emerged from the mountains into well-populated realms that were exotic, remote, and wealthy.

In each city, town, and village that the expedition reached, the dwarven delver, now proving himself a master merchant as well, traded away his precious spherical gems. Sometimes he exchanged them for great sums of steel coinage or bedazzling jewelry, but at other times he seemed touched by a most undwarflike generosity and consented to give up a stone for a mere night’s lodging, or in trade for a beaten old nag of a horse. Always the spheres were received with awe and wonder, for they were unique, and therefore precious, among all the treasures of Krynn.

Over winters and summers, through good weather and bad, the trading caravan marked its long and methodical path across much of Ansalon. Beginning with Balifor, the dwarven delver’s route extended to Mithas, then passed through the increasingly prosperous realm of Istar, before finally curling back southward through Neraka, Sanction, and Xak Tsaroth. Eventually he even trekked into the distant reaches of mountainous Thorbardin and the southern seaport of Tarsis.

Thus were the round baubles seeded throughout the world. Some were locked in treasure rooms, or placed upon newly sanctified altars by their proud owners. Others were rolled into playrooms, left as children’s toys, or placed in galleries and halls for public or private exhibition. Each was kept, mostly treasured but occasionally forgotten, as the caravan rolled on. As the years passed, the spheres were regarded like any other exotic object of great beauty and indisputable rarity – that is, they were prized treasures.

And then, at last, the dwarven merchant and his weary caravan approached the valleys of the Khalkist foothills. Yet the great merchant was tired by the long trek and didn’t want to bother to journey all the way to the dwarven realm. Instead, he ate his horses, burned his laborers to death, and settled down to wait.

Storytellers

(ca. 1196 PC)

Night had fallen long since, and the moon – harvest moon, red and full – was up in the mountains to the east. Traders, pilgrims, all manner of travelers had taken advantage of the extra light to make longer journeys, but by now all sensible travelers had made camp or had arrived at inns and homes. Moonlight or no, travel by night could be dangerous.

At the Inn of the Waiting Fire, the logs were blazing and the stew pot already empty. A second crock of cider simmered beside it; the barmaid hurried over, filled a pitcher with several scoops of the huge ladle, and crossed to the tables where tonight’s guests took up every bench, talking quietly and finishing the last of the bread.

The barkeep called across to her, “Refill the cider pot, Peilanne.” She nodded, spinning nimbly and gracefully as she set the hot pitcher down, carefully out of reach of the little girl gnawing determinedly at the end of a fresh loaf as the girl’s mother stroked and untangled the girl’s hair.

She stuck another pitcher under the cider barrel and opened the tap. “Are we expecting anyone else, Darien?”

He smiled at her. “You never know.” He set ale steins one by one on a large tray. “Though the gods know where we’d put them.”

But a breeze shook the lamp flames as the front door opened. A general cry went up: “Shut that door!” “Frosty out there.” “Always a latecomer.”

As he always did with strangers, Darien eyed them carefully. They were physically unimpressive, of medium height and wiry build. One had black hair, the other brown, and their teeth flashed white as they smiled automatically to the crowd at the tables.

All the same, it seemed to Darien that they passed by the tables with complete indifference, as though they were something apart from the local families, the traders, and the travelers.

He met them from behind the bar, smiling more broadly than the newcomers had. “And what can I do for you?”

One of them spoke. “Is there any supper?”

Darien shook his head. “Long since eaten. Look at this crowd; every bed full, locals in to eat as well. Barely any bread left. Didn’t you take food for the road?” He glanced at their tiny packs.

The two looked at each other. The black-haired one said quickly, “We eat where we can, and only take enough for the day. We’ve traveled quite a ways.”

The innkeeper said dubiously, “Traders, are you?” They shook their heads. “Pilgrims?” He added hesitantly, not wishing to be insulting, “Runaway clerics?”

The brown-haired man said, “I’m Gannie and this” — he hesitated slightly — “is Kory. We’re storytellers.”

Kory added, “We specialize in telling frightening stories.”

Gannie glanced around the inn. “This lot looks like they could use the excitement.”

“Ah.” Darien scratched his head. “So there’s a living in telling stories, is there?”

“If you’re good at it.” Kory looked pointedly at the ale barrel.

Peilanne filled two more steins and drew closer, intrigued. “And how do you make it pay better if you’re good?”

Kory said, not entirely happily, “We wager on ourselves.”

“My idea,” Gannie said proudly.

Peilanne joined the conversation with a laugh, a light silvery sound. “How does that work?”

Kory said unwillingly, “We bet you and anyone else in the room that we can scare people with our story. If we lose, we don’t get paid and we don’t eat.”

Gannie frowned at him. “But we seldom lose.”

Kory looked at him glumly. “It could happen.”

Darien nodded. “I see. And to win, you have to scare nearly everyone in the dining room.”

“As long as they don’t turn out to be disguised kenders, or something else without fear,” Kory said dubiously.

“Look around you, young sir. That old man, Brann, is a shepherd, with his flock in the cote out back. Young Elinor, making a mess at the table, is from the village, here with Annella her mother. And that fat one is a merchant out of Solamnia, and those others with him, all human —” He leaned forward. “But are you tricking me? Will you scare them just with the story, or with something else?”

“Oh, our stories are good enough all by themselves,” Gannie assured him.

Darien settled back into filling an ale pitcher, watching them closely. “And what must I do if you win?”

“You pay us and you make us a meal.”

He glanced automatically at the empty stew pot. “Make you a meal?” Darien chuckled. “For now, at least, have the last of the bread. On the house, pending the outcome of the bet.”

Peilanne looked at him with surprise and opened her mouth. He shook his head slightly to silence her, then tapped his gold ring against a cup. Eventually the insistent noise silenced everyone.

“This is Kory” — he hesitated, then pointed to the other man — “and this is Gannie. I have a wager with them.”

He explained the terms. As he finished, Gannie bowed low and said, “And anyone else can bet, too!”

They looked around at each other. Bet a stranger that they wouldn’t be scared of a story? It seemed like sure money.

Kory went from table to table, checking with interested parties, then returned to Gannie. “I hope we have enough if we lose,” he warned.

Gannie rolled his eyes at him. “Have we ever lost?” Quickly putting a hand over Kory’s mouth, he bowed to the company again. “And now, our story.”

“I want one about owlbears,” the little girl insisted.

Her mother said quietly, “Hush, Elinor,” and looked apologetically at the two young men. “She loves stories.”

“A wonderful girl.” Kory dropped to one knee. “Sorry, our best story isn’t about owlbears. “He glanced at the surrounding company, and said with surprising force, “Can we tell one about dragons?”

The company sat up, startled. Darien and Peilanne leaned forward, concerned.

“Excellent.” Gannie put one foot on one end of the bench and leaned over his audience. “Once, not long enough ago, there were two young men, vagabond wanderers. Tale-tellers and inn-hoppers, spenders of money and chasers of dreams. We’ll call them” — he pretended to hesitate — “Koryon and Elgan....”

The similarity of names was lost on no one. Brann the shepherd smiled condescendingly, settling back to enjoy a story within a story. Even Elinor looked with sudden interest on the two storytellers, looking from one to the other as if waiting for their real names to shine on their foreheads.

“On this particular morning, Elgan woke...”

*

Elgan woke in the summer sunlight, brushing at his nose. A grass stem was tickling him.

Koryon was holding the stem. “Welcome to morning. Are you all right?”

Elgan wiggled his toes, counted his fingers and finally, with some trepidation, pinched his nostrils and blew his nose. Nothing fell off. “Fine.” He disentangled himself from his cloak, crawled to the stream and ducked his face in, drinking deeply.

Koryon said, “Fun night, wasn’t it? What nice people.”

Elgan glanced down the valley, where smoke from the chimneys came from the cottages and still more smoke floated upward from the hearth of the Inn of Road’s Ease. He turned to Koryon. “You really ought to watch yourself more,” he said disapprovingly.

“It was just normal entertainment.”

“Normal? That trick with the knives? That was reckless.”

Elgan grinned. He had palmed a dozen dining knives, one at a time, and made them appear in his hand as he threw them to outline Koryon against the wall.

“And did I hit you with even one knife?”

Koryon, scratching his head, stopped and felt the outline of his left ear. He stared at Elgan accusingly.

“All right, did I hit you with more than one?”

Koryon said morosely, “I ought to be dead.”

“Watch what you wish for,” Elgan said absently.

“I’m not wishing, simply stating a fact.” He quit feeling his ear, but still frowned. “And all those stories about dragon battles – that was simply showing off. I’ve known you since you were a child —”

“You were a pessimist even then —”

“— and I know for a fact you’ve never been in a dragon battle.” He paused. “I don’t think you’ve even seen a dragon battle.”

“Not true,” Elgan said firmly. “You may remember, on the occasion of my older brother’s birthday, we both saw a pitched battle involving three armed men and three dragons —”

“Gods, Elgan, that was a puppet show!” After a moment’s silence in the sun, Koryon said, “You haven’t said anything about Beldieze.”

“Beldieze.” Elgan stretched, eyes shut and dreaming. She had walked up to him after the knife throwing, and had stared straight into his eyes. Hers were blue-silver, and caught the candlelight amazingly; that wasn’t all they had caught. Her dark hair, long and nearly straight, framed her face until he looked into it and felt he would never break free and get out. And her voice, like bells when she began asking questions....

He started. “She asked me about dragon fights.”

Koryon snorted. “And you told stories all night.”

By evening’s end, the tables had been pulled together in the middle of the hall, Elgan was standing on the center table, waving a flagon of ale and explaining battles. He had hopped on the back of the strong, good-natured innkeeper, commandeered a broom, and charged about the inn to demonstrate the finer points of lance aiming. At one point, Elgan remembered, he had speared a curtain-ring held by Beldieze.

At a later point, he remembered a great deal of kissing and a walk under the stars.

“Where did you go?”

“Out. First for a walk, and then... to see someone.”

Koryon frowned suspiciously. He was good at that. “To see who?”

“Someone... an authority. He was good with a pen – writing.” He squinted, trying to remember. “Late in the night, we wrote something. Together. I wish I remembered what.”

Koryon, pausing as he pulled out a clean shirt and glanced down the hill, said, “Why not ask her?”

Elgan bounded to his feet. “Gods. I’m a mess.” He snatched the shirt out of Koryon’s hands and muttered “Thanks” as he pulled it on. He bounded downhill, remembering that he had thought her good-looking....

Now that he saw her in the sunlight he decided the Inn of Road’s Ease must have been dark, or he must have been blind; she was beautiful. Beldieze had straight dark hair down to her waist, the figure of a dancer, and a full-lipped mouth that had smiled wickedly the night before. And of course, wonderful large eyes, almost luminous. They were staring at him now, and her smile seemed self-conscious. “Beldieze?” he said, mostly to test how her name sounded in his mouth.

“Elgan. I wasn’t sure how you’d be feeling today.” She put a hand on his arm.

Koryon, cloak draped over his bare chest, stood discreetly in the background, drinking from a water jug and making a show of staying out of earshot.

Elgan put his hand on hers, smiling back. “You still like me, in broad daylight?”

“I still admire you,” she said immediately. “Your stories about dragon battles impressed everyone. It wasn’t just the way you told them” — she stepped back, throwing her arms open — “but the wealth of detail. The swooping and stalling and silent gliding and air currents and lance thrusts —” She mock-thrust, her arms rippling forward. She moved toward him at the same time, until her arms touched his waist.

He blushed. “I didn’t mean to brag.”

Koryon, nominally out of earshot, snorted.

“It sounded like expertise, not bragging. In fact” — she touched his nose playfully — “I asked you if you would fight a dragon for me, and you said you would. Remember?”

Elgan didn’t like where this was leading. “Of course, I might not really be expert enough to fight a real dragon.”

She smiled sadly. “I was afraid last night that you’d feel that way later. I said as much. You swore you could and would. We agreed on a binding contract, composed by a cleric, an older man who lives just outside of town.” She added, with light additional emphasis, “He’s more of a mage, actually.”

The hair on the back of Elgan’s neck prickled. “Why a mage?”

“So that the contract would bind.” She took it out and showed it to him.

“I’m not going to fight a dragon —”

The parchment flickered out of her hands suddenly and materialized around his right arm, tightening itself slowly. He tugged at it. Nothing happened. He took out a knife and cut at it. The parchment wrapped itself tighter.

“See?” Beldieze stood with her arms folded, looking anxiously at the parchment. “It’s exactly what you wanted. It does contract, and it is binding.”

The contract pulled still tighter, and his hand turned dark red. Elgan bit his lip, envisioning the cylinder of paper closing on itself until it severed his arm. Koryon looked worried.

Elgan took a quick, shuddering breath. “All right, I’ll honor it. For now.”

“Good.” She pointed down the hill. “Your saddle and lance are at the base of the hill; find your own mount. You have only two days.”

She pointed to the parchment, which had loosened but stayed on his arm. Elgan looked at it intently, understanding little of the legal scrawl but recognizing his own signature beneath the words “fight a dragon.”

He gave up. “So. Where is this supposed dragon?” he asked skeptically.

Her mouth quirked. “The one named in the contract is Jaegendar.”

Koryon, standing presumably out of earshot, made a great sucking sound, and dropping his bottle, doubled over choking.

Elgan ran over and pounded his back – perhaps too fervently; Koryon dropped to his knees, gasping.

“Are you all right?”

Koryon glared. “I’m fine, except for my back.”

“You must have choked on something.”

“Of course,” he said coldly.

Elgan turned back to Beldieze, folded his arms and asked casually, “Why Jaegendar?”

“You’ve heard of him?”

“If it’s the same dragon. For instance, this Jaegendar wouldn’t be called Jaegendar the Black? Dark Jaegendar?” He added awkwardly, “‘The Wings of Death?’”

“Also Jaegendar the Wealthy. The one and only Jaegendar. Yes.”

Elgan frowned. “Why Jaegendar?”

He expected many things – a tale of tragedy and revenge, a story of human greed and dragon horde, a quest for glory or a magic token. What he did not expect was the sudden shimmer of air and whoosh of wings as her human form vanished and a silver dragon appeared before them.

“If he dies,” the silver dragon said calmly, “his stepchild will inherit everything.” She looked down at the humans, a fanged smile curving on her face. “Not everyone in the inn last night was human.”

Koryon started choking again.

Beldieze laughed, a silvery noise that echoed across the hills, and off she flew.

*

“And off she flew.” Kory paused to wink at Peilanne, who frowned back. The reference to her silvery laugh hadn’t escaped her.

Peilanne gathered the dining knives back up and rubbed futilely at the scars in the bread board. In case anyone had missed the parallels between themselves and their story, Gannie had palmed four dinner knives from the table, making them disappear; then, one at a time from an apparently empty hand, he had thrown them at Kory, who caught them on the inn’s bread board and returned them, palming them himself a final time.

“So,” Peilanne leaned across the bar. “So far we have a greedy, vicious dragon and a young, treacherous, murderous dragon. What’s next?”

Everyone in the inn was listening.

“Why do you think so ill of dragons? And why does your friend keep looking out the window?”

Gannie pulled back with a start. “Habit. Sorry.” He turned around. “Not all dragons are bad, as our tale will tell you. Why, after Beldieze was gone...”

*

After Beldieze was gone, Koryon walked over to Elgan.

“You,” he said with the satisfaction one feels when friends have been foolish, “are in real trouble.”

“So we are.”

“‘We?’ “Koryon looked around in mock confusion.

Elgan looked around as well. “I don’t see anyone else.”

“Jaegendar,” Koryon said firmly, “will laugh until it hurts when he sees you.”

Elgan eyed him.

“Us,” Koryon added, not happily.

“We’ll find a way to beat him. We’ll do fine. We’re young, smart, clever, coordinated —”

“All that, of course.” Koryon shivered. “But Jaegendar!”

“He’s just a dragon, right?”

Koryon said in a small voice, “When I was little, my parents used to scare me with Jaegendar stories.”

“Me too, if it’ll make you feel any better.”

Koryon froze, thinking. “Did the contract say ‘fight a dragon,’ or ‘kill a dragon’?”

“‘Fight.’”

“Then there’s your answer. We fight for a while, then quit. There’s no shame in that.”

“There is, actually.”

“Maybe so, but I can live with my shame better than I can with my death. Assuming we can even survive a real fight with Jaegendar. Why are you grinning like that?”

“I’ve got an idea. Dragons are reasonable, right?” He grinned at Koryon. “Most dragons.”

“Which reminds me, did you happen to tell Beldieze how you know so much about dragon battles?”

Elgan shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t say I’d actually been in one.”

Koryon seemed to melt, his outline blurring, and a dragon stood before Elgan. “So she doesn’t know the truth yet.”

Elgan, changing his own form as rapidly, sighed. “No. She doesn’t.”

*

“I don’t like it at all,” Peilanne said firmly as she refilled the table. “A vicious, evil dragon, a greedy, murderous, younger dragon, and two dragon-scoundrels.” She emphasized the last word. “Besides, this is an awful lot of shape-changing. All dragons don’t change shape.”

“Some do.”

Everyone turned to look at Annella, Elinor’s mother. She flinched at their stare but rallied and said, “Red dragons change shape, and silver ones. Black ones don’t.”

Brann nodded over his stein. “Young Annella’s right about everything, including the black ones. Red and silver do, black don’t. So they say.”

Gannie nodded approvingly. “And the two dragons, Koryon and Elgan, are silver.” He folded his arms.

“Besides,” Kory said thoughtfully, “other dragons could use magic.”

“True.” Gannie let grim disapproval enter his voice. “Even a black dragon like Jaegendar could wear a ring of shaping.”

The audience was stirring restlessly. They appealed to the innkeeper.

“They’re right,” Darien said unwillingly. “If a black dragon could find a ring of shaping somewhere, and if he could wear it, he could change to human shape.”

“You see?” Gannie smiled brightly at Peilanne. “A dragon could be among you right now, and no one would know....”

*

Jaegendar was surprisingly easy to find. As Koryon had said gloomily, “Just follow the weeping.” There was a fire in the hills, where a farm was burning. Elgan hiked up to it in human form, not wishing to panic any survivors.

A huge black dragon, fully three times as long as Elgan in dragon form, perched on the edge of a roofless cottage, peering in like a carrion crow. He turned a cold eye this way and that as he checked the corners. He peered down at Elgan, who had stopped well back. “Who is it now?”

“Just me, Elgan.” He licked his lips, which felt suddenly dry.

“Elgan?” The black dragon looked Elgan up and down, not smiling and not frowning. Jaegendar waved a red-stained claw. “Never mind; it’s obvious. You’re here to fight me?”

“I seem to have to” — Elgan could feel his ears reddening — “because, well, the other night, I might have said something about knowing how to fight dragons —”

“You were bragging.” A noise, half scream and half wail, sounded from inside the cottage. “Excuse me.” Jaegendar tracked something this way and that, striking down swiftly like a crane into a stream. There was another scream, and another as Jaegendar thrust his head up and down inside the cottage.

“And I was wondering,” Elgan said, suddenly ashamed of himself as he said it, “if, since you might not want a real fight and all, if we could stage just enough of a mock fight to satisfy —”

“Let me guess.” The black dragon rose up, wiping his mouth with a claw. “A lady has bound you to fight me. And she wants you to kill me because of my cruel ways, is that it?”

“Well, she has her own motives – mostly monetary —”

Jaegendar smiled, yellowing fangs showing suddenly. “Ah. Beldieze? Why am I not surprised?” There was blood on one of his fangs. Jaegendar said, “Excuse me, again.” His tongue flickered across the tooth, licking it clean. His eyes half-closed like a purring cat’s.

When he opened them again he said, “And I can’t dissuade you from this... fight?”

Elgan said honestly, “I wish you could.”

“Well, let me try.” Almost casually he flung a stone the size of a kender at Elgan. As Elgan ducked, Jaegendar threw another, and another.

Elgan scrambled frantically, searching for cover. Moments later, cowering in a ditch and half buried under building stones, he heard mocking laughter and felt a cold wind as Jaegendar rose and flew off.

Something rolled down the pile of stones toward him; he put up an arm to ward it off. The thing that hit his arm was soft, wet and pulpy. Elgan shuddered and struggled under the stones.

Several of them rolled free and Koryon’s head appeared. “I saw him fly off. Big brute, isn’t he? How did it go?” He cocked his head, sniffing the air. “I smell blood. Are you all right?”

Elgan reached up. “Pull me free. Then let’s think of a strategy for tomorrow.” He looked at the black dot in the distance. “A very good one.”

*

Elinor had buried her head against her mother’s sweater, and was peeking out with one frightened eye.

In a single smooth gesture, before her mother could object, Kory popped Elinor onto his shoulders, grabbed the cider ladle, and charged at Gannie, who flapped his arms in mock panic and fled through the inn. They spun and ducked, making spiral turns and leaps near the fire and quick dives in the cold air near the door. From time to time one or the other of them shouted: “Glide!” “Stall!” “Plunge!” “Loop!” Elinor waved the spoon and tried to hit Gannie. She was very happy.

But Peilanne, Darien, and the customers watched nervously, and nobody missed that Gannie paused by the window to scan the sky intently.

When Kory paused breathlessly by the table and set the girl down, Annella grabbed her and held her tight. Elinor waved her arms enthusiastically. “They know all about dragons!”

“Quite a bit,” Gannie admitted. The other adults in the room looked less convinced about this, turning to Darien for confirmation.

“What would I know?” he said irritably. “I run an inn.”

After a moment’s silence he admitted grudgingly, “But I know a little about dragons – the way a man like myself might hear things – and yes, all the details sound real.”

Gannie sat beside Brann, who shrank back from him. “Are you cold?” Gannie gestured at the fire, which was dying to embers. “Soon it’ll be covered with gray ash, like someone waking by a burned-out campfire in the morning...”

*

They woke covered with a light pall of ashes, as from a burned-out campfire; they looked down the valley and saw that much of it was hidden by smoke. They washed up quietly, not looking at each other.

They headed downhill slowly, in human form, carrying the lance and the saddle. When they reached the villagers, no one glanced at them or wondered at their load; everyone was burdened.

Some were empty-eyed and blank, some were angry, some weeping. All of them carried trunks, awkward and badly tied parcels, or grain sacks packed hastily. Many of them carried children too young or too tired to walk.

Ahead of them the sign for the Inn of Road’s Ease rocked as it flamed, the letters glowing as they burned.

The innkeeper was one of the refugees, half-stumbling as he walked. On his back he bore a rack of pewter ale steins.

He tripped on a rock in the road. Koryon leapt forward to steady his load and hold him upright. “Are you all right?”

The innkeeper looked at him as though he hadn’t understood the words. “He burned our buildings, our farms.” He pointed to the opposite hill, where the ruins of cottages and outbuildings were visible through the smoke. “He burned the second cutting of hay that we needed for the winter.” His brow furrowed. “He said he was warming up for a special fight.”

Koryon and Elgan watched him stumble down the valley. Elgan rubbed his arm where the contract still clung.

Koryon stepped quickly behind the ruins of the grain storage and tossed a coin. “Call it.”

A moment later he muttered darkly and changed forms. “Put the saddle on me.”

Koryon, with Elgan on his back, used the morning wind to drift up the opposite hillside toward the outskirts of the town. A barn, hayrack beside it, blazed in front of them. Elgan tugged on the left rein. “Circle it to the left, hold your wings still to not make any noise, spiral up to the right on the thermal rise from the fire —”

“I know how to fly.”

Elgan shut up as Koryon dropped toward the blaze. A woman, running back and forth in front of the barn, screamed at the sky, waving a baby aloft. The baby didn’t move. Elgan shut his eyes. “Hurry up.”

As Koryon glided into the edge of the thermal, his right wing tipped up, full of rising air. He rolled toward it and spiraled up, moving in a little at a time until they were running a tight spiral upward. Elgan checked the lance swivel for the ninth time, looking around constantly. “Koryon?”

“Mmm?” Koryon had his lips pressed tight over the bit, swinging this way and that nervously.

“I think he knows —”

“Of course,” a voice beside them said coolly, and Elgan slammed the reins to the left as a dark figure streaked through the space where they had been, claws raking empty air.

“— everything we’re going to do.” Elgan held the lance close to himself, grateful he hadn’t dropped it. As Koryon swung around, he held up a finger automatically, at arm’s length like a wing tip, and tested the breeze. It felt cold.

They hung under the cloud cover, looking this way and that, seeking Jaegendar.

Elgan said finally, “What’s the classic maneuver out of a failed lunge?”

“Stoop, gain velocity, cup wings at the bottom, slingshot upward, flap hard and find an updraft, rise into clouds” — Koryon scanned the low-lying cloud cover frantically — “where you hide and wait for an advantage,” he finished slowly.

“He had to use another updraft. The wind by the mountains, or —” Elgan stopped as the flaming ruins around them snapped into perspective. “Kory, this place is Jaegendar’s playground. He laid out a whole system of updrafts for himself.... Get up high, shifting from thermal to thermal, and see if we can fool him.”

“I don’t think we can fool him,” Koryon said gloomily. Clearly they didn’t. For his next attack, Jaegendar dropped out of the clouds like a stone, leaving a small jagged hole before the cloud closed behind him, and swerved toward them with barely a flip of a wing tip. Elgan shouted and threw himself flat; Koryon, inelegantly, stalled and let himself tumble.

Elgan hung on desperately. “Get close to the clouds. At least he can’t dive like that again.”

Koryon flapped up, avoiding the obvious updrafts. The weather was restless; crosswinds shook them and required Koryon to make constant corrections just to stay over the hillside. This far up, their breath came out in white plumes.

Elgan tapped Koryon’s side. “Look.” Jaegendar, ahead, was moving slowly away at an angle as he scanned the sky below him.

“So, where do we hide?” asked Koryon.

“We don’t,” Elgan said. “We charge, diving with no wing-noise and lots of speed. Pull out at the last minute. I have an idea.”

When he had finished explaining his plan, Koryon said, “This isn’t an inn, and he doesn’t want to be entertained.”

Elgan looked at Jaegendar’s effortless flight. “We have to try something.”

With a sigh of misgiving, Koryon moved forward, catching a last breeze to rise and then drop, gaining momentum. Elgan watched their target cautiously, ready to call off the attack. He never looked their way. Jaegendar was nearly motionless, wings wide to catch an updraft and spilling slightly when he rose too high. He was a perfect target as he looked intently down at a circular pond, deep and rimmed with steep limestone in the green hills below him.

Elgan looked down as well. The pond was completely calm, untroubled by any ground-level breezes. It was like a mirror – Elgan saw, to his horror, that both dragons were clearly visible in the pond.

“Break off!” Elgan screamed but he was already pulling the reins in a vicious left. Koryon banked immediately, the steepness of the turn pressing Elgan down into the saddle.

Jaegendar spun, his teeth showing in a terrible smile. He aimed for the point where Koryon would have to pull out of the turn or stall.

Elgan tugged the reins hard to the right. Koryon muttered, “All right,” and flipped nearly over, his left wing high where the right had been. Elgan grabbed for the saddle as they spun off in a foolish, energy-wasting, clumsy maneuver that saved their lives as Jaegendar shot past them, his claws close enough to ruffle Elgan’s hair.

Elgan said quietly to Koryon, “We’re dead.”

Koryon agreed. “If we’re very lucky.”

“Hide in the clouds?”

“He’d only follow us in. He can go anywhere we can.” Jaegendar was moving toward them again, gaining speed.

They heard a rumble of thunder. A storm, climbing over the mountains, was dropping in low. The clouds were very dark, ragged underneath with whirling winds.

Elgan leaned down to Koryon and said, “Cloud-suck?”

“What a rotten idea. We’ll be thrown around like toys.” Koryon added, “No dragon in his right mind – Oh, Right.” He turned toward the storm. “Watch my back.”

“Aim to the left of the storm, zigzagging.”

As they moved directly under the cloud, Koryon quit beating his wings. The thunder was deafening, close, the air rough enough that Elgan had to clutch the saddle swivel and squeeze his legs tight to hold on. The air rushed upward around them. In seconds they were inside the thunder cloud.

They rocked about in darkness, illuminated by flashes. Koryon corrected constantly to stay upright. Elgan hung on, remembering a story in the lore of a dragon who had been knocked unconscious by the buffeting and expelled, head down, from a storm.

A particularly bright flash showed Koryon turning to look back at Elgan. He looked afraid. He said apologetically, “I can’t do this forever. I’m getting tired.”

“So will Jaegendar, and he’s old. Aren’t you in better shape than he is?”

“Jaegendar,” Koryon said firmly, “doesn’t have a rider.”

Elgan considered, then spoke through cupped hands over the thunder. “Drift forward, then to the left and down. It’s time.”

“If we have to,” Koryon said glumly.

As they broke free of the clouds, they saw that the burning buildings below them had subsided. Elgan tugged Koryon’s right rein, directing him toward the ruined granary where they had left Beldieze.

The wind tore the clouds apart. Elgan said in relief, “We’ll have sunshine soon, I think.”

“Will that give us some kind of advantage?”

“It’ll give someone an advantage,” he said vaguely. “Don’t go straight to the granary; circle around and check for signs of him. Go leftward,” he added hastily. This was not a time to use the classic patterns.

Koryon banked left, then spilled air from his wings to drop. Elgan grabbed the lance pin tightly. “Where are you going?”

Before he could answer, Elgan looked up and said tightly, “Company to our left.”

Without waiting to check, Koryon banked dizzily to the left.

Jaegendar swooped out of one of the remaining clouds, then vanished, but there was no question that he must have seen them.

Koryon finished his turn and leveled off. “What next?”

“He’s not to either side.” The remaining clouds had nearly dissipated except for the thunderhead hanging over the valley.

In full sunlight, Koryon nearly hovered in place, craning his neck up and down.

“Below?” He peered. “Above?” He squinted. “Nope. We lost him, I hope.”

A shadow fell on them, growing darker every second. Elgan shouted in sudden panic, “He was in the sun! He was in the —”

Koryon jerked sideways as Elgan brought the lance straight up. Jaegendar, smashing down past them, scraped his left wing on the lance.

But after the shock of impact, Elgan dropped the lance. It passed under Koryon’s body and out of sight.

They rose up close to the cloud cover again. Jaegendar slowed and turned, watching them, roaring out as he saw Elgan empty-handed. Koryon, his neck stretched out straight, straining, flapped his wings frantically sideways as fast as possible.

When they looked up, the thunderhead had drifted over the valley; Jaegendar, circling just under the darkest clouds, descended toward them. His black body was silhouetted in the flashes of lightning.

Koryon said in nearly his natural voice, “Oh, good, you made him mad.”

*

“You made him mad?” Darien said in disbelief, caught up in the story in spite of himself. “What kind of fool’s trick is that?”

“A fool’s trick,” Gannie said grimly. He drifted to the right of the window, peering out without leaving a silhouette. Elinor had fallen asleep on Kory’s back; he swooped forward and dropped her into Peilanne’s arms without waking the child.

“Still,” Gannie said thoughtfully, “An angry enemy isn’t a thinking enemy. The one hope left is that you can trick him...”

*

“He tricked us,” Koryon said, scanning the sky frantically. “Where did he go?”

“He dove toward us, then slingshotted back into the clouds while my body hid him from you. He’s that good.” They dove, picking up velocity.

Koryon flapped forward, dropping slightly to gain velocity from the dive. His body was still rigidly straight. “This is awkward. Do you think he knows you haven’t got the lance?”

“He saw me drop it. I’m sure of that.” Elgan flexed his empty arms, trying to relax.

The circular pond lay ahead. Koryon banked toward it, spilling air from his left wing to drop as he turned. He watched their shadow on the grass, tracking until he was nearly between the pond and the sun, directly overhead.

In the blinding moment when the pond was a fiery golden disk, Koryon saw, or thought he saw, a second small black dot reflected above them. He hissed to Elgan, “Look up. Now.”

He looked. “I can’t see a thing —”

“Hold your thumb up, block the sun out with it, and look for wings to either side.”

Elgan shouted, “There! Straight up, in the sun, diving for us. He’s dropping – closer – closer – Gods, his claws —”

Koryon shouted, “Hang on.” Curving the front edges of his wings into his body, he turned his downward velocity upward, a slingshot effect of his own. He clutched his claws tightly to his body as though shielding himself in panic.

Jaegendar, directly over him, flexed his huge claws and roared with anger and pleasure as he dropped —

“Catch!” Koryon lifted his head, revealing the lance he had hidden under his body, and tossed it back to Elgan. Elgan deftly caught it and threw it forward like a spear, using all their momentum and his full strength.

The air whistled around the lance as it struck Jaegendar in the breastbone, sailing in as easily as if it had struck a black cloud.

Jaegendar fell, end over end, slowly, crashing on a pinnacle of rock. The impact alone should have killed him. Koryon dropped lower, grateful that the trick had worked —

*

“Would a trick like that work, sirs? Specially against another dragon?” Brann was asking for information, not objecting.

Gannie regarded him coldly. “Against a stupid, arrogant one who hadn’t been challenged in a long while? It was easy.”

Brann subsided quickly, putting a cup to his mouth as much to hide behind it as to drink.

Gannie went on, “Or at least it worked as well as they could expect. Koryon flew low...”

*

Koryon flew low to see if Jaegendar were dead.

His body, on the cold grass, raised a mist like a hot spring or water on a fire. The lance, passing through his body, pinned him to the earth.

“We did it,” Koryon said with relief.

There was a rustle as the contract dropped from Elgan’s forearm and crumbled to ashes. The breeze caught the ashes and sent them swirling past Jaegendar’s nose —

Where they rose suddenly in a quick puff. Jaegendar, breathing heavily, opened one eye. “Very good,” he said coldly.

Koryon and Elgan, on the ground, froze.

“It nearly worked. A better throw and I would be dead” — he glanced down — “instead of in great pain.” Know,” he said in a low hiss, and coughed. “Know this. I will heal. And I will find you.”

Elgan said with barely a tremor, “You’ll never find us.”

Jaegendar took the lance in his wicked talons and snapped it off, barely above the entry wound. “I will find you, whatever form you take, and I will burn and destroy every place you have been, until the day I catch you. You will wander the earth, and death and misery will follow you nightly.”

Elgan opened his mouth, closed it and strode off quickly. Koryon changed to human form and followed. They paused only to pick up their knapsacks before leaving the smoking valley. As he put on his, Elgan looked thoughtfully at the huge black figure. “I wonder how fast he can heal.”

The two of them walked down the first of many roads.

*

“— the first of many roads.”

The fire was reduced to embers, the lamps out. The inn was shadowy and seemed suddenly as cold as the night.

Kory finished, “And so the two took on human form and fled from town to town, from inn to inn, seeking to hide among humans and pursued nightly by the healed dragon Jaegendar. And everywhere they went, they were followed shortly by flames and destruction. To this day, wherever they go, few survive.”

No one said anything for a long while. Finally, Brann asked in a quavering voice, “And did he ever catch them?”

Gannie, all smiles gone finally, looked out the window for the twentieth time. “Not yet.”

“But he’s destroyed every place they’ve been.”

“Completely.” Kory watched Gannie’s expression anxiously. “Not one stone on another. Refugees, blood, and tears.

“So there are two dragons fleeing another, forever?” the herdsman asked plaintively.

Kory spread his hands. In the firelight, the shadows of his outspread arms flickered like wings, hanging over the table. No one moved until he dropped his arms. “I’m afraid it’s the end.”

Kory coughed discreetly. “If you all remember,” he said earnestly, “our bargain was that if our story frightened you, you would pay us.” He stared at each of them one by one; several of them flinched. “I think we’ve earned our reward.”

The people paid nervously, digging coins out of pockets, pouches and purses. They dropped them into Kory and Gannie’s hands as though making a peace offering or a bribe.

The shepherd pulled out five or six corroded coins, pressing them into Kory’s palm. “All I have,” he said miserably.

Kory patted his shoulder reassuringly, but took every coin.

Annella took the still-sleeping Elinor back from Peilanne and cradled her protectively on her way out of the inn. Kory tried to pat Elinor’s head, but the mother snatched her away.

One and all, even the long-distance travelers, slipped into coats and fled into the night. Kory and Gannie were left alone with the innkeeper, the barmaid, two hats full of money, and an inn of completely empty beds.

Peilanne, clearing tables, scowled at them. “Was that nice?”

Kory said innocently, “By any chance, do you have room for us to stay?”

“I have all the room I need,” Darien said coldly. “Thanks to you.”

Peilanne slammed the cups down. There wasn’t a coin on the tray; all tip money had gone to the storytellers. “All that looking out the window was a nice touch.”

Gannie looked back, all injured innocence. He poked at the fire. “Your embers are dying.”

“It will be fine.” Darien glared around at the empty inn. “After all, this is the Inn of the Waiting Fire.”

“And you still haven’t paid us,” Kory said flatly.

“And what should I pay you, for having ruined my business?”

Gannie boldly tapped Darien’s finger. “That ring looks nice.”

Darien looked down at it with amusement. “No, it doesn’t. It’s worth more than it looks, at least to me. Here.” Gannie watched in disbelief as Darien took two gold coins from the till and tossed one to each of them. “Least I could do.”

“And now,” he added heavily, “If you really can change into dragons, I recommend that you do so.”

Now his shadow was large on the wall. Kory and Gannie shifted uncomfortably. “It’s like we tried to explain,” Kory said finally, plaintively, “it’s just a story.”

“Not even that good a story,” Darien said conversationally. “It needed a better ending. Would you like to hear one?”

Neither of them said anything. From behind the bar Peilanne, polishing cups, watched closely.

“Once, not long ago, there were two irresponsible young men who told a story slandering two dragons. They made their living retelling this story, frightening people, spreading bias and fear against dragons, and hinting strongly that they were dragons themselves. They also hinted that they were being pursued by a black dragon, because of treachery on the part of a silver dragon, and embellished the story with other details that were almost completely untrue.”

Gannie bristled. “We based that story on actual fact.”

“You based it,” Darien said coldly, “on a real black dragon and a real silver dragon. You made up all the rest.”

“What’s the harm in that?” Kory said feebly. “A story’s a story.”

Darien smiled at him. “Not always.” He tapped his ring on the bar. “What kind of silly dragon would chase a pair of inn-hopping liars all over Krynn —”

The two storytellers smiled, relieved.

“— when all he had to do was find an inn, and wait there?”

Their smiles faded.

The innkeeper’s shadow spread and lowered from the ceiling, and his arms seemed to fade into it, until a black dragon, ring of shaping still on his claw, was crouched in the dining hall. “I haven’t finished paying my wager —”

“We forgive you,” Gannie squeaked.

“Quite all right, really,” Kory quavered.

“Nonsense.” He raised an obsidian claw, pretending to think. “Ah, yes. You said I should make you a meal.” He smiled down at them, his sharp teeth gleaming red in the firelight. “My pleasure.”

From the bar, a silver dragon said firmly, “Not inside, Jaegendar.”

Although the window wasn’t open, Kory and Gannie heeded her hint. The two dragons followed, pushing aside the shattered casement. The fire died completely as the sound of panicked screams and flapping wings faded in the distance.

The Dragons

PART III (continued)

CHAPTER 30

PRECIOUS BAUBLES

(1191 PC)

Rallak Thartan was a stout, elderly cloth merchant, fortunate enough to have inherited a family stall in one of Xak Tsaroth’s most affluent neighborhoods. Business was good, as it had been since his great-grandfather had first sent a caravan to Tarsis in search of silk. Through his practice of starting work early and staying late, Rallak Thartan had grown to dominate the fabric market in the entire quarter of the city surrounding his modest shop.

Normally these work habits entailed the diligent merchant arriving at his home well past sunset, long after his competitors had closed up shop. But today, as he had done with increasing frequency of late, he decided to pull the shutters in midafternoon and hurry home to the welcoming arms of his wife.

For, lately, those arms had been very welcoming indeed.

It had all begun with a gift, a bauble Rallak Thartan had given his young wife a few months earlier. A simple red sphere, of large size and pure crimson color, it was an orb that was unique and fascinating in a strange way. The globe was beautiful of shade and perfect of shape, and there was nothing like it in any other house in this part of Xak Tsaroth.

Yet to the merchant, the stone had at first represented neither beauty nor a means toward his wife’s affections. It had been, purely and simply, a matter of revenge.

Rallak was still amazed at the fluke of events that had led him to gain possession of the bauble. After all, the orb had belonged for a long time to the House of Garlot, one of the Thartan clan’s major trading rivals for five generations. The venerable patriarch of House Garlot had won the sphere more than a hundred years ago in a clever trade with a dishonest dwarven peddler. The Garlots had displayed the crimson orb in their shop’s anteroom, and it had long been the envy of Xak Tsaroth’s mercantile circles.

Yet time brought changes, and the House of Garlot had eventually suffered a run of bad luck, most notably the state of raving insanity to which the current heir had succumbed. Finally, upon the recent occasion of his rival’s bankruptcy, which would have been cause for Rallak Thartan’s celebration in its own right, the merchant had gained possession of the crimson bauble.

Though he had at first been unimpressed by the physical appearance and qualities of the sphere, which was too spongy to be an actual stone, Rallak Thartan’s wife had been thrilled. She had installed the crimson orb in a place of honor, an alcove in their sleeping chamber, and had it mounted upon a stand of pure gold. Lately he had even wondered if the thing was glowing, for he had noticed a subtle illumination seeping through the shadows of night, a crimson glow that was somehow very similar to that shed by a fading, but still very hot, bed of coals.

Now he hurried home through the busy streets of the city, anxious to hear the latest word about his wife’s treasure. Lately, each day had brought a new development, or so it had seemed. At least, his young bride had eagerly reported to him the details of a seemingly enchanted series of transformations.

She had been pleased to observe the subtle expansion occurring as the crimson orb literally seemed to swell. She had remarked upon flickers of movement within the orb, ripples that periodically showed upon the smooth surface. And, of course, like Rallak Thartan himself, she was delighted by the aura of embers that seemed to emanate from the globe during the darkest hours of the night.

And when Rallak Thartan’s wife was delighted, she had a way of making sure that he was delighted as well. He reflected upon his own good fortune with a bawdy chuckle. The merchant was a man of mature years, ample paunch, and carefully cultivated dignity, but his wife was much younger than he. Her own enthusiasms carried over to him, and lately he had found himself feeling more youthful than he had in years, even decades. And so much of it seemed to have to do with this precious treasure – the stone that clearly wasn’t a stone at all.

He strolled through the entryway of his palatial manor, mildly distressed that his maidservant had failed to open the door to greet him. Still, even that irritation was fleeting. How could he be angry when his mind was anxiously wondering about his wife’s latest surprise?

Up the stairs he lumbered, thinking that the house was strangely silent around him. Where were the sounds from the kitchen, the cooks and maids going about their chores? Still, he wasn’t particularly worried, not even when he caught a faint whiff of char on the air. Somebody had merely been careless with the fireplace ashes; surely that was all.

The blood on the satin quilt of his mattress gave him the first hint that something was terribly amiss. The appalling discovery of his wife’s headless corpse, lying in the alcove where the treasure was kept on display, provided the second.

The third and final piece of the puzzle was delivered by widespread jaws surprisingly powerful for their size, and equipped with rows of needle-sharp teeth. The gaping mouth darted like a striking snake from the tangle of a curtain that had fallen and was now bundled carelessly on the floor. Like a vise the crimson maw closed around Rallak Thartan’s head … and twisted.

*

Aku Ben Vyneer hauled back on the reins, and the plodding camel shuffled to a halt. With an irritated spit, the animal chomped placidly while the rider climbed down. With a wave of his hand, Ben Vyneer gestured for the file of camels and horses following in his tracks to stop. The men of the long caravan wasted little time in setting up camp. Tents rose with the ease of long practice, and small cooking fires were started, the aroma of strong tea soon wafting through the encampment.

A sea of dunes rolled to the horizon on all sides, unmarred by any sign of an oasis. Nearby, ancient pillars and crumbling walls marked the scene of a waterless ruin. Normally Ben Vyneer would have spent the last few hours of daylight in a steady push forward, urging his tired mounts and men to keep moving, determined to cross this waste in as a short a time as possible. After all, there was no part of Estwilde – or all Ansalon, for that matter – that was so dry, so barren, as this inhospitable desert.

But, strangely, Aku Ben Vyneer had an interest more profound than even the pursuit of profit that normally governed his existence. It was this interest, perhaps even obsession, that had caused him to order the caravan to such an early halt. Now he stalked about the bustling camp with visible agitation, shouting orders, barking relentless criticism, increasingly distraught as he waited for one particular task.

Thus his men wasted no time in erecting the tent of bright blue silk – the shelter he had recently ordered, specifically made to house his greatest treasure. Once the tent had been pitched, the men left their master to his own pursuits. Ben Vyneer entered the tent and took his place on a soft cushion that had been placed before a large chest, a chest for which he alone held the key.

How long and hard had been the road that led him to this end? He reflected on the question with deep pleasure, allowing himself a moment of tantalizing anticipation before he released the lock. For years he had bargained to gain possession of this chest and its unique contents, even selling his most beautiful daughter to the previous owner, in a clear and well-stated exchange.

But then, when that owner had reneged upon his promise, Aku Ben Vyneer had no choice. Yesterday he had killed the wretched thief, then stolen this most precious of treasures during the dark of the night. Today he had led his caravan far into the desert before daring to stop and inspect his find.

With an unsteady hand, he reached out to take the key in his trembling fingers. He turned the chip of brass in the lock, scarcely daring to breathe as he felt the catch of the latch release. He forced himself to be calm as he reached out with both hands, holding steadily to the sides of the sturdy chest.

Aku Ben Vyneer opened the lid, prepared to gasp in delight at the beauteous treasure within.

But instead he grunted in sudden dismay. Shaking, he pushed the lid back, leaping to his feet to peer into the shadowy container.

The blue orb remained there, but there was a pasty flaking to the perfect surface that had not been there a few days earlier when Ben Vyneer had last inspected his – at that time future – treasure.

“What is happening, my bauble?” he asked, reaching out a hand to touch the blue surface that had once been such a perfectly reflective turquoise. “Has someone harmed you?”

To his surprise, he felt a tiny tingle of a spark as his fingers stroked the smooth sphere. And then the orb moved, pulsing with a very definite, throbbing expansion of its upper surface.

Ben Vyneer fell to his knees, pressing his face to the carpeted floor of the tent, and it was in this posture that the blue dragon found him when it emerged. The wyrmling wasted no time in killing the nomad with a bite to the back of his exposed neck.

Then, well contented, the blue dragon hatchling settled down to its first meal.

*

The hooded priests gathered in their damp cellar, within a darkened shack at the terminus of a shadow-cloaked alley amid one of the bleakest of Sanction’s wretched slums. Each member of the cult entered alone, with a careful look back and forth in the dark lane to make sure he wasn’t observed. The surreptitious visitors wore robes of dark gray or brown, each walking silently and alone, casting furtive glances that seemed perfectly at home in this city of evil and greed.

One after another the secret members gathered, passing through the incense-filled stall of the spice shop that ostensibly gave this building a reason for existing. Within, each of the mysterious figures repeated the same process: He went to a trapdoor that was designed to look just like the rotted planks of the floor. After checking again for observers, he silently raised the portal and entered.

Moving down the stairway concealed below, the priest joined his fellows in the secret sanctuary, a room of dank, muddy walls, and worn and ancient benches. But these were mere accessories, unimportant attendants to the thing that had founded this order and was now responsible for drawing the group together.

Pulling the heavy cowls of their hoods forward so that each face was fully lost in thick shadows, they huddled around the sacred orb – the treasure that gave them a focus of faith in the tortured chaos that was Sanction. Though the order of secret priests had been in existence for many decades, an air of expectancy had settled around the members during recent months, and this meeting was one of the results.

The orb was a sphere of perfect blackness resting on a marble dais, raised above the assembly of faithful priests. These hooded clerics murmured quietly, until gradually the sounds rose to a steady, rhythmic chant.

Abruptly a robe was pulled away from a slight figure, and a young woman was revealed. A gag distorted her face, tightly binding her mouth, muffling her frantic pleas and outcries. Cruel bonds wrapped her arms and legs, preventing any movement beyond the frantic twisting and thrashing that she commenced as soon as she was revealed. The woman struggled with a vengeance, her eyes wide with terror as she was stretched on the floor before the orb of darkness. Her bonds were then slashed, but only so that her wrists and ankles could be outspread and fastened with metal-studded straps.

The chanting built slowly, still soft but possessed of an urgency, or perhaps even a hunger, that had been lacking moments before. The helpless victim saw the knife as it emerged from the cowl of a black sleeve. A single scream pierced the gloom, breaking through the confinement of the gag as the blade slashed forward, and then, mercifully, her sufferings were over.

Then the sphere of blackness started to pulse, a rhythmic thrumming that grew in speed and intensity. The priests chanted with frantic hope, all eyes fixed upon the sacred orb. Within the cellar, the sound rose to a keening wail.

The rip came suddenly as something terrible and shiny, serpentine and black, pushed through the surface of the collapsing sphere. Acid spurted, a spume of searing liquid sweeping through a full circle, hissing into flesh and cloth, leaving the priests blinded, writhing on the floor, uttering shrieks that slowly faded to moans, ragged breathing, or utter silence.

These were not sounds worthy of attention in Sanction, so there was none who came to see what had happened.

The black, slime-covered serpent slithered down from the marble dais and crept to the nearest of the priests. This wretch, though blinded and crippled by the acid, was not yet dead, and his groans rose into piteous wails as the serpent began to feed.

The Best

(ca. 1132 PC)

A story from the ancient times...

I knew the four would come. My urgent plea had brought them. Whatever their motives – and, among this diverse group, I knew those motives were mixed – they were here.

The best. The very best.

I stood in the door of the Bitter Ale Inn and, surveying them, my heart was easier than it had been in many, many days.

The four did not sit together. Of course, they didn’t know each other, except perhaps by reputation. Each sat at his or her own table, eating, drinking quietly. Not making a show of themselves. They didn’t need to. They were the best. But though they said nothing with their mouths – using them for the bitter ale so famous in these parts – they were putting their eyes to work: sizing each other up, taking each other’s measure. I was thankful to see that each seemed to like what he or she saw. I wanted no bad blood between members of this group.

Sitting at the very front of the inn, short in stature, but large in courage – was Orin. The dwarf was renowned through these parts for his skill with his axe, but then so were most dwarves. His blade – Splithair – lay on the table before him, where he could keep both an eye and a loving hand on it. Orin’s true talent lay beneath a mountain, as the saying went He had traversed more dragon caves than any other dwarf who had ever lived. And he had never once lost his way, either there or (more important) back out again. Many a treasure-hunter owed his life – and about a third of the treasure – to his guide, Orin Dark-seer.

Seated near the dwarf, at the best table the Bitter Ale had to offer, was a woman of incredible beauty. Her hair was long and black as a moonless night; her eyes drank in men’s souls the way the dwarf drank ale. The tavern’s regulars – a sorry lot of ne’er-do-wells – would have been nosing around her, their tongues hanging out, but for the marks on her clothes.

She was well dressed, don’t mistake me. The cloth she wore was the finest, most expensive velvet in all the land. Its blue color gleamed in the firelight. It was the silver embroidery on the cuffs of her robes and around the hemline that warned off the cheek-pinchers and kiss-snatchers. Pentagrams and stars and intertwined circles and suchlike. Cabalistic marks. Her beautiful eyes met mine, and I bowed to Ulanda the sorceress, come all the way from her fabled castle hidden in the Blue Mist Forest.

Seated near the door – as near the door as he could get and still remain in the inn – was the one member of the four I knew well. I knew him because I was the one who had turned the key in his prison cell and set him free. He was thin and quick, with a mop of red hair and green roguish eyes that could charm a widow out of her life savings and leave her loving him for it. Those slender fingers of his could slide in and out of a pocket as fast as his knife could cut a purse from a belt. He was good, so good he wasn’t often caught. Reynard Deft-hand had made one small mistake. He’d try to lift a purse from me.

Directly across the room from Reynard – dark balancing light in the scales of creation – was a man of noble bearing and stern countenance. The regulars left him alone, too, out of respect for his long and shining sword and the white surcoat he wore, marked with the silver rose. Eric of Truestone, Knight of the Rose, a holy paladin. I was as amazed to see him as I was pleased. I had sent my messengers to the High Clerist’s Tower, begging the knights for aid. I knew they would respond – they were honor-bound. But they had responded by sending me their best.

All four the best, the very best. I looked at them and I felt awed, humbled.

“You should be closing down for the night, Marian,” I said, turning to the pretty lass who tended bar.

The four dragon-hunters looked at me, and not one of them moved. The regulars, on the other hand, took the hint. They quaffed their ale and left without a murmur. I hadn’t been in these parts long – newly come to my job – and, of course, they’d put me to the test. I’d been forced to teach them to respect me. That had been a week ago and one, so I heard, was still laid up. Several of the others winced and rubbed their cracked heads as they hurried past me, all politely wishing me good-night.

“I’ll lock the door,” I said to Marian.

She, too, left, also wishing me – with a saucy smile – a good night. I knew well she’d like to make my good night a better one, but I had business.

When she was gone, I shut and bolted the door. This clearly made Reynard nervous (he was already looking for another escape route), so I came quickly to the point.

“No need to ask why you’re here. You’ve each come in response to my plea for help. I am Gondar, King Frederick’s seneschal. I am the one who sent you the message. I thank you for your quick response, and I welcome you, well, most of you” — I cast a stern glance at Reynard, who grinned — “to Fredericksborough.”

Sir Eric rose and made me a courteous bow. Ulanda looked me over with her wonderful eyes. Orin grunted. Reynard was jingling coins in his pocket. The regulars would find themselves without ale money tomorrow, I guessed.

“You all know why I sent for you,” I continued. “At least, you know part of the reason. The part I could make public.”

“Please be seated, Seneschal,” said Ulanda, with a graceful gesture. “And tell us the part you couldn’t make public.”

The knight joined us, as did the dwarf. Reynard was going to, but Ulanda warned him off with a look. Not the least bit offended, he grinned again and leaned against the bar.

The four waited politely for me to continue.

“I tell you this in absolute confidentiality,” I said, lowering my voice. “As you know, our good king, Frederick, has journeyed to the north on invitation from his half brother, the Duke of Norhampton. There were many in the court who advised His Majesty not to go. None of us trust the twisted, covetous duke. But His Majesty was ever a loving sibling and north he went. Now, our worst fears have been realized. The duke is holding the king hostage, demanding in ransom seven coffers filled with gold, nine coffers filled with silver, and twelve coffers filled with precious jewels.”

“By the eye of Paladine, we should burn this duke’s castle to the ground,” said Eric of the Rose. His hand clenched over his sword’s hilt.

“We would never see His Majesty alive again.” I shook my head.

“This is not why you brought us here,” growled Orin. “Not to rescue your king. He may be a good king, for all I know, but...” The dwarf shrugged.

“Yes, but you don’t care whether a human king lives or dies, do you, Orin?” I said with a smile. “No reason you should. The dwarves have their own king.”

“And there are some of us,” said Ulanda softly, “who have no king at all.”

I wondered if the rumors I’d heard about her were true, that she lured young men to her castle and kept them until she tired of them, then changed them into wolves, forced to guard her dwelling place. At night, it was said, you could hear their howls of anguish. Looking into those lovely eyes, I found myself thinking it might just be worth it!

I wrenched myself back to the business at hand.

“I have not told you the worst,” I said. “I collected the ransom. This is a wealthy kingdom. The nobles dipped into their treasuries. Their lady wives sacrificed their jewels. The treasure was loaded into a wagon, ready to be sent north when...”

I cleared my throat, wished I had drawn myself a mug of ale. “A huge red dragon swept out of the sky, attacked the treasure caravan. I tried to stand and fight, but” — my face burned in shame — “I’ve never known such paralyzing fear. The next thing I knew, I was facefirst on the ground, shivering in terror. The guard fled in panic.

“The great dragon settled down on the King’s Highway. It leisurely devoured the horses, then, lifting the wagon containing the treasure in its claws, the cursed beast flew away.”

“Dragonfear,” said Orin, as one long experienced in such things.

“Though it has never happened to me, I’ve heard the dragonfear can be devastating.” Sir Eric rested his hand pityingly on mine. “It was foul magic that unmanned you, Seneschal. No need for shame.”

“Foul magic,” repeated Ulanda, casting the knight a dark look. I could see she was thinking what an excellent wolf he would make.

“I saw the treasure.” Reynard heaved a gusty sigh. “It was a beautiful sight. And there must be more, lots more, in that dragon’s lair.”

“There is,” said Orin. “Do you think yours is the only kingdom this dragon has robbed, Seneschal? My people were hauling a shipment of golden nuggets from our mines in the south when a red dragon – pull out my beard if it’s not the same one – swooped out of the skies and made off with it!”

“Golden nuggets!” Reynard licked his lips. “How much were they worth, all told?”

Orin cast him a baleful glance. “Never you mind, Light-finger.”

“The name is Deft-hand,” Reynard said, but the rest ignored him.

“I have received word from my sisters in the east,” Ulanda was saying, “that this same dragon is responsible for the theft of several of our coven’s most powerful arcane artifacts. I would describe them to you, but they are very secret. And very dangerous, to the inexperienced,” she added pointedly, for Reynard’s sake.

“We, too, have suffered by this wyrm,” said Eric grimly. “Our brethren to the west sent us as a gift a holy relic – a finger bone of Vinus Solamnus. The dragon attacked the escort, slaughtered them to a man, carried away our artifact.”

Ulanda laughed, made a face. “I don’t believe it! What would the dragon want with a moldy old finger bone?”

The knight’s face hardened. “The finger bone was encased in a diamond, big around as an apple. The diamond was carried in a chalice made of gold, encrusted with rubies and emeralds. The chalice was carried on a platter made of silver, set with a hundred sapphires.”

“I thought you holy knights took vows of poverty,” Reynard insinuated slyly. “Maybe I should start going to church again.”

Eric rose majestically to his feet. Glaring at the thief, the knight drew his sword. Reynard sidled over behind me.

“Hold, Sir Knight,” I said, standing. “The route to the dragon’s lair leads up a sheer cliff with nary a hand-or foothold in sight.”

The knight eyed Reynard’s slender fingers and wiry body. Sheathing his sword, the knight sat back down.

“You’ve discovered the lair!” Reynard cried. He was trembling, so excited, I feared he might hug me.

“Is this true, Seneschal?” Ulanda leaned near me. I could smell musk and spice. Her fingertips were cool on my hand. “Have you found the dragon’s lair?”

“I pray to Paladine you have! Gladly would I leave this life, spend eternity in the blessed realm of Paladine, if I could have a chance to fight this wyrm!” Eric vowed. Lifting a sacred medallion he wore around his neck to his lips, he kissed it to seal his holy oath.

“I lost my king’s ransom,” I said. “I took a vow neither to eat nor sleep until I had tracked the beast to its lair. Many weary days and nights I followed the trail – a shining coin fallen to the ground, a jewel spilled from the wagon. The trail led straight to a peak known as Black Mountain. A day I waited, patient, watching. I was rewarded. I saw the dragon leave its lair. I know how to get inside.”

Reynard began to dance around the tavern, singing and snapping his long fingers. Eric of the Rose actually smiled. Orin Dark-seer ran his thumb lovingly over his axe-blade. Ulanda kissed my cheek.

“You must come visit me some night, Seneschal, when this adventure is ended,” she whispered.

The four of them and I spent the night in the inn, were up well before dawn to begin our journey.

*

The Black Mountain loomed before us, its peak hidden by a perpetual cloud of gray smoke. The mountain is named for its shining black rock, belched up from the very bowels of the world. Sometimes the mountain still rumbles, just to remind us that it is alive, but none living could remember the last time it spewed flame.

We reached it by late afternoon. The sun’s rays shone red on the cliff face we would have to climb. By craning my neck, I could see the gaping dark hole that was the entrance to the dragon’s lair.

“Not a handhold in sight. By Paladine, you weren’t exaggerating, Seneschal,” said Eric, frowning as he ran his hand over the smooth black rock.

Reynard laughed. “Bah! I’ve climbed castle walls that were as smooth as milady’s – Well, let’s just say they were smooth.”

The thief looped a long length of rope over his shoulder. He started to add a bag full of spikes and a hammer, but I stopped him.

“The dragon might have returned. If so, the beast would hear you driving the spikes into the rock.” I glanced upward. “The way is not far, just difficult. Once you make it, lower the rope down to us. We can climb it.”

Reynard agreed. He studied the cliff face a moment, all seriousness now, no sign of a grin. Then, to the amazement of all of us watching, he attached himself to the rock like a spider and began to climb.

I had known Reynard was good, but I must admit, I had not known how good. I watched him crawl up that sheer cliff face, digging his fingers into minute cracks, his feet scrabbling for purchase, hanging on, sometimes, by effort of will alone. I was impressed. He was the best. No other man living could have made it up that cliff.

“The gods are with us in our holy cause,” said Eric reverently, watching Reynard crawl up the black rock like a lizard.

Ulanda stifled a yawn, covered her mouth with a dainty hand. Orin stomped around the foot of the cliff in impatience. I continued to watch Reynard, admiring his work. He had reached the entrance to the cavern, disappeared inside. In a moment, he came back out, indicated with a wave of his hand that all was safe.

Reynard lowered the rope down to us. Unfortunately, the rope he’d brought was far too short. We couldn’t reach it. Orin began to curse loudly. Ulanda laughed, snapped her fingers, spoke a word. The rope quivered, and suddenly it was exactly the right length.

Eric eyed the magiced rope dubiously, but it was his only way up. He grabbed hold of it, then – appearing to think of something – he turned to the sorceress.

“My lady, I fear your delicate hands are not meant for climbing ropes, nor are you dressed for scaling mountains. If you will forgive me the liberty, I will carry you up the cliff.”

“Carry me!” Ulanda stared at him, then she laughed again.

Eric stiffened; his face went rigid and cold. “Your pardon, my lady —”

“Forgive me, Sir Knight,” Ulanda said smoothly. “But I am not a weak and helpless damsel. And it would be best if you remembered that. All of you.”

So saying, Ulanda drew a lacy, silken handkerchief from her pocket and spread it upon the ground. Placing her feet upon the handkerchief, she spoke words that were like the sound of tinkling chimes. The handkerchief became hard as steel. It began to rise slowly into the air, bearing the sorceress with it.

Sir Eric’s eyes widened. He made the sign against evil.

Ulanda floated calmly up the cliff face. Reynard was on hand to assist her with the landing at the mouth of the cave. The thief’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. He was practically drooling. We could all hear his words.

“What a second-story man you’d make! Lady, I’ll give you half – well, a fourth of my treasure for that scrap of cloth.”

Ulanda picked up the steel platform, snapped it once in the air. Once again, the handkerchief was silk and lace. She placed it carefully in a pocket of her robes. The thief’s eyes followed it all the way.

“It is not for sale,” Ulanda said, and she shrugged. “You wouldn’t find it of much value anyway. If anyone touches it, other than myself, the handkerchief will wrap itself around the unfortunate person’s nose and mouth. It will smother him to death.”

She smiled at Reynard sweetly. He eyed her, decided she was telling the truth, gulped, and turned hastily away.

“May Paladine preserve me,” Eric said dourly. Laying his hand upon the rope, he started to climb.

He was strong, that knight. Encased in heavy plate armor and chain mail, his sword hanging from his side, he pulled himself up the cliff with ease. The dwarf was quick to follow, running up the rope nimbly. I took my time. It was nearly evening now, but the afternoon sun had warmed the rock. Hauling myself up that rope was hot work. I slipped once, giving myself the scare of a lifetime. But I managed to hang on, heaved a sign of relief when Eric pulled me up over the ledge and into the cool shadows of the cavern.

“Where’s the dwarf?” I asked, noticing only three of my companions were around.

“He went ahead to scout the way,” said Eric.

I nodded, glad for the chance to rest. Reynard drew up the rope, hid it beneath a rock for use on the way back. I glanced around. All along the sides of the cavern, I could see marks left by the dragon’s massive body scraping against the rock. We were examining these when Orin returned, his bearded face split in a wide smile.

“You are right, Seneschal. This is the way to the dragon’s lair. And this proves it.”

Orin held his find up to the light. It was a golden nugget. Reynard eyed it covetously, and I knew then and there it was going to cause trouble.

“This proves it!” Orin repeated, his eyes shining bright as the gold. “This is the beast’s hole. We’ve got him! Got him now!”

Eric of the Rose, a grim look on his face, drew his sword and started for a huge tunnel leading off the cavern’s entrance. Shocked, Orin caught hold of the knight, pulled him back.

“Are you daft, man?” the dwarf demanded. “Will you go walking in the dragon’s front door? Why don’t you just ring the bell, let him know we’re here?”

“What other way is there?” Eric asked, nettled at Orin’s superior tone.

“The back way,” said the dwarf cunningly. “The secret way. All dragons keep a back exit, just in case. We’ll use that.”

“You’re saying we have to climb round to the other side of this bloody mountain?” Reynard protested. “After all the work it took to get here?”

“Naw, Light-finger!” Orin scoffed. “We’ll go through the mountain. Safer, easier. Follow me.”

He headed for what looked to me like nothing more than a crack in the wall. But, once we had all squeezed inside, we discovered a tunnel that led even deeper into the mountain.

“This place is blacker than the Dark Queen’s heart,” muttered Eric, as we took our first few tentative steps inside. Although he had spoken in a low voice, his words echoed alarmingly.

“Hush!” the dwarf growled. “What do you mean dark? I can see perfectly.”

“But we humans can’t! Do we dare risk a light?” I whispered.

“We won’t get far without one,” Eric grumbled. He’d already nearly brained himself on a low-hanging rock. “What about a torch?”

“Torches smoke. And it’s rumored there’re other things living in this mountain besides the dragon!” Reynard said ominously.

“Will this do?” asked Ulanda.

Removing a jeweled wand from her belt, she held it up. She spoke no word, but – as if offended by the darkness – the wand began to shine with a soft white light.

Orin shook his head over the frailty of humans and stumped off down the tunnel. We followed after.

The path led down and around and over and under and into and out of and up and sideways and across... a veritable maze. How Orin kept from getting lost or mixed up was beyond me. All of us had doubts (Reynard expressed his loudly), but Orin never wavered.

We soon lost track of time, wandering in the darkness beneath the mountain, but I would guess that we ended up walking most of the night. If we had not found the coin, we still would have guessed the dragon’s presence, just by the smell. It wasn’t heavy or rank, didn’t set us gagging or choking. It was a scent, a breath, a hint of blood and sulphur, gold and iron. It wasn’t pervasive, but drifted through the narrow corridors like the dust, teasing, taunting.

Ulanda wrinkled her nose in disgust. She’d just complained breathlessly that she couldn’t stand another moment in this “stuffy hole” when Orin brought us to a halt. Grinning slyly, he looked round at us.

“This is it,” he said.

“This is what?” Eric asked dubiously, staring at yet another crack in the wall. (We’d seen a lot of cracks!)

“It leads to the dragon’s other entrance,” said the dwarf.

Squeezing through the crack, we found ourselves in another tunnel, this one far larger than any we’d found yet. We couldn’t see daylight, but we could smell fresh air, so we knew the tunnel connected with the outside. Ulanda held her wand up to the wall, and there again were the marks made by the dragon’s body. To clinch the matter, a few red scales glittered on the ground.

Orin Dark-seer had done the impossible. He’d taken us clean through the mountain. The dwarf was pretty pleased with himself, but his pleasure was short-lived.

We stopped for a rest, to drink some water and eat a bite of food to keep up our energy. Ulanda was sitting beside me, telling me in a low voice of the wonders of her castle, when suddenly Orin sprang to his feet.

“Thief!” The dwarf howled. He leapt at Reynard. “Give it back!”

I was standing; so was Reynard, who managed to put me in between himself and the enraged dwarf.

“My gold nugget!” Orin shrieked.

“Share and share alike,” Reynard said, bobbing this way and that to avoid the dwarf. “Finders keepers.”

Orin began swinging that damn axe of his a bit too near my knees for comfort.

“Shut them up, Seneschal!” Eric ordered me, as if I were one of his foot soldiers. “They’ll bring the dragon down on us!”

“Fools! I’ll put an end to this!” Ulanda reached her hand into a silken pouch she wore on her belt.

I think we may well have lost both thief and guide at that moment, but we suddenly had far greater problems.

“Orin! Behind you!” I shouted.

Seeing by the expression of sheer terror on my face that this was no trick, Orin whirled around.

A knight – or what had once been a knight – was walking toward us. His armor covered bone, not flesh. His helm rattled on a bare and bloodstained skull. He held a sword in his skeletal hand. Behind him, I saw what seemed an army of these horrors, though there were – in reality – only six or seven.

“I’ve heard tell of this!” Eric said, awed. “These were once living men, who dared attack this dragon. The wyrm killed them and now forces their rotting corpses to serve him!”

“I’ll put it out of its misery,” Orin cried. Bounding forward, the dwarf struck at the undead warrior with his axe. The blade severed the knight’s knees at the joint. The skeleton toppled. The dwarf laughed.

“No need to trouble yourselves over this lot,” he told us. “Stand back.”

The dwarf went after the second. But at that moment, the first skeleton picked up its bones, began putting itself back together! Within moments, it was whole again. The skeleton brought its sword down on the dwarf’s head. Fortunately for Orin, he was wearing a heavy steel helm. The sword did no damage, but the blow sent the dwarf reeling.

Ulanda already had her hand in her pouch. She drew out a noxious powder, tossed it onto the undead warrior nearest her. The skeleton went up in a whoosh of flame that nearly incinerated the thief, who had been attempting to lift a jeweled dagger from the undead warrior’s belt. After that, Reynard very wisely took himself out of the way, watched the fight from a corner.

Eric of the Rose drew his sword, but he did not attack. Holding his blade by the hilt, he raised it in front of one of the walking skeletons. “I call on Paladine to free these noble knights of the curse that binds them to this wretched life.”

The undead warrior kept coming, its bony hand clutching a rusting sword. Eric held his ground, stood fast, repeating his prayer in sonorous Solamnic. The skeletal warrior raised its sword for the deathblow. Eric gazed at it steadfastly, never wavering in his faith.

I watched with that terrible fascination that freezes a man in his tracks until the end.

“Paladine!” Eric gave a great shout, raised his sword to the heavens.

The skeletal knight dropped down in a pile of dust at the knight’s feet.

Orin, who had been exchanging blows with two corpses for some time and was now getting the worst of the battle, beat a strategic retreat. Ulanda with her magic and Eric with his faith took care of the remainder of the skeletal warriors.

I had drawn my sword, but, seeing that my help wasn’t needed, I watched in admiration. When the warriors were either reduced to dust or smoldering ash, the two returned. Ulanda’s hair wasn’t even mussed. Eric hadn’t broken into a sweat.

“There are not two in this land who could have done what you did,” I said to them, and I meant it.

“I am good at anything I undertake,” Ulanda said. She wiped dust from her hands. “Very good,” she added with a charming smile and a glance at me from beneath her long eyelashes.

“My god Paladine was with me,” Eric said humbly.

The battered dwarf glowered. “Meaning to say my god Reorx wasn’t?”

“The good knight means nothing of the sort.” I was quick to end the argument. “Without you, Orin Dark-seer, we would be food for the dragon right now. Why do you think the skeleton men attacked us? Because we are drawing too near the dragon’s lair, and that is due entirely to your expertise. No one else in this land could have brought us this far safely, and we all know it.”

At this, I glanced pointedly at Eric, who took the hint and bowed courteously, if a bit stiffly, to the dwarf. Ulanda rolled her lovely eyes, but muttered something gracious.

I gave Reynard a swift kick in the pants, and the thief reluctantly handed over the golden nugget, which seemed to mean more to the dwarf than our words of praise. Orin thanked us all, of course, but his attention was on the gold. He examined it suspiciously, as if worried that Reynard might have tried to switch the real nugget with a fake. The dwarf bit down it, polished it on his doublet. Finally certain the gold was real, Orin thrust it beneath his leather armor for safekeeping.

So absorbed was the dwarf in his gold that he didn’t notice Reynard lifting his purse from behind. I did, but I took care not to mention it.

As I said, we were close to the dragon’s lair.

We moved ahead, doubly cautious, keeping sharp watch for any foe. We were deep, deep inside the mountain now. It was silent. Too silent.

“You’d think we’d hear something,” Eric whispered to me. “The dragon breathing, if nothing else. A beast that large would sound like a bellows down here.”

“Perhaps this means he’s not home,” Reynard said.

“Or perhaps it means we’ve come to a dead end,” said Ulanda idly.

Rounding a corner of the tunnel, we all stopped and stared. The sorceress was right. Ahead of us, blocking our path, was a solid rock wall.

The darkness grew darker at that moment. All hint of outside air had long since been left behind. The scent of blood and sulphur, now enhanced by a dank, chill, musty smell, was strong. And so was the scent of gold. I could smell it and so, I knew, could my companions. Our imaginations, I suppose, or perhaps wishful thinking. But maybe not. Gold has a smell – its own metal smell and, added to that, the stink of the sweat from all the hands that have touched it and coveted it and grasped it and lost it. That was the smell, and it was sweet perfume to everyone in that cave. Sweet and frustrating, for – seemingly – we had no way to reach it.

Orin’s cheeks flushed. He tugged on his beard, cast us all a sidelong glance. “This must be the way,” he muttered, kicking disconsolately at the rock.

“We’ll have to go back,” Eric said grimly. “Paladine is teaching me a lesson. I should have faced the wyrm in honorable battle. None of this skulking about like a —”

“Thief?” Reynard said brightly. “Very well, Sir Knight, you can go back to the front door, if you want. I will sneak in by the window.”

With this, Reynard closed his eyes and, flattening himself against the rock wall, he seemed – to all appearances – to be making love to it. His hands crawled over it, his fingers poking and prodding. He even whispered what sounded like cooing and coaxing words. Suddenly, with a triumphant grin, he placed his feet in two indentations in the bottom of the wall, put his hands in two cracks at the top, and pressed.

The rock wall shivered, then it began to slide to one side! A shaft of reddish light beamed out. The thief jumped off the wall, waved his hand at the opening he’d created.

“A secret door,” Orin said. “I knew it all along.”

“You want to go around to the front now?” Reynard asked the knight slyly.

Eric glared at the thief, but he appeared to be having second thoughts about meeting the dragon face-to-face in an honorable fight. He drew his sword, waited for the wall to open completely so that we could see inside.

The light pouring out from the doorway was extremely bright. All of us blinked and rubbed our eyes, trying to adjust them to the sudden brilliance after the darkness of the tunnels. We waited, listening for the dragon. None of us had a doubt but that we had discovered the beast’s dwelling place.

We heard nothing. All was deathly quiet.

“The dragon’s not home!” Reynard rubbed his hands. “Hiddukel the Trickster is with me today!” He made a dash for the entrance, but Sir Eric’s hand fell, like doom, on his shoulder.

“I will lead,” he said. “It is my right.”

Sword in hand, a prayer on his lips, the holy paladin walked into the dragon’s lair.

Reynard crept right behind him. Orin, moving more cautiously, followed the thief. Ulanda had taken a curious-looking scroll from her belt. Holding it fast, she entered the lair after the dwarf. I drew my dagger. Keeping watch behind me, I entered last.

The door began to rumble shut.

I halted. “We’re going to be trapped in here!” I called out as loudly as I dared.

The others paid no attention to me. They had discovered the dragon’s treasure room.

The bright light’s source was a pit of molten rock bubbling in a corner of the gigantic underground chamber. The floor of the cavern had been worn smooth, probably by the rubbing of the dragon’s enormous body. A great, glittering heap, tall as His Majesty’s castle, was piled together on the cavern floor.

Gathered here was every beautiful, valuable, and precious object in the kingdom. Gold shone red in the fire-light, jewels of every color of the rainbow winked and sparkled. The silver reflected the smiles of the dragon-hunters. And, best of all, the cavern was uninhabited.

Sir Eric fell on his knees and began to pray.

Ulanda stared, openmouthed.

Orin was weeping into his beard with joy. But by now, the secret door had slammed shut.

Not one of them noticed.

“The dragon’s not home!” Reynard shrieked, and he made a dive for the treasure pile.

My treasure pile.

The thief began pawing through the gold.

My gold.

I walked up behind him.

“Never jump to conclusions,” I said.

With my dagger, I gave him the death a thief deserves.

I stabbed him in the back.

“I thought you should at least have a look,” I said to him kindly, gesturing to my hoard. “Since you’re the best.”

Reynard died then – the most astonished looking corpse I’d ever seen. I still don’t think he’d quite figured things out.

But Ulanda had. She was smart, that sorceress. She guessed the truth immediately, if a bit late – even before I took off my ring of shapechanging.

Now, at last, after weeks of being cramped into that tiny form, I could stretch out. My body grew, slowly taking on its original, immense shape, almost filling the cavern. I held the ring up in front of her eyes.

“You were right,” I told her, the jewel sparkling in what was now a claw. “Your coven did possess many powerful arcane objects. This is just one of them.”

Ulanda stared at me in terror. She tried to use her scroll, but the dragonfear was too much for her. The words of magic wouldn’t come to her parched, pale lips.

She’d been sweet enough to invite me to spend the night, and so I did her a favor. I let her see, before she died, a demonstration of the magic now in my possession. Appropriately, it was one of my most prized artifacts – a necklace made out of magical wolves’ teeth – that encircled her lovely neck and tore out her throat.

All this time, Orin Dark-seer had been hacking at my hind leg with his axe. I let him get in a few licks. The dwarf hadn’t been a bad sort, after all, and he’d done me a favor by showing me the weakness in my defenses. When he seemed likely to draw blood, however, I tired of the contest. Picking him up, I tossed him in the pool of molten lava. Eventually, he’d become part of the mountain – a fitting end for a dwarf. I trust he appreciated it.

That left Sir Eric, who had wanted, all along, to meet me in honorable battle. I granted him his wish.

He faced me bravely, calling on Paladine to fight at his side.

Paladine must have busy with something else just then, for he didn’t make an appearance.

Eric died in a blaze of glory.

Well, he died in a blaze.

I trust his soul went straight to the Dome of Creation, where it’s my guess his god must have had some pretty fancy explaining to do.

They were dead now. All four.

I put out the fire, swept up the knight’s ashes. Then I shoved the other two corpses out the secret door. The thief and the sorceress would take the place of the skeletal warriors I’d been forced to sacrifice to keep up appearances.

Crawling back to my treasure pile, I tidied up the gold a bit, where the thief had disturbed it. Then I climbed on top, spread myself out, and burrowed deeply and luxuriously into the gold and silver and jewels. I spread my wings protectively over the treasure, even paused to admire the effect of the firelight shining on my red scales. I wrapped my long tail around the golden nuggets of the dwarves, stretched my body comfortably out over the jewels of the knights, laid my head down on the magical treasure of the sorceress’s coven.

I was tired, but satisfied. My plan had worked out wonderfully well. I had rid myself of them.

They’d been the best. The very best.

Sooner or later, separately or together, they would have come after me. And they might have caught me napping.

I settled myself onto the treasure more comfortably, closed my eyes. I’d earned my rest.

And I could sleep peacefully... now.

The Dragons

PART III (continued)

CHAPTER 31

FURY OF DEATHFYRE

(1056 PC)

“Fly to me, my kin-dragons, wyrms of Takhisis!”

Deathfyre stood tall atop the smoldering caldron of the volcano, sending out a cry that rang across the breadth of Ansalon. The message was swelled, given strength and volume and range, by the Queen of Darkness herself. Riding the wind, the summons reached far, penetrating every corner of the world.

As the great red dragon bugled forth the call from the heights of the Lords of Doom, the populace of Sanction quailed and cried in the valley below. An hour earlier Deathfyre had first flown over that city in his true form, appearing from the volcanic smog like a vengeful apparition. Crimson wings spread wide, as if to draw the entire city into an embrace of doom, the red dragon swept back and forth over mansion and slum.

He had attracted attention with loud roars, drawing the populace into the streets and onto rooftops and balconies, where they stared upward in a mixture of terror and awe. Then Deathfyre spoke to them in their own language, telling them that their new master had come … that he was the one who would lead them to power and glory.

“If you do my bidding,” he had bellowed, the sound of his voice echoing from the three great mountains flanking the city of fire, “you shall thrive and grow mighty! But if you resist, know that you shall die!”

Men trembled and women wailed at the coming of the mighty wyrm, but the numerous ogres in the city howled and cheered, hailing the vision of a master that arose from the distant fog of their tribal dreams. These accolades still rang out, and a frenzy had spread through Sanction, bringing throngs into the narrow streets, igniting chaotic revelry and frantic prayer in approximately equal proportions.

But for now all these lesser beings, the two-legged throngs of his legions, were beneath Deathfyre’s notice. His cry was meant for other ears, some near and others distant, and – unlike the bellows with which he had terrified Sanction – it was audible to those listeners alone.

In the depths of the city’s sewers, a black head emerged from the murk, probing for the source of the piercing summons. The young dragon had dwelt here for a long time, ever since it had emerged from the sacred orb that had been the focus of a short-lived cult. Now it crept through the muck, pushing upward, stalking along a street, scattering merchants and mercenaries alike until it took wing, striving without understanding to reach the lofty summit.

Through the arid waste of the Estwilde desert, the cry wafted like a scorching wind, penetrating the eroded columns of an ancient palace. Gusts carried eddies of sand into swirling funnels, marking the clean-picked skeletons of many camels, horses, and men. The hot wind swept on, pushing through the ruins into a barren, dry chamber where dwelt a serpent of pure turquoise blue. That wyrm raised its wicked head, sensing the cry, and then it, too, took wing, rising over the desert toward the horizon of the rugged Khalkists. The blue dragon flew with a purpose, a sense of mission like nothing it had ever known.

In distant Xak Tsaroth, the cry fell from the sky, pushing through a ring of armed guards that garrisoned a cordon about the once-grand home of a wealthy merchant. It had been a long time since that merchant had been seen, and though numerous brave men had ventured into the house to see what was wrong, none of them had ever emerged. Thus this permanent detachment of warriors had been left as a precaution.

Now the guards recoiled in terror as a crimson monster roared forth, scarlet wings flapping wildly, cruel jaws gaping. The red dragon filled the street with lethal gouts of fire, burning numerous men-at-arms and bystanders before it took wing. Once airborne, the wyrmling marked a course for Sanction, like his kin-dragons answering the piercing, intuitive cry.

And from countless other hatching dens they came as well, these dragons born in treasure rooms and dungeons and manor houses throughout Ansalon. They took wing as soon as they were touched by their immortal queen’s message, in the first days out of the egg for some, after many years of surreptitious feeding and growing for others. The chromatic dragons were guided by an instinct older than the trio of mountains that surrounded Sanction, the Lords of Doom that had emerged from the chaos of Darklady Mountain’s destructive eruption.

They joined Deathfyre over the course of several days, hundreds of wyrms of all the Dark Queen’s colors. Greens flew in wide formations, while blues and reds dived and darted, striving for supremacy. Dragons of black came out of the night, and wyrms of icy white flew from the glacial south, all of them awakened and compelled, drawn by the irresistible summons of the Queen of Darkness.

“I blazed my way from Xak Tsaroth in a fury of fire and claw and fang!” boasted crimson Tombfyre, crowing in exultation, describing the men-at-arms who had fallen dead, lethally charred by his fiery breath.

“And I was master of all the sewers of Sanction. There I dwelt in comfort, eating well, until I hastened to obey your summons!” announced black Corro.

“As for me, I was comfortable in the midst of the northern desert,” explained Azurus, he of the turquoise-blue scales. “But finally the last of the camels was gone, and I began to grow hungry. And now that you have brought me here, I begin to see my purpose.”

“Fly forth, my kin-dragons!” ordered Deathfyre, selecting the greatest among his flock as his agents. “Go to the realms of mankind and ogre, dwarf and bakali – all you can reach within a day’s flight of here. Gather warriors to my banners and bid them march to my city with all haste – and tell them that to disobey is to die.”

Corro, Azurus, Tombfyre, and many others flew toward the points of the compass, and within a few days they returned, bringing the promise of many troops following in their wake. A wave of warlike frenzy had swept the surrounding realms, and warriors of all races flocked to Sanction with bloodlust and avarice in their hearts.

At the feet of the Khalkists, the ogres once again answered the martial call, thousands of brutish warriors emerging from their dens and lairs. The descendants of a once-mighty and highly cultured race, they now snarled and growled like animals, smacking their lips at the prospects of fresh blood. The ogres were large and strong, and each carried a heavy, sharp-edged blade. As a force on the ground, they were a mass against whom very few troops would dare to stand.

From the lower valleys and fens of the Khalkists came the bakali, recruited by the black dragons, who relished the muck and mire favored by the reptilian savages. The lizard men remembered Deathfyre in their greatest legends, and they willingly gathered in a throng to once more serve their crimson master. The scaly-skinned warriors came by the hundreds and then the thousands, forming great encampments before the walls of Sanction, watched suspiciously by the humans who manned the city ramparts.

Corrupt humans came, too, drawn from Sanction and other realms by lure of treasure, or propelled by fear of consequences should they decline to serve. Barbarian horsemen rode in great swarms from the plains, and nomads marched southward from the deserts. Crude and brutal pirates trekked overland all the way from Balifor, and mercenaries from Tarsis and Xak Tsaroth arrived in increasing numbers, answering the universal lures of treasure and adventure.

And even some of the dwarves of the Khalkists, the children of those who had labored for Deathfyre in the gathering of the dragon eggs, added their banners to the crimson wyrm’s horde. Wicked and evil creatures, these cruel dwarves betrayed the proud and honorable legacy of their people, bribed by the dragons’ offers of all the gems they could capture.

The dragons that had answered Deathfyre’s summons circled the mountains and finally settled to the ground, landing on the flanks of the soaring volcanoes, so that from a distance the summits seemed to be mottled in patterns of the queen’s five colors. All of these deadly serpents had been born in secrecy, and many were already quite huge – a surfeit of food supplies had seen to that.

Now the dragons fluttered and roared, watching the troops stream toward the city below. Breath of fire and acid, ice and gas and lightning, blasted the skies in ritual challenge as the wyrms of the Dark Queen grew more aggressive, more anxious to unleash their power against the world. Inevitably fights erupted among them, leaving wings rent, scales torn from flesh, and lives lost as that pent-up fury built to a fever pitch.

And then their leader let them know that the attack would soon begin.

Deathfyre gathered his two-legged captains on the ground before the city walls. He appointed a mighty ogre, Garic Drakan, as commander of the army, and bade the dwarves, bakali, humans, and other ogres to show the chieftain such fealty as they would to the red dragon himself. When the roars had risen to a deafening crescendo, Garic put his army to the march, leaving Sanction behind as the horde advanced like a tide of ink onto the plains of Solamnia.

“Do we strike against the elves?” demanded mighty Azurus as the dragons fluttered their stiff wings and craned their necks, ready to attack. All knew the grim history of the Silvanesti wars, and vengeance was a powerful compulsion among the wyrms of Takhisis.

“No. This time it will be the humans who feel the brunt of our onslaught!” declared Deathfyre. He clearly remembered his matriarch’s firmest lesson: Find your strongest enemy and kill him! “Solamnia has become the greatest realm, the strongest empire on Krynn, and thus it shall be Solamnia that feels the fury of our queen’s wrath!”

“I myself will burn a hundred of the enemy warriors!” boasted Tombfyre, who was already a large serpent, capable of expelling a huge gout of flame. He rose to his haunches and bellowed a great fountain of fire into the sky.

“Ah, my son,” declared Deathfyre. “I know that you will earn the praises of our queen!”

And when the dragons of evil took wing, they darkened the sky. Aided by their skyborne allies, Garic Drakan’s army swept forward on the ground, quickly subduing the realms around the mountains, squashing the peoples who dwelt in the foothills as if these minor kingdoms and duchies were so many villages and camps. Ultimately the great serpents led the invasions from Sanction onto the plains of Vingaard, a tide swarming westward toward the realm of the proud knights.

On the ground, the armies of the ogre Garic Drakan marched forth. Columns diverged across the prairie, destroying settlements, pillaging strongholds, battling any band of armed men that dared to raise a blade. Legions of mercenary horsemen preceded the brutal foot soldiers, making savage onslaughts against every city and town in their path. Bakali lizard men swarmed behind the riders, killing mercilessly, while the heavy ogres and tens of thousands of human footmen plodded relentlessly forward, a crushing wave of irresistible force that swarmed in a lethal tide.

In the face of this onslaught, the Knights of Solamnia rode forth from their castles to do battle. Companies of the Sword, the Crown, and the Rose all formed courageously. True to honor, duty, and the Measure, they faced attacks by overwhelming armies, until the dragons of the Dark Queen flew from the skies, driving the human warriors back with horrendous casualties.

But during these initial campaigns, mindful of the impetuous advance that had led to destruction in Silvanesti more than a thousand years before, Deathfyre held his legions to a more measured pace. Led by Tombfyre and Azurus, the mighty red dragon’s wings of flying serpents rarely flew far ahead of the troops on the ground, and those spearheads were held in check as well. Deathfyre insisted that his horsemen remain within supporting distance of the rest of the army, until ultimately the army of the Dark Queen plodded forward in a well-disciplined wave, relentlessly burying everything across a thousand-mile swath of ruin.

And always Deathfyre remained alert for reports of the dragons of metal. Surely they dwelt in the west and would learn of the attack. But where were they? When would they enter the fight? He couldn’t know the answer, and so he made certain that he was ready. In fact, this was one of the major reasons for the measured advance of his force. He didn’t want to expose a far-flung spearhead to annihilation at the hands of a sudden dragon counterattack.

Still, much of the pride of Solamnia bled and died on the plains of Ansalon. Dargaard Keep fell, and the mighty Vingaard River was crossed, with the castle of the same name besieged. Everywhere the army of Deathfyre met victory and left grieving, ruin, and destruction once the vanguard had passed.

But where were the dragons of metal? Until they flew, Deathfyre knew that his vengeance would remain incomplete.

Quarry

(ca. 1053 PC)

The stench of elf filled the ancient red dragon’s nostrils. It did not register immediately in his slumber-filled brain, but when it did, Klassh jolted awake, every fiber of his being on full alert. Still, he did not move. Any movement on his part would disturb the mountainous pile of gold, silver and gems on which he rested. Keeping his breathing regular, Klassh slowly half-opened one eye and scanned the triangular Great Hall, looking with satisfaction on the enormous hoard he had collected over the centuries, until he found the elf. The thief was alone, crouched in a far corner, working on the lock of a long, thin box, which the dragon had never seen before. Near that corner of the room, Klassh also noticed a concealed door – now open – that he had not known was there.

“Damned dwarves,” the dragon said to himself. “They can never have enough back doors and you can never find them all.”

Fully awake now, Klassh realized that the elf smelled slightly off – like bad fish. Studying the elf, the dragon noted the broad shoulders, tall, wiry frame, and silver hair.

“Half-elf, most likely,” mused Klassh. “Probably won’t taste good. The half-breeds never do.”

Strangely, although well armored, the thief wore only an empty scabbard at his side. The burnished elven chain mail had leather strips woven through the rings to dampen much of the noise of the metal. A hooded gray cloak was thrown over the elf’s shoulders, out of the way of his hands as he worked.

The irritated dragon watched the elf as it diligently applied itself to the lock. Like a stalking cat not ready to alert its prey, the dragon remained perfectly still.

Click. The lock opened.

Klassh quickly closed his eye again as the elf checked to see if the dragon had heard the noise. Satisfied that the beast still slept, the elf threw back the lid. Klassh opened his eye again, watched as the elf drew forth a magnificent glowing broadsword that fairly sang with enchantment. The dragon was stunned by the realization that such an artifact had been in his possession and he’d never known it!

The elf quickly sheathed the sword and started slinking toward the open door, completely ignoring the other fabulous treasure lying literally at its feet. Klassh sent a gout of flame flaring at the elf. It must have been watching, however, because he managed to dodge the fire by ducking behind a pile of blackened plate mail and scorched bones, the remains of foolish knights who had dared to challenge Klassh. The flame ignited some moldering tapestries and a few wooden chests, filling the hall with smoky light.

The dragon had long ago learned that his enormous form was not well suited to negotiating the glittering dunes of precious metals, gems and trinkets heaped high throughout the room, so Klassh muttered a word of magic.

The dragon stifled a cry of pain as his neck contracted and his torso folded in on itself. Once his great mass had shrunk by a quarter, his head and limbs reshaped themselves to a feline form. Flaming red hair sprouted all over his body, most thickly on his head and neck, where a large silky mane grew. Smaller, but sharper, claws protruded from his paws, glistening in the shadowy firelight.

Now with a cat’s agility, the dragon gathered himself, let out a thunderous roar and leapt with tremendous strength toward the elf’s hiding place. Gold and silver flew through the air as he landed gracefully on the floor and bounded over the armor. Alighting on the far side of the pile, Klassh saw the elf scurrying to a more protected position among the gleaming heaps of treasure. It slipped out of sight behind a stack of wooden chests.

The dragon followed the elf, sniffing the air, hoping to use his feline sense of smell to detect the thief. Unfortunately, the acrid reek of the burning tapestries blocked out all other odors; the smoke also made it difficult for Klassh to see farther than a few feet ahead.

At last, the dragon found a trace of the elf’s fetor in an opening between a few of the chests. Pawing away at the crack, his claw caught on a piece of cloth. With a triumphant roar, Klassh attempted to yank the elf out of its hiding place. The dragon had hold of the elf’s gray cloak, now singed and stained with soot.

The dragon heard a creak from above. Klassh looked up too late to see the pile of chests crashing down on him. The elf was nowhere in sight. The chests knocked Klassh to the ground, pinning his forelegs. He tried to free himself, but could not gain the leverage.

As the fires began to die down and throw heavy shadows throughout the Hall, Klassh changed form again. Pain wracked his body as his form altered and flowed, legs and arms merging with his torso. The debris shifted and settled. He used his serpentine form to slither out from under the chests. As he emerged from the wreckage, he spotted the elf. The thief faded into the shadows near a large pile of coins.

Unable to maintain the limbless snake form for too long, the dragon shifted and reduced his size again, forcing his head, limbs and torso to approximate a humanoid form.

Though now about the size of a large ogre or small hill giant, Klassh could never be mistaken for either one. With tough, red, reptilian skin, flashing red eyes, and huge muscles rippling throughout his torso, arms and legs, he looked more like a demon from the Pits than any Krynn-born creature. Breathing heavily and momentarily weakened by the multiple transformations, Klassh surveyed the chamber.

Klassh strode toward the heap of coins where he’d last seen the creature. As always, when in human form his senses were dulled and sluggish. He could smell nothing but smoke and fire. His efforts proving fruitless, the dragon stalked toward the dwarf-made door, intending to guard it against the elf’s escape.

Metal scraped on stone. Klassh ran to the large pile of weapons – leftovers from the dead knights. A sword fell to the ground. Rounding the pile, the dragon found nothing but a large gem near the fallen sword. Realizing this had been yet another distraction, Klassh turned to look at the secret door. He spotted the elf making a break for it.

Kicking the sword, Klassh sped toward the door. The elf made a flying leap into the opening. The dragon lunged and managed to wrap a scaly hand around the elf’s ankle. The elf pitched forward. Klassh twisted the elf around in midair and hurled him away from the door. The thief flipped like an acrobat, and landed gracefully. It drew its magical shining sword in one smooth motion.

Klassh scooped up the fallen sword and advanced. Whirling the blade in a dizzying series of figure eights, the dragon, still in human form, engaged the intruder. For a few minutes, the combatants parried and thrust, testing each other’s mettle. Dancing out of the way of a thrust, the elf delivered a deep, painful slash to Klassh’s left leg. The dragon howled in pain. Klassh lost control of his form, polymorphing back to his original shape. The elf dashed for the portal.

The dragon sighed in relief from the strain of holding the humanoid form. He turned just in time to see the elf clear the doorway. Breathing another flame blast lost Klassh precious seconds and was ultimately a waste of effort. As the flame flowed down the corridor behind the elf, the intensity of the heat destroyed the tunnel’s already decaying support structure and it collapsed in on itself. That way was blocked. Klassh would have to use the front door.

Launching himself through the once-grand entrance, Klassh took to the air with a mighty thrust of his wings. With powerful strokes, he climbed rapidly into the stormy skies. The first rain was in progress after a brutally dry summer. Ordinarily, Klassh enjoyed an autumn squall, which cooled the heat generated by his fiery breath. But today he was oblivious to the shower. Soaring upward, he caught a strong thermal and relaxed his wings, gliding upward in ever-tightening concentric circles.

As he reached the apex of the updraft, now hundreds of feet in the air, Klassh looked below and spotted the elf moving down the mountainside. The dragon’s ire had cooled now, but he was annoyed with himself for not establishing mental contact with the troublesome thief. Klassh possessed a Pendant of Mind-Seeing stolen long ago from the elves. Once Klassh locked onto the elf’s thoughts, it could not escape. Now that Klassh had a clear line of sight, it was just a matter of a few seconds.

... ready yet, the thief was thinking.

Contact!

FEAR!

Delicious terror flooded Klassh’s brain as he read the emotions of the fleeing elf. The intoxicated dragon did not even realize he had lost the thermal and was descending until the feeling intensified and he noticed the elf looking skyward. It had spotted the dragon and was scrambling for cover. Klassh pulled out of his dive and flew upward.

Klassh concentrated deeply and once again entered the frightened elf’s mind.

FEAR!

Once again, the elf’s utter panic flooded the dragon’s brain, but this time he probed deeper, and managed to extract a name: B’ynn al’Tor. Attempting to push even further into the elf’s mind, the dragon found the way blocked. Its brain was locked up tight behind the barrier of his panic.

The elf dodged skillfully through the rough terrain. The green had mostly gone from the landscape, replaced by the spectacular reds, oranges, yellows and browns that pervaded the mountains in the fall.

Shortly before the First Dragon War, the dragon had come to these mountains to find a home. He had been pleasantly surprised to discover a dwarven stronghold nestled near the very top of one of the highest peaks. Although Klassh loathed all mortals, he reserved his most deep and abiding hatred for dwarves. He had greatly enjoyed clearing them out and making their great hall his lair. He spent most of his time now at what the dwarves had once called Cobb Hall.

The elf was now descending a rather steep and slippery slope. The sparse growth at this elevation, compounded by the drizzling rain, must have made the footing precarious.

No longer in any rush to kill the intruder, but rather in a mood to deal some pain to the creature before finishing it off, the dragon, mostly hidden by the storm clouds, flew over the elf at a great height. Cresting, he dropped, using the mountains to conceal his descent. Only a hundred yards from the elf, who was still picking his way carefully down the mountain, Klassh quickened his descent and flew rapidly toward his quarry. As he passed over the elf, only a few yards above, the great blast of wind spawned by his furiously pumping wings blew the elf off-balance.

The elf might have recovered, if the gust had not also triggered a small rockslide. It fell hard, rolling down the hillside, battered by the wet, rocky surface as well as the loose stones falling on and over it.

PAIN! FEAR! HUMILIATION!

Well pleased, the dragon soared upward, basking in the emotions coursing through the elf’s mind. The joy of the game was upon Klassh and he was not about to let it end too soon.

Klassh circled and swooped down again.

The elf crawled painfully behind a boulder. The dragon warmed to the chase. The doomed elf had proved remarkably resourceful and entertaining so far.

The thief had managed to crawl into an outcropping of boulders that supported a flat rock, forming a protective shield against the dragon’s attacks. Stymied from direct assault, Klassh lit on the shield rock, adding his considerable weight to the precariously balanced stone.

FEAR!

The elf’s terror spiked sharply, but he had nowhere to go. The dragon gave the elf a few minutes to relax, then shifted his weight. The stone ground against its supports, sending showers of pebbles and dust down on the wounded elf.

FEAR!

As Klassh expected, the elf’s fear rose to a crescendo, filling the dragon with sweet music. Just before the shelf collapsed, Klassh lifted off.

As he rose, Klassh was aware that the elf had started to move again, but when the dragon circled around to look, he could not see the thief. Squinting his eyes, scanning the area near the elf’s recent hiding place, the dragon spotted the elf moving toward a sharp drop-off.

Swooping down, the dragon buffeted the area with his wings, stirring up a small dust storm. The elf ran toward the cliff and jumped off.

Startled, the dragon rose into the air and swung around to see what had happened.

A small ledge projected from the face of the cliff, leading to a cave in the cliff face. The cliff blocked the sun, casting its huge shadow across the cliff’s face. The dragon could not readily tell the size of the cave as he flew past, but he would not permit the thief to get away this easily and spoil his fun. Klassh could not land on the thin ledge, so he circled around and dove directly into the cave.

Klassh transformed in midair. He passed through the cave opening, the outspread feathered wings of his griffin form easily slowing his headlong flight. When he landed, a sharp pain lanced up through his rear leg, nearly causing him to lose control. Looking back, he saw that the wound given him by the elf in the great hall had festered.

Returning to his natural form, Klassh licked at the wound, and tasted the residue of magic. The intrinsic curative powers of the dragon’s saliva quickly overcame the remaining traces of magic and the wound began to heal, though it still stung.

Klassh’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and he knew for certain that he had found another dwarven structure, which looked as old as Cobb Hall.

“Twice-damned dwarves! Busy as beavers they are,” Klassh muttered.

Some avian creatures had obviously claimed the place as their nest. Two large eggs sat in the middle of the largest pile of refuse. The dragon gulped the eggs casually as he explored the chamber.

Fortunately, the senseless dwarves liked to build big, as attested to by the huge opening right in front of the dragon, which was just big enough to accommodate his bulk. The elf’s trail was clearly marked in the dust by footprints on the stone floor.

As Klassh moved through the dry corridors, the dust swirled about him, sticking to his wet skin, obscuring his vision, stinging his eyes and choking his breathing. He was no longer enjoying the game as much.

“The thief will pay for this,” Klassh vowed. “When I get my claws on the elf, it will wish it had perished in my first flame blast. I will chew it slowly, savoring its fear and anguish.”

Suddenly, the footprints vanished. Looking closely, Klassh peered through the dust. The footprints started again a few feet away.

Klassh continued.

A pit sprang open beneath him, but it was far too small for his great size.

“Ha! Stupid dwarves!”

The dragon slithered on.

FEAR!

Still unable to penetrate the shield of the elf’s panic, Klassh contented himself with monitoring the creature’s emotions and reading the odd stray thought that slipped through.

Must keep moving... dusty... following my footprints... trap... Such were the elf’s terror-ridden thoughts.

Shortly, Klassh came upon another gap in the footprints, but the dragon did not even slow down. He felt something very sharp prick his side. But the pain quickly subsided, so the dragon ignored the wound and kept moving, trying to catch up with the elf.

Suddenly Klassh’s skin began to itch. The joy of the hunt was definitely gone now, replaced by anger and irritation. Klassh desperately wanted out of these stale corridors. When he caught up with the elf, the dragon was inclined just to roast the thief with a fire blast and be done with it. He would retrieve the gleaming sword from the elf’s charred corpse, then go to a nearby mountain lake and relax in its deliciously cold waters.

His pleasant thoughts were interrupted by another sharp prick in his side. He again ignored the wound, but at the third stab, he snapped and let out a bellow of annoyance and pain.

A wave of nausea swept over Klassh. His body and head began to ache violently. The itching on his skin increased tenfold, as if his skin was trying to crawl off his body. He lost control of his limbs and sank to the ground.

“Poison! Thrice-damned dwarves poisoned me!” Klassh roared.

He thrashed his tail. His stomach twisted. His head pounded as if a stone giant were hitting him with a hammer, and then darkness swam before his eyes. For the first time in his long life, Klassh passed out.

*

The dragon came to slowly. His body ached, his head still pounded and his stomach roiled, but his system was fighting off the powerful poison. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious. He could no longer feel the thief’s emotions or hear its thoughts. Losing consciousness had severed the magical contact.

The dragon heaved himself up onto his feet. It took Klassh a few more minutes to get his bearings and find the elf’s footprints in the dust once more.

Consumed with his own misery, Klassh did not notice the dust beginning to thin and the footprints starting to mix with others. He did not hear voices emanating from a passageway before him until he turned a corner and ran into a small group of goblins. The goblins froze for an instant, and then burst into complete panic, dropping everything they were carrying, running about, tripping over each other, and gibbering in high-pitched voices. Klassh lunged forward and snagged one by its jerkin.

“How do I get out of here?” he roared at the hysterical creature, who immediately fainted dead away in his grasp.

Tossing the goblin to the side, breaking its neck as it hit the wall, Klassh grabbed for another one and tried again, with the same result. The goblin passed out.

“Can’t even answer a simple question,” Klassh grumbled.

Giving up on that strategy, Klassh followed the largest concentration of goblins. It seemed probable that they were heading for the exit. But he soon discovered, when he came to a dead end, that the goblins were rushing about in a blind panic. Loathe to waste one of his powers, but aware that he was now hopelessly lost, Klassh grabbed another goblin and cast a calming spell over it.

“I will not hurt you. Lead me out of here,” Klassh commanded.

The dragon cleared the way with his flame, frying anything in his way. The now-calmed goblin led the dragon through a series of seemingly endless corridors until they reached the exit. The sky had darkened since he had entered the cave. Rain now fell from the sky in a torrent.

The exit was halfway up the cliff face. Looking down, Klassh saw a strange contraption that looked like a wooden platform attached to a number of ropes. It moved along the face of the cliff next to a series of openings in a vertical line on the cliff face. He could see the elf through the sheeting rain, working the ropes.

“Thief!” screamed the dragon, launching himself out of the opening and into the sky, inadvertently knocking the goblin out as well. The goblin remained calm. It did not even scream as it fell to its death on the rocks below.

Klassh spread his wings, hearing them crack and snap as the joints flexed themselves, and started to climb upward. The cool rush of air on his face and the wet splatter of raindrops on his body helped to clear his head of the last remnants of the poison and sickness. With a terrific sneeze, he blew the dust from his nose, then circled downward toward the wooden platform.

The elf on the platform had just reached the next opening when Klassh painted it with white-hot flame. The platform caught fire instantly. The ropes holding it disintegrated. Leaving a flaming trail, the fiery wreckage crashed down to the rocks and landed near the hapless goblin’s body.

Klassh spiraled down and landed near the burning ruin. He examined the debris closely, but could not find any trace of the elf, any of its belongings, or the purloined sword.

“Dwarf entrails! The thief must have managed to get into that opening!”

It took Klassh nearly an hour to find a small, disguised cave – an egress from the tunnels nestled at the foot of the mountain near a vale. The glade offered plenty of cover with a forest beyond. An ideal spot for an ambush.

Klassh found a sturdy ledge on the mountain and lay in wait for the elf.

*

Klassh was not disappointed. An hour later, the rain had eased. The elf poked his head out of the cave.

Focusing his concentration on the elf once again, the dragon strove to reestablish the mental link.

Where is the dragon? the elf was wondering.

The thief had his answer. He saw Klassh on the ledge.

FEAR.

The elf’s emotions once again flooded into the dragon’s head, but they were not very satisfying. The dragon still could not penetrate deeply into the elf’s mind.

The thief advanced again, moving quickly but silently through the glade, using trees and boulders to hide.

FEAR!

The elf moved faster now, running full out for the relative safety of the forest. The thief would be well hidden if the dragon chose to fly above the trees. Despite his fury, Klassh was loathe to use his flame on his beautiful forest. He rose into the air, went into a steep dive, and laid down a line of fire between the elf and its goal, careful not to let the flames get too close to the trees. The dragon pulled out of his dive a few feet from the ground, climbed into the sky, and swung around.

The elf continued running as fast as he could directly toward the flames, not slowing at all. With a leap, he dove right through the fire. A golden shimmer surrounded the elf’s body as he passed unscathed through the flames, rolled deftly to his feet, and dashed into the forest. The elf continued to run through the sparser outer growth until he reached the heavy canopy, and then vanished inside.

“Thief,” Klassh spoke and this time felt the word penetrate the elf’s mental block.

SURPRISE. FEAR.

“Thief. Elf,” the dragon continued. “I know you can hear my thoughts. I can feel your fear. You think you are safe within the forest, but I will burn it all to the ground, destroy every last tree, plant and creature to get to you. Give yourself to me. Since you have been a worthy adversary, I promise you a quick death.”

Go to the Abyss, the elf responded.

“Come now, elf. I know your kind well. I have fought you for millennia. You would not let all this forest be destroyed just to buy yourself a few more moments of life.”

Silence from the elf.

“B’ynn al’Tor,” Klassh said smugly.

SURPRISE.

“Yes, thief. I know your name. I know your family as well. The House of Tor is well known to the Dragons. We have always regarded your family as a powerful adversary. How far you have fallen. A mere thief, not worthy of the name of Tor.”

SHAME.

... am worthy... the elf thought.

“No, you are not worthy,” Klassh said sternly. “A worthy Tor would not resort to sneaking into my lair through a back door, running away, hiding in dwarf-made tunnels, and skulking around in a forest, which I will burn down around your ears if you do not give yourself to me.”

SELF-LOATHING.

... foolish...

“Yes, you are very foolish, young elf. Do you not know who I am? My true name you will never know, but I have been known to the world as Klassh, most ancient and powerful of dragons.”

SURPRISE.

“Surprised?” Klassh laughed. “You should be. Takhisis herself released me from my earthen tomb, and as she requested, I have kept my freedom hidden from the world so that I may be more effective in aiding the new generation of dragons to conquer Krynn. I tell you this now since I know that, one way or another, you will die before the day is out.”

Silence.

“No response, B’ynn al’Tor... half-breed?” Klassh snickered.

SURPRISE. SHAME.

“Yes, I know everything about you, Tor. Half-breed. Outcast.”

Klassh fabricated a story. He still could not fully penetrate the elf’s emotional barrier, but the dragon knew enough about elven society to improvise.

“In the great hall I smelled the human in you. Cross-breeds are not welcome in proper elven society, are they? So they kicked you out and you became a common thief. The black mark on the proud House of Tor.”

The elf trekked cautiously through the forest. The dragon could see from above that the area of the forest the elf had entered was actually a narrow band of trees. The forest was sliced through by a deep, wide ravine, like a half-healed scar in the yellow-red autumn skin of the earth. The trees ran nearly to the edge of the ravine. The elf would not be aware of its blunder until it was too late.

It would only take a few minutes for the elf to reach the gorge.

“I tire of the chase, outcast, so what is it to be?” Klassh demanded. “Do I burn down the forest, or do you give yourself up? Come now, what do you, a half-breed, have to live for?”

ANGER.

... wife... child...

“A wife and child. Now that is something to live for... and perhaps die for,” Klassh said. “If you cause me to burn down my forest, I will not only destroy you, but also your family. I will track them down, thief. I will kill them slowly. I will savor your child’s taste in my body. Then the mother. Her I will swallow whole and let die in the raging fires in my stomach.”

OUTRAGE!

“You must realize by now, thief, how tenacious I am,” Klassh continued. “It does not matter how long it takes, I will find your family and kill them. Perhaps I will instruct some of my brethren to seek especially those of the House of Tor. Perhaps I can wipe that noble house that has survived for millennia from the face of Krynn, purge it utterly from the world. Gone. Forgotten. All because of you, the half-breed that dared to challenge the might of Klassh.”

GUILT.

“You can save them, B’ynn al’Tor. Just give yourself to me now and your death will suffice.”

... lies! thought the elf.

“I do not lie. I am a dragon of my word. Just come forth, and I will spare your family and the House of Tor. Just you need die to satisfy me. Just you.”

No!

The power of the elf’s reply astounded the dragon, but Klassh let it pass. In a moment, the elf would leave the protection of the trees and find the ravine blocking its path. Klassh looked forward to the overwhelming despair that would flood from his quarry at that time.

The dragon was to be disappointed.

Bursting from the trees, the elf saw the canyon. Instead of stopping, it ran more strongly than before.

The thief was going to attempt to jump it!

HOPE!

Sensing something amiss, the enraged dragon decided to end the game. He went into a powerful dive that would take him right into the gorge at the point where the elf was about to jump. If flame could not touch the thief, then tooth and claw would do.

The elf jumped over the edge.

Klassh swept over the edge of the chasm, saw the thief grab a rope and swing out and away from him. Klassh hurtled past, completely missing the elf. The dragon crashed into the thick brush and trees that lined the sides of the ravine. Desperately trying to free himself, the dragon heard a crashing sound. He was suddenly being pummeled from all sides. Rocks and dirt fell past his head. Klassh realized that he had been tricked. Then he felt a blow on the side of his head and all was dark.

*

Klassh awoke, unable to move. He was having trouble breathing. His eyes focused on the elf, now sitting on a boulder just a few feet from the dragon. The elf held the glowing sword across its knees. Klassh tried to move, discovered that he was nearly buried under tons of dirt, rocks and stones. The weight of the debris was slowly crushing the life from him. He tried to muster up a blast of flame, but it caught in his throat.

“How...?” Klassh whispered.

In reply came the strong mental voice of the elf.

You were tricked, dragon. It is as simple as that. The terrible and mighty Klassh was tricked.

“Mindspeak? You have it?”

Yes, Klassh, and I have always known who you were; I have the gift. That is why you couldn’t read my thoughts freely. In fact, though you didn’t know it, you read only the thoughts and emotions I allowed.

“Who...?”

I truly am B’ynn al’Tor, half-breed son of the House of Tor, but my story is not as you supposed it. The elves are more enlightened these days and realize the strengths that the human-elf pairing can produce. Many of us are recruited to special assignments, for which our combination of superior strength, constitution and agility make us ideal. I am a Dragonsbane, a killer of dragons.

“Never heard... of you,” Klassh muttered.

None of your kind ever will. We leave no trace, just a dead dragon, killed by accident. It has done wonders to demoralize the dragonarmies. That’s right, Klassh, B’ynn al’Tor continued. I came to kill you. Once I locked my mind onto yours, you didn’t have a thought I didn’t hear. You never made a move I didn’t anticipate. I fed you the emotions and thoughts you wanted to hear. I played you like a fish, reeling you in, then giving you some slack, until the final yank lured you into my trap.

“How did you know about the sword?”

The sword is the Blade of Tor, an ancestral heirloom lost during the Kinslayer Wars. The same dwarves who gave me the secrets of Cobb Hall also informed me their ancestors had recovered the blade and hidden it in the great hall.

Silence from the dying dragon. Just the ever-slowing breath pumping in and out of his tortured lungs.

Nothing to say, dragon? B’ynn al’Tor asked. Goodbye then. You will die shortly and I will go on to kill many more of your brethren.

The elf watched as the dragon’s eyes slowly closed for the last time, and he waited for a few hours to be sure Klassh was dead. Satisfied, B’ynn al’Tor, Dragonsbane, turned and climbed back up the ravine, never looking back.

*

In another century, Dunstan Van Eyre, student of Astinus, would write about the Dragonsbane:

During the Third Dragon War, a secret group of highly trained elves and half-elves was formed. It was chartered to hunt down and kill important dragons. The members were remarkable warriors and magi. They were Dragonsbane. Schooled in the physiology and psychology of their prey, the Dragonsbane used stealth, deception and consummate planning to eliminate the dragons one by one. They left no trace, ensuring every death looked like an accident. Though they operated for decades and though the dragons must have had suspicions about the many accidental deaths of their brethren, the dragons never uncovered any evidence of their existence. This sage only learned about them by accident, from a descendant of arguably the greatest Dragonsbane of them all, B’ynn al’Tor.

The motto of the Dragonsbane was: “One Dragon, One Bane.”

Rumor has it that they still operate to this day.

The Dragons

PART III (continued)

CHAPTER 32

LECTRAL’S CHOICE

(1029 PC)

Flanking cliffs of white chalk rose from the mist-shrouded depths of a wilderness gorge, concealing an icy torrent of glacial melt that churned and eroded its way through the slash of deep channel. Most of the vast chasm was shrouded in nearly eternal shadows, a blanket of darkness broken only when the sun stood at high zenith. Moss draped the slick white rocks, and tributary streams flowed from constant springs and seasonal snowmelt, trickling down the steep cliffs in a myriad of splashing waterfalls, adding their contents to the raging flowage far below.

High on the north-facing wall of the deep gorge was a wide ledge, a shelf of white rock that remained exposed to sunlight throughout the day, during all seasons of the year. The chalk surface was smooth, though a number of curved indentations pocked the surface near the cliff wall. Furthermore, a steady stream of clear water trilled down the nearby cliffs, gathering in a wide, deep pool before spilling over the lip of the ledge to shower into the unseen depths of the gorge.

This perch was Lectral’s favorite place in all the High Kharolis. The flat surface was long enough for him to stretch to his full length and sufficiently wide that he could carelessly gather himself into a loose coil. The pool made for splendid drinking, and on exceptionally hot days, he could immerse himself all the way to his eyeballs in refreshing coolness.

As to the view, he was content to remain within the cool confinement of the white chalk walls. He enjoyed the sight of blue or gray skies overhead, and from within the gap of his secluded gorge, he observed the phases of the moons or watched the constellations as the stars wheeled by. He had learned to anticipate every nuance of lunar cycles, predicting when and where each of the three moons would appear along the overhead rim.

The familiar Kharolis skyline loomed to the east, and though Lectral couldn’t see the mountains from his ledge, he could call up their mental image anytime he chose. For now, he was content to let the memory suffice, to enjoy the smooth comfort and sheltered confines of his lofty ledge. Of course, he often left this place to hunt, and frequently those hunts took him over the crests of the High Kharolis. He always made a point to circle the deep mountain-guarded lake where his proud sire, the legendary Callak, was buried.

Yet it had been long since he had visited any of the two-legged folk who lived beyond those heights. He wasn’t really interested in that sort of society anymore – with the exception of the Kagonesti. And even then, his protector-ship of the wild elves had become an aloof and distant thing. Often he had observed the tribes throughout the forests of Ansalon, but he did so invisibly, or in the guise of a bird or perhaps a stag or mountain sheep. He held the ram’s horn in its sacred trust, but never had he had to use it or to answer its summons from the Kagonesti.

For long periods of time, Lectral remained on his chalk ledge, concealed within his white gorge by himself. Heart, ever his favorite companion and nestmate, had been absent from his life for many winters. He wondered if she were spending all of her time in the guise of human or elf, for even the griffons that regularly brought word of events in the world had heard nothing of the large silver female. With a flash of jealous memory, his thoughts returned to a sparkling moment: the chase of two wild elves through the forest and its untimely interruption by a band of ogres.

It was odd how, in that elven guise, he had felt a warmth of feeling, a deep affection for his nestmates that was decidedly undragonlike. He had heard about love, of course, but as it would be to any centuries-old serpent, the concept was not a thing he could understand. It seemed a silly and vulnerable weakness, useful only to enliven the existence of short-lived creatures who had no real hope of majesty in their pathetic lives.

Sometimes in the years immediately following the time when he and Heart had wandered apart, Lectral, too, had walked among men. After all, as a silver dragon it was somewhat expected. Yet he had never found the appeal in these short-lived, vibrant folk that had compelled Heart and, more recently, her younger sisters, Saytica and Silvara, to live for long stretches in the guise of a two-legs. The Kagonesti, at least, were serene and dignified and lived lives of a properly long span of years.

Lectral was thinking, with fond reminiscence, of the silver female when a cloak of darkness suddenly blotted out the stars. He jerked his head upward, popping out the top of a sphere of a magical blackness, and when he heard a musical trill of laughter, he knew he had been made the victim of a prank.

“Silvara! Come out where I can see you!”

The laughter rose, chiming in harmony with the waterfall, and a small, slender dragon of shimmering silver crept into view around the shoulder of the cliff wall.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Lectral,” she said with utter insincerity. With a blink of her great luminous eyes – eyes that seemed too large for the narrow silver wedge of her head – she stretched her wings and dipped a leisurely foreclaw into the waters of the pool.

Lectral, as always, found it impossible to be angry with the impetuous wyrmling. Still, he made a show of scowling and harrumphing, as if she should think twice about working a new spell on him the next time she paid a visit. “And to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

“Saytica and I were in Palanthas for the winter, but I think I was starting to get on Astinus’s nerves,” Silvara admitted, with a slightly embarrassed shrug. “At least, that’s what Regia said when she asked me to leave.”

“Maybe you were getting on Regia’s nerves as well,” Lectral proposed with a chuckle.

Their golden kin-dragon was widely known for her fanatical attachment to human ways of society and manners. Regia was easily flustered by a dragon who, whether in human or elven guise, lacked a proper knowledge of decorum. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the playful young silver had soon grown irritating in the eyes of the haughty gold.

“That could be. Quallathan and I were playing around the Tower of High Sorcery, and she punished him with an extra lesson and told me I should see what was happening in the High Kharolis.”

“That sounds like Regia,” Lectral admitted. Quallathan was even younger than Silvara, but he was strong and quick, with a keen intellect and sharp wit that had already drawn a great deal of attention from the elders. It was quite possible that Regia considered Silvara a bad influence on Qual, though Lectral refrained from mentioning his suspicion to the lively youngster. “I don’t suppose an extra lesson is too much of a punishment for Quallathan,” he suggested.

“No. He went right into his human form and started to read a big stack of scrolls Regia gave him.”

“Did you know that’s why the gold dragons like to use their two-legged bodies so much?” the silver male explained. “Because it’s easier to read with a human’s eyes than with a dragon’s. Also, human fingers are better than claws for turning the pages.”

“I didn’t know that. But it was all right, though,” Silvara continued breezily, trotting to the edge of the ledge and looking into the misty depths of the gorge, then turning those over-large eyes back to Lectral. “I was ready for a change of scenery.”

“Saytica stayed behind?”

“Yes,” Silvara replied. “She has an easier time putting up with all the rules.”

“Well, she’s quite a bit older and larger than you. I suppose that makes a difference,” noted Lectral.

“Everyone is,” the young female replied sourly, but then she brightened. “Anyway, it’s as Daria taught us: Dragons should be flying, not reading.”

Lectral chuckled, remembering his matriarch with fondness. Then his brow furrowed. “Have you seen Heart?” he asked, finally getting to the question that was never far from the surface of his awareness.

“No, and Regia hasn’t either. She asked me the same thing just before she sent me away.”

An eagle keened, circling the ledge, silhouetted by the rosy glow of the sun sinking toward the western horizon. Then the birdlike form shimmered and grew, and it was a gold dragon gliding through the air, curling regally and settling toward a landing on Lectral’s ledge.

The two silvers quickly changed shape, using the bodies of wild elves to conserve space, and moved against the cliff wall to leave more room on the narrow perch.

The gold, whom Lectral had already recognized as mighty Arumnus, settled in a downrush of wind and nodded a greeting of stiff-necked formality. The dragon’s rather formal manner wasn’t because he was aloof, but because he’d been spending too much time with Regia, Lectral suspected.

Smoothly Arumnus changed shape, shrinking, curling upright to stand smoothly in the body of a burly Knight of Solamnia. Shiny golden armor protected his strapping form, and a great sword was strapped to his waist.

The two wild elf bodies stepped forward. “Welcome, kin-dragon,” Lectral said, feeling a surprising rush of affection toward the mature gold. After all, Arumnus was one of the few male dragons who was as old as Lectral himself. Despite his aloof and studious nature, he had been a friend and comrade since making Lectral’s acquaintance some three centuries before.

“Have you heard the news?” Arumnus asked, urgency overcoming his traditional gold dragon reserve.

“What is it?” Silvara asked before Lectral could speak.

“War has come again to the world. It has already been waged for several winters in the east, and now it has come against the men of Solamnia. The wyrms of the Dark Queen are awakened, and they, too, have joined the onslaught against the knights.”

“Dragons of red and blue – chromatic serpents?” demanded Lectral, tingling with a sudden sense of discovery – and fear. “But where did they come from?”

“They came from the east,” Arumnus replied. “Sanction is their great city, but much of Solamnia has felt the torch of dragonfire.”

“That is no concern of ours!” Lectral blurted, surprising himself with the outburst and the sentiment. He was aware of Silvara’s look of astonishment and the gold dragon’s expression of gentle reproach.

“How can you say that?” argued the young and graceful wild elf who was the female silver dragon. “We all have friends among the humans! Think of Heart. What will she do when she learns about this?”

“No!” Lectral barked in sudden panic, knowing the affinity the silver female felt toward the knights. Indeed, Heart would no doubt take wing against the chromatic dragons by herself if need be. “That is, we have to find her!”

“It is already a dragon matter,” Arumnus continued. “Young Cymbol has gathered his copper siblings, and at least a dozen of them have flown against the evil dragons in the north. Word is that Bassal was killed, perhaps others as well.”

Lectral felt a glimmer of real menace. These were the names of dragons he knew, at least in passing. And now they were falling, slain? “Cymbol has always been an angry sort. Many times I have heard him boast that he would lead the attack against the Dark Queen’s dragons if only he had the chance.”

“And now he has that chance,” Silvara noted, her own eyes alight.

“Regia is considering the golds’ response even as we speak.” Arumnus looked toward the sky with unseemly urgency. “Perhaps she will have arrived at a conclusion by the time I return,” he added hopefully.

“Don’t just consider. Do something!” Silvara insisted.

Lectral, too, sensed the rising compulsion of a martial summons. “Yes. We silvers shall fight as well. This is the fight that our ancestors waged … that drove our fathers and mothers from the grotto.”

His mind flashed to a thought of the Kagonesti forest in the realm south of Sanction, and he tried to picture the horror if the scourge of dragonfire and waste should spread there. Guilt surged as he realized that it had been many winters since he had flown over the wild elf realms.

“What now? Who’s this?” Arumnus pointed toward the sky, where a silver-winged shape glided across the faces of the rising moons, then settled toward the ledge.

“Heart!” cried Silvara, frantically waving a slender hand.

The elder female silver dragon settled to the ledge, and then she, too, became an elfmaid, as beautiful as Silvara, though with the fullness of a mature woman. Lectral remembered that shape, and again the memories of a forest chase came back. He felt a dizzying sense of emotion, all but staggering as he stepped toward his silver nestmate. He embraced her, felt her arms tight around him.

“Hello, my Heart,” he said thickly, taking her elven hands in his own. “It is good to know that you are safe and well.”

“And you, my nestmate,” she replied, the pressure of her fingers sending ripples of agony through his heart until she broke free of his touch.

“Hello, Sister,” said Silvara, going to Heart and quickly hugging her.

“Greetings, Little Sister. And to you, my friends.”

Lectral’s heart pounded, and he felt a rush of blood in his ears. A raging storm of memories returned to him, and he recalled every detail of the time he had chased her through the woods, had almost captured her.

And, looking at the distant focus of her eyes, he understood that she had, at last, eluded him forever.

“Do you know of the war?” asked Silvara.

“Indeed. The dragons of the Dark Queen have taken to the skies,” Heart declared grimly. “Already some of the brown metal dragons have joined the knights, but we silvers should go as well! The humans are brave and fight valiantly, but they need our help. Saytica has already flown to join them.”

“Of course!” Silvara said. “And what of Huma?”

Lectral looked at Heart sharply, jolted by the question. She returned his look with an expression of frankness and a plea for understanding. “There is one man in particular … the knight called Huma,” she explained. “He has moved me with his courage, his goodness. In part, it is for him that I come to you to beg your help for the knights.”

“The knights … or this one knight?” asked Lectral, his tone a soft growl.

Heart’s head whipped back as if she had been slapped. Then she raised her chin and met her nestmate’s gaze. “I cherish him very much. And I believe that he may lead the knights to victory.”

Lectral suppressed a surge of jealousy. A very strong part of him wanted to find and squash this human who dared to enthrall his nestmate, and he worked very hard to restrain an impulse toward violence.

“What about the wild elves, the Kagonesti in the east?” he asked anxiously. “Who knows whether or not they are suffering under the dragons as well?”

“Who can know?” countered Heart. “But there is more. You all remember the Spear of Paladine, the prophecy as foretold by our honored mother, Daria, at the time the grotto was abandoned.”

“Yes!” cried Silvara excitedly. “The weapon of the gods that would give us means to strike at the Dark Queen.”

“It is a lance!” the elfmaid dragon explained. “A Dragonlance, formed by the hammer of Kharas and wielded by knights from the backs of dragons.”

“And you have these lances?” asked Arumnus.

“We have twenty lances,” she said. “Many are the knights who have volunteered to wield them. We need nineteen dragons to fly with me. I have already heard from Saytica and Cymbol and Bolt, and Arkas as well.”

“And I shall fly at your side!” pledged Arumnus.

“And I!” Silvara cried.

Heart turned her firm expression to the younger female. “You are too small, Little Sister. The lance-wielder must be an armored knight, and I fear the burden would be more than you could carry.”

Silvara slumped, but then turned her expression to Lectral. “You can go, too, can’t you?”

The silver dragon took a deep breath, for the first time his elven chest feeling like a constricting vessel. He shook his head, still fighting against an explosion of temper.

“By the time you fly to Palanthas you will have your twenty, and many more,” he said, with a penetrating look at Heart. “As for me, I must fly to my Kagonesti.”

She came to him and placed an elven hand upon his taut arm. “I understand. But know, Lectral, that this man Huma is a good man. And I love him.”

“Love?” The Kagonesti eyes flashed scorn. “Have you forgotten you are a dragon?”

“No, I haven’t. But perhaps I’ve learned that even dragons can know love. Perhaps that’s a gift we silvers can teach to our kin-dragons. We can love.”

“You can love, perhaps.” Lectral’s voice was as tight as a Kagonesti bowstring. “As for me, I choose to fight.”

CHAPTER 33

WAR IN THE SKY

(1028 PC)

Lectral took to the air, propelled by a sense of profound rage, driving relentlessly through the skies, leaving the High Kharolis behind. Borne by his fury, silver wings carried him over the broad Vingaard plains. He tried not to think about Heart and her knight, but his mind was aflame with the memory of her last words to him.

Love – and for a human? How could she even imagine such a thing? It was an abomination, a blasphemy of the darkest kind! If there was indeed such as concept as love, it belonged to the two-legs – lesser creatures who lacked the majesty of flight, of thousand-year life spans, of inherent magic and devastating breath-weapons!

Powerful wing strokes devoured the miles as Lectral passed the forested foothills and moved to the fringe of the dusty plain, flying over realms he hadn’t seen in many years. Eventually he perceived the great darkness in the north and knew that this was the present area of contention of the Dark Queen’s war.

Drawing closer now, he soared above vast legions, a dark tide overrunning the plain all the way to the Khalkists. Dragons of evil wheeled and spiraled amid the clouds, and Lectral masked himself in invisibility. Even in his nearly blinding rage he retained enough patience to know he should study his enemies, should acquaint himself with their habits instead of making an impetuous attack.

From a distance, he observed dragons of red burning villages, landing to tear at human-built constructs of stone and earth. He wanted to strike at them, but he wouldn’t, having convinced himself that his duty was to the wild elves. Watching one mighty red in particular, he determined that this was the leader of the Dark Queen’s wyrms, and he spotted another crimson wyrm, almost as big, that led many other serpents in the onslaught toward Palanthas. Once, as Lectral circled on the fringes of the battle, that sinister monster raised its head, and the invisible silver shivered to a sensation that he had been discovered.

But Lectral turned toward the east, seeking the foothills of the Kagonesti forests, and the red wyrm turned back to lead his offensive. Closer now, black clouds roiled in the skies, blanketing the plains with a cloak as heavy as the gloom that shrouded the silver dragon’s heart. And still Heart’s words echoed through his mind, mocking and taunting. Love! Could she really believe it?

He growled, knowing that she did. Again he remembered that wild elfmaid who had led him on the chase through the woods, and a plume of frost exploded from his jaws in an unconscious expression of his rage and grief. If the knight, Huma, had appeared before him, Lectral felt certain he would have ripped the man into small pieces.

But he had his task before him, and the evidence of war was all around. Curving toward the Khalkists, he swept over the great arsenals of Sanction, invisibly watching legions of blue and white dragons wing forth, flying to the east, while countless troops – reinforcements to the main armies, no doubt – marched in their wake.

Only then did he turn his flight directly to the south, ultimately soaring above the forest homes of the Kagonesti. With relief, he saw that the woodlands remained green and untrammeled. At least from the heights, it appeared that this time the war had spared the ancient elven realms. The trees were vibrant and healthy, the lakes clean, streams spilling crystalline and pure from the mountain heights.

The ram’s horn was a feathery weight around his neck as Lectral swept low, skimming just above the level of the trees. Unlike the last wars, it seemed that this time the Dark Queen’s fury was in fact directed against the humans, not the elves, and for this Lectral was profoundly grateful.

But did even the humans deserve the help of the mighty serpents of Paladine? Although he knew that twenty of his kin-dragons were flying into battle, bearing human riders with their gleaming Dragonlances, he couldn’t bring himself to believe they did. And he refused to acknowledge that this feeling was petty, caused by his own jealousy. Instead, he convinced himself that his motives were noble and he was the only hope the Kagonesti had.

And he flew on, winging over a verdant swath of undisturbed forest, trying to ignore the war raging within his own soul.

*

With Heart as their leader, the dragons of metal landed on the courtyards and plazas of Palanthas. Saytica was there, and other silvers as well, and also golden Arumnus and several of his male and female nestmates. Cymbol and many of the coppers, who had been battling the chromatic dragons for several seasons, had willingly volunteered to bear lancers into the fray. Too, Bolt and the bronzes, and Kord, with six or eight of his brass brothers, had also hastened to the proud city, landing on the increasingly crowded fields.

Lectral had been right, Heart saw. There were more than enough dragons for the twenty lances and the equal number of knights who had offered to bear them. Still, she missed him. His absence left a hole in her being that she knew would never be filled.

Saddles had been made by master smiths and leatherworkers, simple straps of leather and steel, and these were fastened to the great flying mounts. The Dragonlances themselves, gleaming shafts of enchanted steel tipped with razor-sharp barbs sparkling like diamonds in the sunshine, were affixed to simple but effective swivel mounts.

Finally the mighty serpents dipped their heads and allowed the riders to climb aboard. Winds gusted across the parade ground as twenty pairs of wings pulsed and fluttered, driving into the air, slowly lifting the great dragons and their bold lancers toward the skies. The cheers of a hopeful populace rang behind them as the flight, with Heart and her beloved Huma in the lead, angled toward the east.

Clouds roiled and churned, spuming like black smoke high into the sky, marking the scourge of Garic Drakan’s invasion. Cymbol had told the others of the terrible devastation taking place, but even so, the taint of soot and ash and death was an affront to the nostrils of man and dragon alike. Yet the flight of metal dragons sped boldly on, venturing into the murk, seeking the sinister colors that would mark the Dark Queen’s serpentine fliers.

Crying challenges, braying toward the vanishing sun, the dragons of Paladine swept through the darkness. Silver Heart was still in the lead, with Saytica and Arumnus to one side, each ridden by an armored knight. On her other flank flew Bolt, with a unique rider, a hulking, dark-skinned minotaur. All the metal dragons spread into a wide V formation, a sight not unfamiliar in the skies over Krynn, yet this flight was faster and far more deadly than any wing of migrating geese.

Disappearing into the heavy clouds, the powerful dragons fought against gusting winds, struggled to keep their neighboring fliers in sight as they surged through the roiling skies over the plains. And then there were flashes of brightness in the black, alabaster wings and gaping jaws of the same color as a dozen white dragons surged forward to attack. The gleaming tips of the deadly spears ripped into the pale wyrms, and with screams of pain and resonant blasts of lightning and frost, fire and acid, war in the skies was joined.

*

Lectral was alerted by the cry of a griffon, a keening shriek of alarm that came from a faraway mountainside. Sensing a menacing presence above, the silver dragon teleported a hundred feet to one side a split second before the attacking red dragon incinerated the air where he had been.

The monstrous serpent was huge, and Lectral knew immediately that this was the one who had sensed his presence, the dragon who was second in size only to the crimson monster in command of all the Dark Queen’s horde. A quick glance to the north showed him four more reds, all winging swiftly closer, but this great red serpent was the immediate threat.

All of Lectral’s rage came together as, with a shrill cry of fury, he flew toward the attacker. His breath exploded in a thunder of frost, but the red evaded it at the last minute, and the silver was forced to veer aside from another hissing fireball.

“Fool!” brayed the crimson wyrm. “Like the pig Darlantan, your ancestor, you are doomed!”

“Spawn of Crematia! It is you who will die!” Lectral roared in response, straining to close with the serpentine crimson tail.

He snapped, barely missing the red dragon, then whirled through a tight spin to fly after his foe. Slashing claws tore at the scarlet membrane of a wing, rending a single gash, and then the two monstrous dragons crashed together. Clenching, they twisted and spiraled, clawing in frantic rage, breaking apart to leave a shower of scales, mixed crimson and argent, fluttering downward.

The two mighty serpents dipped and dodged, diving and climbing, first one, then the other in pursuit. And all the time the other four reds drew closer, winging with desperate speed. The newcomers were all considerably smaller than Lectral’s awesome foe, but even so, the silver knew their arrival would sway the battle into an unwinnable contest.

“Now, son of Darlantan, you will die!” cried the red, seeing the direction of Lectral’s gaze. “I, Tombfyre, will see your life ended!”

Only one tactic gave him hope. Lectral turned southward, pulling his opponent into pursuit, now carrying the fight away from the foursome of reds with as much speed as possible.

“Coward!” brayed Tombfyre. “Stay and fight! At least do your sire that much honor!”

“I am Lectral, heir to Darlantan and Callak,” the silver roared, diving, curling his neck to shout backward, underneath his belly. “I would slay you, but I am no fool, to die against five!”

“Bah!” sneered Tombfyre, abruptly veering out of his pursuit. “Then the wyrmlings can kill you. I have more important affairs!”

With a blink of magic, the red dragon vanished, and Lectral guessed that he had teleported back to the battle that was raging in the north. Trembling with rage, the silver whirled about, more than willing to face the four younger reds in a duel.

Flying toward him, the crimson serpents closed the distance fast, spreading apart only slightly as they and the mighty silver converged. Abruptly Lectral tilted into a stall, then pulled himself upward with a powerful push of his wings. The sky beneath him became a hellish inferno of crackling fire, but the silver dragon escaped with just a few scorches on his tail.

Quickly he pivoted, slashing past the reds, sweeping downward in a plunging dive.

Then, as Lectral blasted the nearest chromatic with an explosion of killing frost, there were three. His wings drove him ever faster, and now he was the attacker, trying to close the distance. Clawing at a red body, veering away from another explosion of fiery breath, the silver dragon ripped scales from the flank of an enemy wyrm.

But the trio of red dragons swerved back, and in a clash of talons and fangs, all four serpents came together. A hissing cloud of frost and flame roared like a thunderstorm, engulfing all the dragons in a horrific cloud of mutually destructive breath.

And then Lectral was falling, twisting lazily, watching the trees rush upward to meet him. He tried to break away, but his wings refused to move.

*

“There!” Arumnus declared in a harrumph of flame. The knight on his back leaned over, studying the distant ground.

“I see them – four or five greens, eh?”

“And the blacks!” the gold dragon noted, banking slightly to bring the rest of the chromatic dragons into view. The gold looked around anxiously. Where were Heart and her knight?

With bellows of vengeful fury, the dragons and their knightly riders dived toward the enemy wyrms. Lances ripped through emerald scales or shredded wings of midnight black, and the skies were full of smoke and flames and screams. Serpentine fliers weaved, slashed, and breathed, while knightly riders wielded their lances with deadly skill. In a few shocking moments of battle, every one of the chromatic dragons had been driven from the sides.

Heart and her rider pulled ahead, winging beside Arumnus. The silver flew strongly, but her expression was grim.

“I must go,” she declared. “We have a different fight to wage.”

“But our destiny lies here!” Arumnus declared, indicating a vast wing of red dragons spreading across the sky, angling toward a renewed attack.

“You will take this destiny,” Heart replied. “As to me, I must follow the commands of love.”

“Love is not for dragons!” Arumnus asserted, but his silver kin-dragon and her rider were already gone.

And a great, five-headed shadow began to loom out of the clouds. Arumnus knew Heart’s goal, and he could only pray that she would succeed.

*

Lectral’s body twisted under an onslaught of unbelievable pain. He flailed as one of the scarlet serpents swerved past, catching the red’s leathery wing with his sharp talons. Tearing savagely, the silver dragon rent the stiff surface, pulling the red to him, feeling the brittle membrane, frozen by his blast of silver breath, crumble in his talons.

Two more red dragons, smaller than the heir of Crematia but still dangerous, tried to free their comrade, but Lectral clung tightly to the squirming serpent. With a crushing bite, he snapped the wyrm’s neck, but then the rippling agony through his own body drove blackness upward into his brain. He struggled, groping for words, for magic, for something!

When he crashed into the trees, he was vaguely aware of the two reds flying away, leaving him for dead. Pain swept through his body, wracking agony that seemed certain to kill him.

But he still lived. In a nightmare of agony, he realized his wings were shredded, several of his legs smashed and broken.

Finally he reached out a claw, felt the curving surface under his talons, and raised the ram’s horn to his jaws.

CHAPTER 34

THE WOUNDED QUEEN

(1028 PC)

“Sire!” Tombfyre cried, appearing in the air before Deathfyre’s flying form. “There is a silver to the south, over the forests of the wild elves! He was pursued by four wyrms, but I cannot say that his life is ended, for I came as soon as I heard your summons.”

“There will be time for him later,” Deathfyre growled. “Now I need you here. See these humans? They come to us with lances, cruel weapons that have already rent flights of whites and greens.”

Corro, the mighty black, fell into formation beside them. He snorted, flexing his midnight wings, with many of his inky clan trailing behind. As Corro passed, Tombfyre felt a new presence, and with awe he watched a mighty cloud seethe upward, growing into a solid entity.

“Show courage, my kin-dragons!” roared the elder red. “Our queen approaches, and if we can win this fight, she will hold sway over all the world!”

Deathfyre led his red dragons in a wedge of lethal flight, bellowing furiously at the sight of the metallic serpents winging toward them. Tombfyre pressed ahead, savage and eager, fires of fury burning in his belly.

Now he saw that the good dragons had saddled themselves with riders, a single human warrior astride each of the serpents. Sunlight glinted from the silvery metal shafts of their wicked lances, but Tombfyre chortled aloud at the realization that his enemies had handicapped themselves with all of this clumsy, unnecessary weight.

The two formations swept closer, and the red dragon bellowed a cry of battle, ordering his serpents into a dive. Corro spat a drool of acid, snarling loudly, leading the remaining blacks and greens – those that had survived the first clash with the Dragonlances. Many blues and whites pulled alongside, and more than sixty of the Dark Queen’s wyrms swept downward in an awful wedge of death.

The metallic dragons closed swiftly, with those curiously shining weapons raised, the wyrms bugling bold challenges of their own. Don’t they see the odds? Tombfyre was amazed and a little shaken by the foe’s tenacity.

“Lances?” declared blue Azurus, gliding beside Deathfyre with a disdainful snort. “As if they could strike us down with mere pinpricks!”

“Beware,” countered Deathfyre, “for those are more than pins.”

The blue looked scornful, and Tombfyre himself was amazed to hear his sire speak of caution.

“Spread out!” warned Deathfyre, urging the blues and whites to give them room, knowing that the eruption of red dragon breath would be deadly even to his own allies and that the lethal frost of the whites and the crackling lightning of the blues could prove equally harmful to the serpents of his own wing. It was far better to attack the enemy with a widespread formation, concentrating all the breath attacks against different portions of the sky.

Azurus led the way, bringing his blues through a plunging curve, sweeping toward the head of the metal dragon flight. Some of these silver and gold wyrms rose toward the blues, while the rest winged on, bearing steadily toward the reds or warily eyeing the whites that swerved outward to make an attack from the other flank.

Lightning crackled as Azurus spat a flaming bolt at the lead dragon, a large gold. But that serpent twisted away, leaving a cascade of sparks spilling from the dragon-scale shield protecting the rider. Then the lance of the leading attacker ripped through the blue membrane of a broad wing. Mighty Azurus, greatest of the blues, lurched and flapped pathetically, veering to the side, then toppling onto his back while the shredded membrane trailed behind him. With a shrieking cry of fury that swelled to disbelief, then curdled into sheer terror, he tumbled from the skies.

Other keen lances ripped into the blues, and in a few shocking instants, a half-dozen of the sleek, powerful dragons had fallen. The metal serpents veered and dodged, maneuvering to avoid the effects of the deadly lightning breath. Now the dragons of Paladine attacked aggressively, spewing acid and cold and flame of their own, bearing the riders and those wicked lances into the midst of a swirling aerial melee. Slashing with metallic talon and fang, the good dragons desperately sought to rend the evil serpents who escaped the initial killing onslaught.

The whites swept inward, but they were met by a trio of silvers, immune to the frosty blast of white dragonbreath. The metal serpents emerged from the cloud of icy spumes, three riders crouched behind their shields, lances poised steadily, aimed at the ranks of wounded enemy dragons. With piercing stabs, the serpents of Paladine drove relentlessly through the scattering whites, stabbing and slashing many of the alabaster wyrms out of the sky.

For long, deadly moments, the formations wheeled through the sky, an aerial dance of exquisite beauty and lethal consequence. The evil wyrms struggled for the advantage of height, but even bearing their burdensome riders, the good dragons stayed close, stabbing and burning, knocking down one after another of the Dark Queen’s serpents. When the chromatic dragons separated, then swept inward for a concentrated attack, the knights on their dragons managed to hold them at bay. Meeting the onslaught with outstretched lances, they forced the attackers to veer up, down, sideways, as the dragons of metal wheeled through a protective circle, each lancer guarding the flank of the man and dragon before him.

Suddenly a great presence loomed in the sky as clouds congealed into a shape, straining to achieve solidity. Again Tombfyre felt a shiver of awe, of lethal and immortal presence. Was it the queen? Would she come here, to Krynn, riding the victory of her legions? Tombfyre saw the writhing heads, the smoky clouds that formed the great immortal body now taking form, and his heart flared with hope.

But one after another of Deathfyre’s wyrms were slain, and though a few of the good dragons and their riders were knocked out of the air, the battle developed catastrophically for the red dragon’s wing. The serpents of the Dark Queen surged from high altitude or tried to sweep upward from below. But always they were met with those terrible lances, the weapons relentlessly cutting and piercing and killing.

Finally, with a shrill cry, Deathfyre dived away and led the surviving serpents of the Dark Queen in headlong flight, while the good dragons maintained their defensive spiral, apparently content to let the attackers go – until a mighty silver, mounted by an armored knight, appeared out of nowhere. The tip of his lance ripped through Deathfyre’s flank, and with a ground-shaking scream, the villainous red dragon, the ancient harbinger of evil who had lived for two thousand years, flipped onto his back and plunged, lifeless, toward the bloodstained plain.

Tombfyre shrieked in rage as he saw his sire fall. But still more of those deadly lances rushed closer, an encircling ring of death, and he knew that this battle was lost.

“We will marshal our forces and return with a hundred dragons!” he bellowed in fury, though the cry sounded hollow even in his own ears. In truth, they had been soundly defeated, his dragons all but driven from the skies.

“My son, scion of Deathfyre … hear the will of your queen.”

The words reached Tombfyre, and they were clear and precise, as if Takhisis spoke to him from close proximity. He whipped his head around, gaping at the sight of a massive, cloudy shape crowned by five writhing heads of smoke. The heads wailed and twitched, as if the immortal goddess were suffering grievous pain.

“Speak, my queen, giver and taker of all life!” the red dragon begged.

He saw the Queen of Darkness herself as she shimmered in the air. Again he felt a moment of soaring hope …

… but then he sensed the whole truth. A terrible lance had pierced the gut of the five-headed monstrosity, and he understood that more than a battle had been lost. He thought of the silvers who had killed his sire, who had evaded him in the skies to the south, and he cried out in anguished frustration as he watched the dark goddess fade into the skies.

He knew he should fly, should seek and kill his enemies.

But he couldn’t move.

“My chromatic children, you are banished, exiled. It is the price of my survival. You must come with me!”

The will of the Dark Queen reached him through space, and he saw the awful truth: By oath had Huma freed the Dark Queen, and by that oath was Tombfyre bound as well.

Takhisis would withdraw from Krynn, and as she had pledged to Huma, a vow made in exchange for her life, she would bear her children away with her, ordering them into exile from the world.

But as always the Queen of Darkness sought to work betrayal.

And as the chromatic dragons were pulled toward the Abyss, Tombfyre was given a lair of comfort and safety deep in the bowels of the world.

And he felt a destiny of greatness and majesty laid upon his shoulders.

CHAPTER 35

FAREWELL TO ANSALON

(1027 PC)

A wild elf brave, Ashtaway, reached Lectral only a few hours after the grievously wounded dragon had sounded the ram’s horn. Marked by the spiral tattoos of black ink that had marked his clan since the time of Kagonos, the warrior found the shallow cave in which the silver serpent had sought shelter. Aided by a Kagonesti maid, Hammana, the brave brought venison to the injured dragon, while the healing skills of the elfmaid helped to stanch the bleeding of his worst injuries.

Slowly, dreamily, he allowed them to tend him, welcomed their ministrations and their company. For a long time, he remained under their care, depending on Ashtaway for food, relying upon Hammana’s poultices to heal his many wounds. Though the brave was often absent, the maid stayed at his side for many days, and the large dragon welcomed her presence. At the same time, Lectral was aware of a deep irony: He had come to save the Kagonesti, and instead it was they who had saved him.

And in his darker moments, when the two elves left him alone, he acknowledged a deeper truth. He had not flown southward solely to serve the Kagonesti, to fulfill a sense of his own duty. Rather, he had also done so to avoid the painful reality of Heart’s choice, her love for a human. Unaware of the course of the war raging in the north, he remained lost in his own musings, occasionally brightened by the presence of the two wild elves.

As he watched them together, saw the tenderness in their mutual looks and hesitant touches, perceived their concern for each other and the longing in Hammana’s eyes when Ashtaway was absent. He realized they were in love with each other. He found the knowledge both heartening and sad. The attraction seemed very natural, their joy together almost palpable – and he could only think of Heart. Could she possibly feel this same kind of affection for her knight?

Over the course of a season or more, his injuries slowly healed, though one rear leg and his wings remained badly damaged, so much so that he still couldn’t fly. Then, late on a warm day, after Hammana had gone back to her village, Lectral heard a rustle of silver wings and saw a familiar snout peering at him from the sunlit woods beyond his shallow cave.

“Silvara!” he declared, his heart pounding with a joy he had thought vanished forever.

The silver female padded into the small cave. “I am glad I found you, Honored Elder. I feared for you more than I can say.”

“And you, Little Sister – you’re a sight more welcome than you can possibly know.”

“You’re hurt!” she declared, moving forward to inspect the red scars of his wounds.

“I have been well cared for. I will live and probably even fly again, given time. But now, tell me of the war, the dragons and their lancers in the skies …?”

“The war is over. The dragons of Takhisis are gone, sent from the world by the Dark Queen herself, in a vow forced upon her by the knight Huma, in exchange for her own life.”

“Heart was right about him, then. … He is a man of true greatness.” Lectral felt a stab of shame, sharpened by the fact that he couldn’t completely banish a flush of jealousy.

Silvara lowered her head, and with a growing ache of grief, he suspected the next thing she would have to tell him.

“And what of Heart?” he asked, barely daring to breathe.

“The cost of our victory was high. She was slain, perishing at the same time as her knight,” the silver female replied.

Lectral was silent for a long time. His thoughts churned in a stormy mixture of guilt and grief, wanting to blame the human knight for the death of his nestmate. With another rush of shame, he found that he could not. If anyone was to blame, it was he.

“Have you heard of the red dragons … of the one called Tombfyre?” Lectral thought of the wicked serpent who had taunted and fought him, and now he trembled in profound rage. If he was unable to save her, at least he could look forward to revenge!

But Silvara looked at him sadly, as if uncertain that he could understand her words. “Banished like all the others. He has departed from Krynn together with all his evil kin-dragons. But there is more, and that is what brings me to you. I come to tell you that we are departing from Ansalon as well.”

“We? The silvers?” Lectral was stunned.

“All of us … all the dragons of Paladine.”

“But why? Did you not say that the war was won?”

“It is another part of the oath, so that the people of the world can rule themselves without the interference of mighty beings.”

She told him of the sacred vow that had taken the Dark Queen and all her dragons from Ansalon, and of the price that the good dragons were to pay as well. They would journey to a place called the Dragon Isles, where they would live out their lives and their generations.

“These islands are said to be idyllic realms, perfect of clime, with space for all the metal clans.” As she spoke, her eyes turned outward, fixing upon the forests and mountains beyond, and he sensed that, like him, she wasn’t ready to leave all they knew behind.

“But how can I go? I cannot fly,” he declared.

“Saytica will bear you, but you must assume the form of a two-legs. She comes tonight.” Silvara told him that Saytica had been a heroine of the war, bearing the knight who had struck down mighty Deathfyre, the leader of the Dark Queen’s wyrms.

And when the mighty silver female came to him later that night, Lectral was able to shift his body. He chose the shape of the white-bearded sage, the same form that had been favored by Darlantan so many centuries before. Finally Lectral straddled the strong, silver shoulders and rode through the skies on the back of Saytica.

They passed over the lands vacated by the fleeing armies of Garic Drakan. The mighty silver flier remained silent, sensing the distress of her battered, grieving clan-dragon. All around them were the other silvers, a great airborne armada soaring through the cool air, starlight glimmering from a multitude of reflective wings.

Lectral looked helplessly, saw the horizon of the High Kharolis passing to the left, but already the snowy skyline of the mountain ridges had vanished into the distance.

And already, too, it seemed that his once vivid memories of the place were beginning to fade.

Easy Pickings

(ca 1021 PC)

“Caught ’em wit’ the river behind ’em – more better for killin’,” Chaltiford growled, excitement pounding within his barrel-sized chest.

“Stupid place to ride,” agreed Delmarkiam Slashmaster, Chaltiford’s tribal chief.

The two ogres stood on a grassy embankment overlooking a river valley. A file of armored riders – Knights of Solamnia – patrolled the near bank, moving steadily downstream. With the vast army of Huma and his dragons rumored to be far to the north, this detachment – better than three score knights – certainly faced terrible danger.

Though all the war chiefs had advanced to the lip of the promontory, as yet they had not been observed. Chaltiford’s kinsmen, six dozen strong, hunkered down out of sight, as did the other numerous companies of the hulking, brutish humanoids. As the chieftain of a small tribe, Delmarkiam commanded a band of his village mates and cousins.

“They’ll git too far away,” Chaltiford warned.

Indeed, Chaltiford’s company needed to strike fast – else the human riders would soon slip out of range.

“Charge!” bellowed Delmarkiam, never one for long command conferences.

Twenty chiefs shared approximately the same thought process, and a long, rippling bellow rumbled from the heights alongside the river. Now the knights looked up, immediately wheeling their heavy chargers toward the threat. Chaltiford imagined their fear as a thousand ogres pounded toward them, and the thought pierced him with a chill of pleasure.

The dozen clans of ogres, all united under the banner of the Dark Queen, pressed forward. For brief minutes – the time it took to charge a half mile – Chalt relished one of the most glorious episodes in his long and violent life. The hulking brutes, charging line abreast, made the very ground rumble beneath their awesome onslaught!

Before them, the small company of heavily armored knights wheeled their horses in a tight circle, but they were not able to protect their flanks. And the river behind them, too deep to ford, effectively blocked their retreat.

A great stallion reared before Chaltiford, and he smashed at it with his club, breaking the steed’s leg. The rider’s sword slashed downward, biting the ogre’s wrist, but Delmarkiam Slashmaster thrust his stone-tipped blade between Chaltiford and the knight.

The human grunted, wounded in the belly, and Chaltiford’s club rose again, sweeping the luckless fellow from his horse. Eight or ten ogres crowded near to eagerly administer the final blows, while Delmarkiam slit the horse’s throat as an afterthought.

Raising his bloody club, Chaltiford howled in triumph. His chieftain at his side, the ogre lieutenant lumbered deeper into the fray, pursuing his next victim.

But the knights resisted with surprising discipline and impressive ferocity. After the first clash they drew their horses tightly together. The ogres tried valiantly, but could not press close enough to drag the insolent humans from their saddles.

The knights made a series of gutsy countercharges, keeping their brutish opponents off balance. Chaltiford admired their bravery even as he lusted for their blood, but his club remained unwetted by further bloodletting. Howling in frustration, he hurled himself against the wall of bucking horses, falling back with bruises from many an iron-shod hoof.

Eventually, numbers prevailed, and the brutish ogres fully encircled the small band of riders. Axes and hammers rang against swords and shields, and the field resounded with the clash and chaos of a fine battle. Cries of men, ogres, and horses mingled in a cacophony of pain and rage.

Still, less than half of the humans had been knocked from their saddles when Chaltiford’s eyes swept skyward, compelled by some gut premonition.

Sleek metal death swooped toward him. The dragons of Huma had come, and now they dove from the heavens in gleaming savagery, golds and silvers, brasses and bronzes, all bearing riders – and many of the riders wielding the deadly lances that had so decisively turned the tide of the war.

The entire force of ogres quailed before the sight of the mature serpents. Many of the huge humanoids fell to the ground, groveling pathetically, too terrified even to try to fight the great wyrms.

The mounted knights found new life and lunged forward in an unexpected charge. Chaltiford raised his club, barely knocking aside a blow that would have split his face. Delmarkiam stabbed at a charging horse, but sliced at thin air. In an instant, it seemed, the knights had erupted through the ring of ogres.

The full fury of the dragons was vented on the fleeing ogres. Chaltiford’s lair mates bled to the cut of talon and fang, or died in agony beneath scalding fireballs of dragon breath and the spittle of caustic acid. For frantic minutes Chaltiford’s own life became a terrifying collage of near-fatal encounters with death.

He saw Delmarkiam borne to earth, crushed by powerful claws. The dying ogre cried out to his friend, but Chalt scrambled away, terrified by the nearness of the dragons.

Other wyrms soared past, blotting out the sun. Chaltiford dove to the moist earth and buried his face in the mud, quivering in horror as ogres to his right and left were rent by the claws of a huge gold dragon. Snapping jaws tore away most of one of his ears as he desperately crawled away.

The ogre dove for some bushes, feeling the searing explosion of a dragon’s breath blossoming over his head – just high enough to spare his life, though crackling blisters rose on his back, and the long pigtail on the rear of his scalp was singed to ashes.

Clear of the immediate battle, Chaltiford rose to his feet and lumbered for the shelter of a nearby forest. Even then he was not completely safe, however, as an intrepid knight galloped after him on his great, barded charger. The ogre barely reached the entwined branches in time, plunging through a thicket of thorns with the knight’s lance prodding him in the heel. Prickly branches tore Chaltiford’s burned, bruised flesh, but his pain only drove him to greater panic and more desperate flight.

Only after hours of gasping, terrified running did he dare to slow his pace to a stumbling walk. As he blindly plodded along, his storm of emotions obscured any immediate sense of fatigue.

Chaltiford was wounded, angry, defeated, humbled, frustrated... a bleak and depressing litany. Yet he could not forget that, most of all, he was alive!

“A hundred curses on the Knights of Solamnia!” he snarled aloud, half expecting the trees on either side of the trail to cower in terror at the fierceness of his voice. After all, there had been a time here in the Kharolis Mountains when the bark of an ogre was a feared and respected sound! Of course, that had been in the time before the knights, and the dragons of metal, and the accursed lances, Chaltiford reflected ruefully.

Why did they have to fight an enemy so brutally capable? He groused that complaint over and over, telling himself that the Dark Queen’s war had become a gigantic waste of time and blood. Ogres against knights and dragons? Too many ogres were getting killed.

What he needed were some easy pickings, Chaltiford decided. He was a big, strong ogre – he should be able to find something small and weak, like in the old days, and bash it pretty good. From now on, that’s what he’d make sure to do. Chaltiford was done with wars and campaigns and battles against fire-breathing, flying serpents!

He maintained his trudging march for many days. His course took him deep into the Kharolis Mountains – not for any particular reason, but because his fear-crazed instincts told him that the rugged heights offered him some refuge from the hateful humans and their wretched allies, the dragons of metal.

Of course, in mountains the threat of dwarves was always present. Chaltiford knew dwarves, had killed many of the scrappy, bearded warriors, and he loathed them nearly as much as he did the Solamnics. But he knew that Thorbardin lay far to the south, and dwarves in this range were pretty scarce. For the time being, Chaltiford would have to take his chances against the possibility of dwarves over the certainty of the dragons and knights who ruled the plains of Solamnia.

He was trekking wearily through a rocky, barren vale when the ogre chieftain saw something that stopped him in his tracks. At first he feared that all his evasions had been for naught. Sunlight, slanting low over the western ridge, reflected over a gleaming surface before him – a skin of rippling scales, each as bright as a polished coin of purest gold.

Dragon! The big, serpentine body sprawled on a mountainside no more than a half mile away. The wyrm lay at the base of a sheer precipice, and for the moment at least had not noticed Chaltiford’s presence.

The ogre’s knees went rubbery, and he slumped to the ground with a low moan. Eyes wide, he gaped at the immense golden serpent that he hated and feared more than anything else. The creature lay, apparently sunning itself, on a rough and steeply sloping ridgetop of boulders. The cliff beyond the dragon extended upward for thousands of feet, culminating in one of the highest peaks in this part of the Kharolis Range.

Had the dragon spotted Chaltiford? The ogre wasn’t sure – though the dragon had not moved. Then Chaltiford realized something, as the dragonfear slowly dissipated. There was nothing in this dragon’s manner, Chaltiford told himself with growing cockiness, even to suggest that it was alive!

The ogre’s drooping lids descended over his wicked, piglike eyes as a look of crafty appraisal replaced the stark terror that had distorted his face moments earlier. Climbing to his feet, Chaltiford scuttled to a nearby boulder. The stone jutted upward from the ground, high enough to screen him from the recumbent dragon. Peering around the rock, he studied the motionless creature.

Sure enough, Chaltiford spotted a gaping tear in the creature’s neck, and its wing lay sprawled beside it in an awkward fashion, wrenched from its proper alignment.

Shrewdly, the ogre studied his ancient enemy. Chaltiford shuddered with revulsion even as he gloated over this dragon’s predicament. The creature must have been truly awesome when it was alive, for its body was uncommonly huge. How much treasure might a wyrm like that acquire during a lifetime? Surely, an unimaginable amount!

As the thought entered his mind, another followed in unusually rapid sequence. Whatever treasure this dragon had amassed had to be presently unguarded!

Of course, the creature could have ended up here after flying from a virtually unlimited distance. But from the severity of its wounds, Chaltiford guessed that the dragon had not traveled very far in its weakened state. No, the golden serpent had been right in this vicinity, he suspected, when grim fate claimed it.

Trembling, Chalt crept closer. Even dead, the monster remained massive, awe-inspiring, and horrific. It was all the ogre could do to force his wobbling legs forward. Yet as he continued his cautious approach, and no sign of movement rippled those golden scales, Chaltiford began to master his fear.

By the time he had reached the massive corpse, the ogre was practically swaggering, puffing his chest outward and balancing his club on his shoulder at a jaunty angle. He stepped right up to a massive, lifeless limb, and even thought about delivering a scornful kick. Chaltiford contented himself by spitting in the dragon’s direction.

The ogre’s bloodshot eyes glittered as he inspected the corpse of his race’s dread enemy. He saw that one of the dragon’s wings was crumpled and scarred, as if it had suffered a grievous wound a long time ago. Chaltiford reasoned that, even after that wound had healed, the dragon had been unable to fly.

Other wounds were far fresher, and these the ogre deduced to be the mortal ones. Though no master of logic, Chaltiford had seen enough mangled flesh and dead or dying bodies to understand the general nature of fatal injury. A long gash tore the dragon’s neck, and the ogre knew this to be the deathblow. Yet the golden wyrm had not succumbed to a weapon, for not even a dragonlance would inflict a wound so deep and wide.

Instinctively the ogre’s eyes tilted, examining the steep face of rock stretching skyward to a high, snow-swept summit. Halfway up the cliff he saw a protuberance of rock. Dull brownish stains intermixed with a few flecks of golden scales marred the surface of that outcrop and confirmed Chaltiford’s hunch: The weakened dragon had toppled, breaking its neck in the plunge.

Why was the dragon alone, here, when so many of its kin waged war over the plains? Of course, with its impaired wing the serpent would have been little use in the great flying formations – but then, why had it tried to ascend such a lofty and steep-sided peak? Ideas tugged at Chaltiford’s avaricious mind.

A clattering of stones caught the ogre’s ear. Whirling, the brute raised his club and squinted along the mountainside. Several pebbles rolled out from beneath the dead serpent’s tail.

Chaltiford crept forward, club raised. He stooped to investigate, peering into a shadowy niche where the dragon’s tail slumped over a pair of rocks.

Two golden eyes blinked fearlessly back at him. The dragon he saw was a miniature of its mother, though at barely two feet long it held none of the fearsome majesty of the adult wyrm. Too, its wings were tiny and not yet usable. The little creature took a step forward. When the tiny head emerged from the shadows, Chaltiford brought his club down in a sharp strike, smashing the serpentine skull with a single blow.

Then he froze, excitement tingling through his veins. Why would this dragon’s hatchling be around? The answer was obvious – somewhere nearby was the dragon’s lair!

He saw gouges near the top of the cliff – surely the dragon’s claws had made them, scratching desperately as it lost its balance and fell. With fierce glee, he made out, above the talon marks, the shadowy outline of a cave’s mouth.

He had found the dragon’s lair.

Trembling with joy, Chaltiford appraised the towering mountain. To the right and left of him were more gradual shoulders of rock. These, too, were steep, but the ogre – no stranger to mountainous terrain – knew that he could climb either side. Obviously, the flightless hatchling had made the easy descent.

The certainty that above him waited the dragon’s lair proved a powerful intoxication. A mighty serpent such as this must assuredly have been guarding a veritable hoard of treasure!

The day’s sunlight was already fading, so the ogre forced himself to rest for the night, intending to begin the climb with the dawn. Curling up between a pair of jutting rocks – not too close to the dragon’s lifeless form – Chaltiford fell into a deep, restful sleep. His slumber was broken by pleasant dreams, in which he was surrounded by mountains of gold, which shimmered like a hundred brilliant suns.

When he awakened, he wasted no time. He bounced to his feet, hoisted his club, started toward one of the mountain’s steep, curving shoulders, and began plodding up the rock-strewn base.

Steadily he climbed. Behind him lay a vast panorama of mountains, ridges, and valleys. Yet the ogre’s eyes did not turn from the rocks in front of him, and he moved continually upward, toward that black hole on the mountain’s peak.

The going was rough, and in places Chaltiford was forced to sling his club through his belt so that he could use both hands to assist his climb. Nevertheless, he had climbed many such challenging slopes – and never with such a compelling inducement.

The lure of treasure grew vivid in the ogre’s mind. The images of his dream, shimmering mountains of gold, fevered his imagination. Riches! Chaltiford knew he was on the verge of great wealth. When he returned to his village, the ogres would chant his name, telling the tale of his triumphant accomplishment. He would have his pick of the females, he knew, and even the swaggering young males would stare dumbly in awe at the wondrous wealth of Chaltiford!

Ogres loved gold without reason. In this, though in few other ways, they were much like dwarves. Gold seduced them, more than anything else. Just the nearness of the precious metal caused them to salivate. To possess gold overshadowed all other possible rewards.

The ogres of Chaltiford’s village had been suffering from near-starvation when the Dark Queen’s scouts had come to recruit them for war. Yet, when offered their choice of payment, none of the humanoids had asked for food. Instead, each had desired gold. The human commanders had engaged their services for paltry nuggets. Now those tidbits would be mere baubles compared to the treasure that was about to become Chaltiford’s – and his alone!

How much gold would he find in the great dragon’s hoard? Would there be piles of coins or trunks of nuggets? Perhaps – the very thought took his breath away – he would find a stack of gleaming ingots, each weighing as much as a kender!

Of course, there would doubtless be gems and silver and other ornaments, and these, too, Chaltiford intended to claim. Silver would provide gifts for the wenches back home, while the other trinkets might prove useful for barter on the road. But the thought of these paled beside the gold that drew him upward.

His mind thus occupied, Chaltiford took little note of the passing of the day. When he finally paused to reflect on his progress, he realized he had almost reached the top of the mountain – and that the sun had already dropped far into the western sky.

From the crest of the ridge, the ogre saw the dragon’s lair – with its wide, shadowy mouth. Excitedly, the ogre started to inch toward it along a flat shelf of rock. With his long arms, he reached to grasp a tight crack in the rock wall as a handhold. Shuffling his feet sideways, he edged closer to the lair. The ledge was not very wide, and in some places Chaltiford’s heels hung suspended over a many-thousand-foot drop.

Each step was made with painstaking care, and each move necessitated a firm handhold. In this slow fashion, Chaltiford made remarkably good time, and within an hour the shadowy, arched entrance of the cave was within reach – just slightly overhead.

Now he strained to lift the bulk of his massive body upward. His rough-toed boots clawed at the rock, scrambling for lift, and a haze of red floated across his eyes as he grunted and gasped. With one mighty push, Chaltiford rolled up and forward and – despite the proximity of the lair – panted for several minutes before he felt ready to stand and begin plundering.

Rising to his feet, he peered into the shadow-darkened cave. Behind him, the full glory of the Kharolis range spilled into the distance, yet his attention remained riveted on the immediate goal of the lair.

For the first time a glimmer of fear tugged at him. He unslung the club from his belt, and the easy heft of the weapon considerably bolstered his courage. The smooth cavern floor beckoned him inward, and he carefully stepped under the arched roof.

Quickly his eyes adjusted to the darkness. His feet crunched over brittle rocks, and he looked down to see well-chewed shards of bone covering the floor. Several skulls – of deer, mountain sheep, and elk – lay scattered about. The rest of the bones had been broken and splintered by something eager to get at the rich marrow inside.

Another few steps brought Chaltiford within sight of a huge bundle of twigs and hide. It resembled a bird’s nest, though it could easily have held the ogre and a pair of his kinsmen. Looking within, he saw shards of eggshells.

The nest proved beyond a doubt that this was the dragon’s lair. Somewhere within – probably in the farthest recess of the cave – Chaltiford would find the serpent’s riches. The thought sent tingles of pleasure rippling through his body, bringing goosebumps across the surface of his pale, bristle-stubbled skin.

Crushing shell fragments beneath his boots, Chaltiford stomped through the nest and probed deeper into the cave. The winding passageway continued inward, branching into numerous large chambers. Some of the corridors must have been uncomfortably narrow for the huge serpent, Chaltiford mused to himself.

The ogre advanced cautiously through several of these chambers, swinging his club this way and that. His eyes, shining with avarice, strained to penetrate the gloom.

He heard a scuttling, rodentlike sound. Whirling, he saw nothing but shadows and motionless rock. There! Something raced through the air with frightening speed, and Chaltiford yelped in surprise. Instinctively the ogre threw himself to the floor, only then realizing that he had been startled by bats. Hundreds of the tiny creatures winged overhead, flying out from the depths of the cave. In a few seconds, the plague of bats had passed.

The ogre snorted contemptuously, dusting himself off as he rose to his feet. Again he hefted the club, feeling the reassuring weight of its grip.

The next chamber in the cavern network proved unexpectedly large. A high ceiling, studded with iciclelike spires of dangling stone, arched well over his head. Pools of still, clear water dotted the floor. Beside these he found many fish skeletons, picked clean of meat.

Moving through this large cave, Chaltiford thought once more that he heard something moving behind him, but he saw nothing. Transferring his club to his left hand, the ogre found a good-sized chunk of rock and hoisted it in his right fist. Still walking, he swiveled his blunt neck to the right and left, daring the darkness to show any sign of movement.

The cave was silent as he crossed to the far end. A narrow arch led to a winding corridor, and he followed this for a dozen paces before the walls opened to each side, and he once more found himself in a large, subterranean chamber. Unlike the previous rooms, however, this portion of the cavern had no smooth floor.

Instead, the stone before the ogre’s feet tumbled steeply away. Chaltiford could barely make out the rough, rocky bottom of a pit, some twenty or thirty feet below. The depression filled most of this cavern, though narrow, crumbling shelves of rock extended around the sides. Beyond the pit, the brutish humanoid saw the darkened archway leading to yet another underground chamber.

Something glimmered within that room, and Chaltiford’s heart pounded. His palms grew slick with sweat as he squinted, straining desperately to penetrate the gloom. His eyes slowly confirmed what his mind had dared to hope.

The ogre’s jaw dropped in amazement. Here was gold – a small mountain of it, just as he had pictured so vividly in his imagination! Even the shadows could not conceal the luster of the smooth coins.

Other colors glittered and teased him. He saw the lustrous green that could only mean emeralds, and many a crimson speck signified rubies. Larger objects of green and black he suspected were jade, while garnets, agates, and turquoise all added their multihued brilliance to the heaping mound of treasure.

Chaltiford licked his lips, unaware that drool had begun to trickle down his many-folded chin. Only a supreme effort of his dim brain stopped him from flinging himself across the pit in a desperate effort to leap to the other side.

He forced himself to look for a path around the obstacle. Either of the rubble-strewn ledges, he decided, offered a potential way. So, with a shrug of his stooped shoulders, Chaltiford headed toward the right. Peering into the pit, he noted that though its depth varied, it did not threaten a fatal fall. The bottom was strewn with irregular rocks, however, which would make for a very uncomfortable landing, so the ogre took great pains to make sure that he didn’t miss a step.

Fortunately, there was room for him to walk without clinging to the wall with both hands, so he kept his club ready, swinging it with his left hand as he eased forward simply because the heft and feel of it reassured him and increased his confidence.

Not that he had anything to worry about, he reminded himself.

He heard scampering steps behind him and twisted around so that his back was against the wall. He was startled to see another minuscule dragon, leaping along the ledge just a few feet behind him. The head was no larger than a snake’s, supported by a supple, curving neck. The creature’s forefeet were tipped with sharp claws, and despite its tiny size it regarded the hulking humanoid without any obvious trace of fear.

Chaltiford’s club smashed downward, splintering stones and scattering gravel, but the little dragon darted spryly backward before the blow struck.

The hatchling was darn fast for such a tiny creature, the ogre admitted to himself. If that had been a rat or squirrel – creatures of comparable size – the blow would have certainly splattered it all over the ledge. Yet the dragon had seemed to disappear even as the club started its downward plunge!

The important thing was that it had gone, Chaltiford told himself. It couldn’t have hurt him very much, but the last thing he wanted was a pesky wyrmling nipping at his heels while he made this treacherous crossing.

Another step of his heavy boot knocked loose stones free from the ledge, and Chaltiford realized that the traverse was a little more challenging than he had first suspected. The ledge narrowed, and he was forced to turn his face to the cavern wall as he balanced on his toes for support. The rock surface was pitted and scarred with numerous cracks and holes, so at least he found plenty of handholds. He still clutched the heavy club in his left fist.

Irritatingly, the little dragon had appeared once again, scampering behind him on the ledge. It stood, a miniature image of its mother, staring upward at the ogre from about ten feet away. Tiny wings unfurled, flapping awkwardly, though – like its sibling down by the mother’s corpse – Chaltiford knew the creature was still too young to fly. A tiny, forked tongue slipped between needle sharp teeth, and the creature’s eyes glowed with a strange urgency.

There was enough menace in those little fangs for the humanoid to consider turning back and chasing the creature off the ledge – or preferably killing it – before he continued on to claim the treasure.

But the nearness of that gilded mound proved too strong a lure. With a sharp kick, the ogre sent the wyrmling scrambling away. Only then did Chaltiford continue his cautious traverse of the ledge. Loose stones tumbled away with each step, and the ogre concentrated on maintaining a tight grip with his free hand while he carefully examined the footing below.

More noises scratched the ledge behind him. Cursing, the huge humanoid wished he had left the club in his right hand – the hatchling was close by, but the ogre’s precarious balance made it difficult for him to transfer the weapon. Even so, with his toes wedged firmly against the ledge, Chaltiford reached around behind himself to pass the club to his other hand. Now he raised the knobby stick, waiting for the little dragon to move just a tad closer.

Yet the creature hung back, regarding him with those penetrating eyes. Again the ogre almost started after it, but he knew by now that the wyrmling could flee far faster than the humanoid could pursue. Instead, Chaltiford turned back toward his goal, relieved at least that he was about halfway around the pit.

Once again he heard that familiar clattering of claws on stone – but this time the sound originated in front of him. On the ledge in his path another little dragon sat patiently, well out of striking range. And even if the serpent had been closer to him, Chaltiford snorted angrily, once again he held the accursed club in the wrong hand!

Of course, this hatchling wasn’t about to stop him either! Grimly, the ogre continued on, kicking the ledge clear of loose rubble. His face was pressed close to the stone wall, and out of the corner of his eye he saw that the first wyrmling had again followed him onto the ledge.

Cursing, Chaltiford made out the outlines of several more little dragons, cautiously emerging from the darkness behind their bold sibling. When he twisted his face back to the left, he saw that more of the hatchlings had joined the one that blocked his forward path.

There was no doubt in the ogre’s mind as to his course of action – he had to go forward. That treasure still beckoned, and he was not about to be deprived of his rightful reward. The insignificant lizards regarded him with huge, fascinated eyes, but made no move to retreat as he drew closer. Waving his club at the serpents to his rear, he again propped himself on his toes and reached his hands around his back to transfer the weapon to his other side.

It was then that he noticed the tiny dragon crouched in the shadows of a crevice right before his face.

Chaltiford blinked, crossing his eyes to focus on the serpent barely a foot from his nose. Tiny jaws gaped, showing an array of truly large teeth.

The wyrmling’s eyes flashed wickedly as it gulped a huge breath. Golden scales bulged outward on the swelling chest, and then a small puff of flame belched from the serpent’s widespread mouth. Fire seared Chaltiford’s face, burning away his eyebrows and sizzling the skin of his bulbous nose.

With a bellow of pain, Chaltiford lunged away from the dragon – and away from the ledge upon which he stood. Tumbling backward, he flailed through the air until he crashed onto a pile of jagged boulders that comprised the floor of the pit. Bones snapped in his legs and shoulders, while his club clattered to the ground some distance away.

And again he heard that sound – the clicking of tiny claws against the stone. Even blinded by fire, the ogre could easily locate the dragons by the clicking sounds. The hatchlings were creeping closer, climbing down the walls of the pit with no apparent difficulty.

Agony tore at Chaltiford’s body, but he could do little more than groan. None of his limbs responded to the desperate commands from his mind. Though he strained to see, his eyes refused to function.

Instead, he listened in horror as the serpents advanced. They came from all around him, a hideous parody of the golden coins that had surrounded him in his dream.

Now he understood that peculiar urgency he had sensed in the hatchlings’ eyes. The dragons’ expression was only natural, he realized as he gritted his teeth in pain. After all, their mother was dead, and they had been left alone in the lair for a long time. The explanation was a simple one:

They were hungry.

The Legend of Huma

(1020 PC)

Prologue

It is very rare that I, Astinus, Master Historian of Krynn, find myself penning a personal note for inclusion in my chronicles. I have done so only once in recent memory, that being after the mage Raistlin came within a breath of becoming an all-powerful deity, mightier even than Paladine and Takhisis. He failed, else I probably would not be writing this, but it was a failure deserving of note.

While commenting on that incident, I came to realize that a vicious error had been discovered in my older volumes. By the handwriting, I suspect that one Paulus Warius, an assistant of mine some three centuries before and notable more for his clumsiness than his ability to keep records, must have accidentally destroyed part of some three or four older volumes and then replaced the damaged pages with what he assumed were correct copies. They were not.

The error concerns the transitory period between what are now called the Age of Light and the Age of Might. Ergoth, for instance, was a much older empire than is noted in the false history. Vinas Solamnus in fact commanded Ergoth’s armies by 2692 P. C., not fourteen centuries later as the false history claims. The Second Dragon War, noted incorrectly as a Second and Third war by Warius because it lasted more than forty-five years, ended in 2645 P. C. It was here I first learned of the grave mistakes, for I had opened the pages concerning those last few years in order to make reference to Huma, Knight of Solamnia, a man of very mortal flesh who faced and defeated Takhisis, goddess of evil, the Dragonqueen. I had intended, after the end of the Second Dragon War, to note Huma’s exploits but, as it always happens, my mind was on my work.

I have spent more time with this than I had originally allotted myself. Perhaps it is because I, too, felt some relief after that struggle, for I had been ready to close the final volume of this world’s history at one point. It would have been a shame, as my collection at that time consisted of only a few hundred thousand volumes. For this alone I remember Huma.

His story, fortunately, is still intact in this volume, and I will let that speak for him.

Astinus of Palanthas360 A. C.

Chapter 1

The army passed through a village on its way northwest to Kyre. The village, called Seridan, had been set upon by plague, starvation, and madness, each seeming to take turns and each killing many of the inhabitants. In a lifetime long ago, the village had been prosperous. Now, shacks and makeshift shelters stood where clay brick buildings had fallen to the raids of bold goblins and marauding dark dragons. For some reason, the village had never been destroyed. It just continued to waste away – much like the people who tried to exist there.

The appearance of a column of knights did little to cheer the village. In fact, the inhabitants seemed to feel more than a little resentment at the way the riders and footsoldiers paraded through the mud track that was all the village could call a road. The strife-worn residents felt resentment for the way of life they assumed the Knights of Solamnia led, a way of life that they believed must be better than what each of them faced daily.

At the head of the column, resplendent in his chain and plate armor, rode Lord Oswal of Baxtrey. The intricate pattern of roses displayed on his breastplate revealed him to be a member of the Solamnic order that took that same flower for its symbol. The purple cloak that flowed behind him was attached by a clasp bearing the likeness of a kingfisher with its wings partly spread and a crown above its head. Below the bird, grasped tight in its claws, was a sword with a rose atop it.

Most of the knights were clad as Lord Oswal, although their armor was much more worn and their cloaks tended to be plain in comparison with their commander’s. Lord Oswal’s cloak was a sign of his rank – High Warrior, master of the Order of the Rose, and currently second in command to the Grand Master, he who ruled the knighthood itself.

As they rode, the High Warrior glanced quickly at the rider to his side. They might have been from the same mold, with their hawklike features and the long flowing mustaches that were popular among the knights. Oswal’s features, though, were tempered by age and a truer understanding of the world he lived in, whereas the other, younger by some twenty-odd years, still held steady to the belief that his was the hand that would change the world. They were, in fact, related. Bennett was his nephew and son of Trake, the Grand Master himself. The arrogance so set in Bennett’s face indicated that he already saw himself as his father’s successor.

Lord Oswal hoped Bennett would learn temperance by then. The young knight was of the mind that the knights followed the will of Paladine and, therefore, that they would triumph because their cause was just. Lord Oswal knew that that was not always the case.

The expressions of the younger knights in procession were carefully prepared, emotionless masks. Soon enough they would learn the cruel facts of the world. Lord Oswal knew that the younger knights – and many older ones – still saw themselves as heroes – heroes for a world already lost.

One, in particular, Lord Oswal thought, and opened his mouth to shout.

“Rennard! Up front!”

Huma watched the tall, almost gaunt knight ride forward. If Lord Oswal wished to speak to Rennard, then something was afoot. That something might involve Huma himself, for Rennard seemed to watch him keenly – although Huma was already blooded. Perhaps, like Huma himself, Rennard still believed that here was one who never should have been accepted into the ranks.

Huma bounced as his warhorse stumbled in the mud. The visor of his helmet slammed down in front of his face, startling him. He reached up and raised it, allowing the cool wind to bite at his handsome, if somewhat weathered, features. Though his mustache was not as grand as that of Bennett or the High Warrior, there was some dignity in the slight gray that prematurely touched it and the rest of the hair on his head. His visage was surprisingly soft – so much so that the others occasionally commented on his youth, although not when he was nearby.

Huma could not help staring at the grimy, torn clothing of Seridan’s women and children. Even his own armor, worn as it was and much less intricately decorated than that of Lord Oswal, seemed made of gold when compared to what they had. Their rags hung loosely, and Huma wondered how often these people ate and how much – and what they ate, for that matter. The rebellious part of his nature wanted to take his pack from the saddle and throw it to the villagers. Let them have the rations stored in there. It probably would be the best meal they had eaten in weeks.

“Keep up, you!” the knight behind him growled – and Huma realized how close he had actually come to giving away his rations. He knew it was wrong, as the knighthood rules proclaimed, but it was still a strong desire. Another sign of his inadequacies, he thought with a sigh, and wondered why his petition to join the knighthood ever had been granted.

His thoughts were interrupted by Rennard. Like Huma, the older knight carried a shield whose markings proclaimed his place in the Order of the Crown. Rennard, though, had many years of practical experience and therefore was a commander in his own right. His visor hid all but the two piercing, ice-blue eyes and only hinted at the face. Rennard had few friends even among the Order of the Crown.

Rennard returned Huma’s stare, then looked at the section as a whole. “Gaynor. Huma. Trilane. …” He barked eight names in all. “Break from the column for patrol duty.”

The words betrayed no emotion. Rennard was methodical, a strategist of high caliber. One could not ask for a better leader in time of combat. Nevertheless, his presence always seemed to chill some part of Huma’s soul.

“Lord Oswal wants the dead woods to the south searched over. Possibly goblins, maybe the ogres. We have to return to the column before sunset.” Briefly, Rennard looked up at the perpetually overcast sky. Always, it seemed about to rain, but it never did. “Before total darkness. We do not want to be in the woods at night. Not this close to the western border. Understood?” When the knights assented, he turned his horse, a tall, pale animal much like its rider, and signaled the others to follow.

In minutes, thankfully, they were far away from Seridan. The ground was hard and easier for the mounts to trod upon. That was not surprising – the fire, which had killed much of the forest they rode toward, had baked the nearest fields. No food would grow here for years to come.

It was all so useless sometimes, Huma thought. Where was Paladine? Huma wondered that the god could allow this to happen, and he glanced at the ashy stubs of trees as the patrol rode along. Krynn might as well be in the claws of Takhisis already, the way things were going.

He clamped his mouth tight. That he dared call himself a knight after thoughts such as that!

As they reached the first patch of gnarled, twisted trees, the knights lowered their visors. From a distance, they might have looked like demons, for the horns or wings that decorated the sides of each knight’s helmet were now more evident. The more elaborate, the higher the rank, save in Rennard’s case. Typical of his ways, he had only a crest that rode from the front all the way down the back.

The woods were but one more sorry victim of the seemingly endless war that had razed the continent of Ansalon. Huma wondered what this land had looked like before the Dragonqueen’s creatures had ravaged it. The dead trees gave the woods an evil look. The patrol was unusually tense. Eyes darted here and there, as each knight sought a foe behind the blackened trunks.

Huma clutched at the hilt of his sword. For a brief moment, a motion seemed to catch his eye. A wolf? In this barren land? As the knights moved on, he noted no new movement. Nerves. There was no life in these woods. There was nothing but sorrow.

Rennard called for a halt with the raising of one hand. Even he did not seem to wish to speak, as if the sound would release an unwanted presence.

“Spread out. You four to my right,” he said, gesturing at Huma and three others. “The rest to my left.” He drew his sword.

The others followed suit and moved into position, with one man between Huma and the patrol leader. Rennard gave the signal to advance. The knights kept a slow but steady pace.

The woods curved over a hill, one of the few in this area. If goblins or ogres lurked anywhere nearby, they would be here. Rennard pointed at the knight to Huma’s left and sent the man forward. The rest of the patrol stopped and waited. The scout climbed off his horse and made his way to the top of the rise. The others watched anxiously as he peered over the top, and as quietly and quickly as he could, returned to the knights and horses. Huma, who had taken the reins of the other’s horse, handed them back.

“Well?” Rennard asked quietly.

“Goblins. The ugly creatures are eating. A marauder patrol, I think. Must be at least twenty. No more than several dozen, I think.”

Rennard nodded in satisfaction. “Nothing we cannot handle.” Huma thanked Paladine that his visor hid his own worried face. Rennard pointed at the scout, Huma, and the two knights to Huma’s right. “Ride around the right side. Well take the left. When you hear an owl, ride in. Huma, you will take charge of your group.”

Some of the other knights shifted uneasily, but no one would argue. Huma gazed at the visors of his three companions and had no trouble reading the eyes of each man. He almost asked that someone replace him as leader, but Rennard was already turning his band away.

Huma chose to say nothing, and he turned his own mount. Whatever their personal feelings, the three were Knights of Solamnia. They had been given an order, and they would obey. To his relief, they followed him without murmur.

The ride was not long, but it was slow and cautious. The goblins were sloppy in every aspect of their lives, including military procedure, but there might be an enterprising leader among them who might have thought to post guards. Goblins in general were of little strategic use in the plans of the Dragonqueen’s warlord – save as marauders. Knowing this and knowing that most goblins fought with little, if any, true skill, did not ease Huma’s mind, however.

Huma could see no guards, and he dared to climb from his horse and survey the goblin camp from a small rise. That the creatures were ugly was an understatement. Their skins were a sickly green, teeth protruded from every inch of their mouths, and their eyes reminded the knight of frogs’ eyes. The goblins were squat and misshapen, but they were also very strong. Many carried axes, and a couple even hefted crude bows. Their armor appeared to be compilations of everything they could rummage from the battlefields.

As Huma watched, a goblin came rushing over to the apparent leader, who was twice as big and ugly as any of his subordinates. The smaller goblin whispered something to the patrol leader, who stiffened and barked out orders.

Huma knew what had happened. Either the newcomer had been a guard or he had wandered away from the camp for some reason. Whatever the case, the goblins apparently realized that Rennard and the others were approaching from the other direction, and they were now preparing for a fight. Within seconds, the normally disorganized goblins had formed themselves into an attack formation that, with the element of surprise, meant that Rennard and his companions would almost certainly be struck down. There was no time to send someone to warn them.

“Get ready!” Huma whispered as he climbed back onto his horse. Sword in hand, he turned back to the others. “We go now!”

“Now?” one of the others asked. The trio looked from one another and back to Huma.

Huma had no time for their hesitation. Sword and shield ready, he kicked his mount in the sides. The horse charged, and Huma, waving his blade above his head, shouted the charge.

“Paladine!”

His courage shocked him, but no more than it shocked the goblins. As one, the creatures turned to face this unexpected menace. The horse charged into the midst of the camp, the knight’s sword already coming down on the nearest goblin. The goblin raised his rusty broadsword in some semblance of defense, but Huma’s swing shattered the weapon and then the owner himself.

Huma’s only desire was to cut down as many of the enemy as possible and give Rennard and his men the chance they needed. Another goblin fell to his sword, and then the rest rushed toward the lone attacker, readying bows and raising pikes. The goblins would not be content to take him prisoner, he knew.

Then Huma heard the shouts behind him and knew that the other three had joined the fray. He fought with greater enthusiasm now, knowing that a chance for life still existed. Some of the goblins broke away from the four horsemen. The others tried to regroup under the hurried commands of the patrol leader.

More battle cries filled the air and Huma glanced up to see Rennard and the others coming from the goblins’ rear. Those of the enemy patrol who had tried to flee fell under the powerful hooves of the warhorses. Rennard methodically cut down two who tried to stand against him, then he urged his mount onward. His movements hinted of a near-eagerness.

One of the knights in Huma’s group was dragged from his horse and a heavy ax finished him before Huma could react. Seconds later, Huma rode down the goblin standing over its kill. The ugly creature had only time to look up before the warhorse’s front hooves caught it in the head, cracking the skull open.

The goblins, knowing they were lost, fought with a rare determination. Only three horsemen blocked their path to freedom. Huma barely blocked a savage swing. An arrow flew past his head.

Suddenly, a howl shivered through the air.

Something leaped at Huma’s steed. The knight caught a brief vision of something akin to a wolf in form – but the resemblance ended with the thing’s corpse-white pallor, as though it had been skinned. The yellow, dripping fangs seemed as long as his fingers and as sharp as needles. Then Huma’s warhorse screamed and turned, despite the knight’s protests. Straining every muscle, the animal raced from the skirmish, mindless of the frantic rider clinging to it. Somewhere close behind, the thing howled again. Huma could only clutch the reins and hang on for the wild ride. The sounds of fighting faded as the maddened horse rushed deeper and deeper into the charred forest.

What could so terrorize a trained warhorse? Certainly no earthly beast.

Then, even that thought vanished from Huma’s mind as his mount broke through the blackened limbs of a knot of trees and found the earth was suddenly far, far below.

Chapter 2

It was dark when Huma returned to consciousness, Lunitari, in wane, glittered weakly, casting a slight crimson tinge. Like blood, Huma thought, and then he forced that thought quickly away. If Lunitari were in wane, which of the other moons would be waxing? Solinari was nowhere to be seen. If it was indeed Nuitari that waxed, Huma would never know it. No one saw the dark moon – no one save the Black Robes, those mages who worshipped the dark god of magic. The dark moon was invisible to common folk and perhaps even to those who followed the paths of white and red magic as well.

As his senses cleared, he became more aware of his surroundings. The horse lay beneath him, its neck broken by the fall. The heavy padding in Huma’s armor, combined with the mass of the horse, had prevented the knight’s death.

He tried to rise and nearly blacked out. All that padding had not been enough to prevent a concussion. While he waited for his head to clear again, Huma looked around.

This might once have been a river in a time when the rains had fallen more often. Its depth, at least four times Huma’s height, was more than enough to kill a crazed steed, even one as strong as the warhorse.

The other side of the river bed lay some distance away. Judging by the sickly growths that barely could be called plants, he suspected this river had dried up many, many years before, possibly in the early days of the war, when the Dragonqueen had sought a quick, decisive victory over the followers of Paladine.

Huma dared once more to attempt to stand. He found that the pounding in his head subsided to mere annoyance if he did not bend his neck abruptly or look down too swiftly. With this in mind, he succeeded in staying on his feet.

“Gods.” The word came unbidden, for Huma was only just now realizing that he was alone in hostile territory. The others must think him dead. Dead – or perhaps a coward who had run.

A mist was developing, sending cold, feathery fingers wisping through the ravine. He could wait out the night and begin his trek at first light – which might mean walking into another goblin patrol – or he could travel by night and pray that whatever lurked out there would be just as blind in the dark mist as he. Neither prospect pleased him, but he could think of no other choice.

He found that the pain in his head had lessened a bit so that now he was able to search the ground for his sword. It lay near, undamaged. His pack was another problem. Part of it was buried beneath his mount and, while Huma was strong, the animal’s position made it virtually impossible for him either to lift the horse or roll it over. He had to satisfy himself with a few rations, a tinderbox and flint, and a few personal items, pried from the unhindered portion of the pack.

Huma did not like the thought of traveling by night, but he liked the idea of traveling alone in plain sight by daylight even less. He picked up his things and, sword in hand, started up the sides of the river bed. The mist would be thinner above, and the high ground was always more advantageous, strategically. At least, Huma hoped so.

*

The mist never got worse, but neither did it get any better. Huma could make out most of the stars, but his ground-level vision extended only ten feet or so, and he was hard-pressed to make out details in the red moon’s weak attempt at illuminating the shroud-covered land. The sword stayed at the ready in Huma’s left hand. He had no shield; it must have been lost in the horse’s mad flight.

Thinking of that, Huma could not help remembering the demonic visage he had glimpsed. If that thing were out there somewhere … His grip on the hilt tightened.

He had traveled an hour when he heard the harsh, mocking voices. Goblins! Huma ducked behind a rotting tree trunk. No more than ten yards separated him from them. Only the mist had saved him. At least three, maybe four, goblins seemed to be joking over the fate of someone. A prisoner, perhaps. Although one part of Huma urged him to slip away safely, another demanded that he lend whatever aid he could. Carefully, he slipped closer and listened.

A rusty, grating voice jarred his aching head. “I thinks the warlord himself will reward us fer this one.”

A deeper voice joined the first, “Maybe he’ll give us the bull. I’d like to be the one to skin him fer a rug. He killed Guiver.”

“You never liked Guiver!”

“He owed me money! Now I’ll never get it!”

A third voice cut in. “How do ya think the ogres will kill’im?”

Huma strained his ears and caught the sound of a knife being sharpened on stone. “Real slow. They got sneaky minds fer that kinda stuff.”

Something rattled chains, and Huma tried to place the location. Somewhere far to the right, he thought.

“He’s awake.”

“Let’s have some fun.”

Chains rattled again, and a voice, resonant and spanning the distance with no trouble, responded. “Give me a weapon and let me fight.”

“Ha!” The goblins snickered. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Cowface? We ain’t fools, ya know.”

“You’ll do until some come along.” Suddenly the voice grunted, as if exerting great effort. The goblin voices – four, Huma estimated – quieted until the grunting became a gasp for breath. The chains rattled.

“I thought he was gonna do it for a minute!”

“Two coppers’ll get ya that he can!”

“What? You fool! You’d bet on something like that?”

“Guiver would’ve.”

Huma, so engrossed in the goblins, almost missed the soft tread behind him. When he did, he was sure that he had been seen. The newcomer, though, continued walking and Huma soon realized that the creature, a goblin guard, could not see well in the mist. Still, a few steps more would bring the goblin close enough that not even a dense fog would save the knight.

Summoning his courage, Huma quietly circled behind the guard. He matched the goblin step for step, save that his own stride was half again as long. Each step brought him that much closer. Only a few more …

A roar bellowed angrily from the camp. Knight and goblin turned without thinking, then stared at one another as realization sank in. Huma was the first to react, leaping at the goblin in a desperate attempt to silence him. Sword and body caught the creature and it fell to the ground – but not before the goblin let out a muffled shout.

*

“Pigsticker?”

Huma cursed his luck and scrambled away from the body. The goblins had abandoned tormenting their captive – who was evidently the source of the bellowing – and were now cautiously making their way in the direction they believed their companion had called out from.

“Pigsticker!”

“He’s probably tripped on a rock again.”

“Well, what’s he gone and done, then – cracked open his head? Pigsticker!”

“I think I should stay back here. Just in case.”

“Snee’s back there. Ya come with us or I’ll give ya a piece of what the bull’s gettin’.”

“Okay, okay!”

The goblins were making more than enough noise to cover Huma’s movements, and the mist hid him even though one of the creatures, amazingly, had thought to carry a torch. They soon would come across the body of their dead comrade, though, and that would bring Huma’s advantage to an end.

His maneuvers brought him close to the perimeter of the camp. He thought he saw a large shape huddled on the ground, with perhaps a horned helmet atop its head, but the mists gave it odd proportions for a human – or even an elf or dwarf. A campfire burned low. A shadowy, lumpy figure moved near it, and Huma knew this must be the goblin, Snee, who had been left to guard the prisoner.

Despite the low illumination from the fire, Huma had no delusions about his chances of sneaking up on this goblin. The ground ahead gave no cover, and the jittery goblin was turning this way and that. Huma made out what appeared to be a wicked, two-handed ax in its paws.

Huma’s free hand flattened across some small rocks, and the glimmerings of a plan flickered in his concussion-wracked head. Taking a handful of the rocks, he dared to get up on his knees. With a quick prayer to Paladine, he threw them to the far side of the camp, away from the prisoner.

The guard reacted predictably, much to Huma’s relief. As the goblin scurried to investigate, Huma scooped up another handful of pebbles, stood up, and quietly made his way toward the back of the prisoner. Midway there, he threw the other handful, this time assuring that they would go even farther. His heart pounding, he covered the remaining ground.

Whoever the prisoner was, he was huge. Huge and smelly. The helmet actually seemed to be some sort of headdress, although Huma did not examine it closely enough to make sure.

“Be very still,” Huma whispered.

Huma felt the body stiffen, but no reply came. From his angle, Huma could see that, unlike the arms which were chained, the legs were bound with rope. He reached down to his belt and pulled out a dagger, even as the other goblins suddenly let out a collective shout. They had discovered their comrade.

“Cut your bonds and run! I’ll do my best to give you time!” Even as he said it, Huma wondered at his own daring – or foolishness, it was hard to say which. He only knew that, as a knight, it was his duty to risk his life for others.

Huma straightened even as Snee hurried back to find out the reason for the shouting. At first, the goblin mistook Huma for one of its companions, but recognition followed almost instantly and the goblin brought its ax around for a wild swing at the young knight. Huma dodged easily and nicked the goblin in one arm. At that, some sense returned to Snee, and the goblin called out for help.

There was no skill in the goblin’s attacks, only brute force. Huma easily dodged each swing of the ax, but he knew that each moment of delay cost him greatly. Already, he could hear the other goblins stomping back to camp.

Then, the goblin who was the apparent leader gave a shout of surprise and yelled, “The bull’s loose!”

Indeed, something was loose, and Huma wondered who or what exactly he had released. With a wild, primitive cry, the shadowy form went tearing past Huma. The startled goblin dropped its ax with a clatter and followed it to the ground immediately afterward.

Unarmed and with his hands chained, the other surely could not survive against three opponents. Yet, when Huma turned to offer aid, his first view was of a giant, hulking form that overwhelmed the goblins as if they were small children. One had gotten too close and now squirmed helplessly in the air above the former prisoner’s head. The other two were backing away fearfully. Huma paused, suddenly unsure if moving closer was a wise move.

The freed prisoner tossed the hapless goblin at the nearest of its two comrades, who, dodging the living projectile, squeaked and turned to flee. The two goblins collided with a bone-breaking crunch. They fell into a heap and lay still.

The lone survivor did not have time to react. The tall, muscular figure reached forward with both arms and wrapped its metal chain around the panic-stricken goblin’s neck. With a single jerk that gave evidence of strength in those massive arms, the chains snapped the goblin’s head back. The lifeless form dropped to the ground like a sack of oats.

Huma came to a halt some twenty feet from the prisoner he had released. Whatever it was, it was at least a foot taller than Huma – no small man, himself – and almost twice as wide. The arms looked to be as thick as Huma’s legs, and the legs looked as if they could bear their owner through a twenty-mile run without any sign of strain.

The other had been satisfied to contemplate his revenge, but now as he straightened, he seemed to be studying the knight.

Again, the voice was deep and resounding. “You have my gratitude, Knight of Solamnia. I owe you my life, a debt I can never repay but one that I shall endeavor to compensate you for if it takes the rest of my days.”

Huma stayed poised, but some of his unease vanished. “You owe me nothing. Anyone would have done the same.”

The tall figure chuckled ominously. “Would they?” He turned to face the knight and, even in the dim light, it was obvious that the one he had freed was no man or elf. The horns were part of the creature, as was the thick, dark fur that covered the top and much of the back. As the goblins had so crudely put it, the other resembled nothing less than a bull with a body of a man.

A minotaur.

The minotaur took a few slow steps toward Huma, as if to prove he meant no harm. Although Huma’s training cried out that this was an enemy – and one of the most fierce – his natural curiosity was fascinated by this creature. Few in the region ever saw a minotaur. The creature’s homeland was far away on the eastern cost of Ansalon. Still, Huma’s curiosity did not prevent him from raising his sword to a more defensive position.

The creature’s head seemed overly large, even for a body as massive as the minotaur’s. Dark, thick fur covered the top and the back half, and a thin fuzz covered the rest. The minotaur’s eyes were much like those of a real bull, save that an intelligence lurked within those orbs. The snout was short and broad, and the teeth that the creature’s grin revealed looked more adapted to tearing flesh than green grass. Huma remembered some of the stories about this race, and he took an involuntary step backward.

The minotaur held up his long, wide hands and displayed the chains that bound them together. The fingers were thicker and more blunt than a man’s and they ended in sharp nails – no, claws. Huma’s own hands were like those of a year-old child in comparison.

“Unlike the goblins, who always need six times the number of their adversaries before they even dream of attack, I think you have the advantage over me. I’m sure you know how to use that fine weapon.”

“I do,” Huma finally managed to blurt out. “What were you doing here? Why were you a prisoner of these goblins? I’ve always heard the minotaurs were allies of the ogres.”

The crimson illumination of the moon gave the former captive’s eyes a fearsome look. “Slave soldiers would be a better term, Knight of Solamnia. We are no more than slaves to our cousins. They hold our lands and our families as hostages, though the word they use is protection. That is why we do what they cannot. One day, though, it will be the minotaurs who will rule. We await that day.”

“Which does not explain why you were a prisoner here.” Huma presented as confident a face as he could muster. It would not take much of the minotaur’s strength to snap the young knight’s neck. He had already seen proof of that.

The beast-man dropped his shackled arms and snorted. “I killed my ogre captain, human. I struck him down with my bare hands. A good blow. Cracked his skull with one shot.”

The thought of striking, much less actually murdering, a superior appalled the knight. He raised his visor and dared to step close to the minotaur.

“You murdered him?”

“You like ogres? Thanks to me, no lives will be lost against his ax – and he was good, I’ll give him that. Many died on that ax, human, even the weak, the helpless. I found him over the bodies of an aged male and two children, perhaps the old human’s grandchildren. I did what I thought right. There is no honor in slaughtering the old, the feeble, or the young – at least, not among my kind. Not that they would have tolerated my betrayal. I had thought it was so among the Knights of Solamnia, too. I see that I may have misunderstood.” The minotaur held up the chained wrists once more, causing Huma to take several quick steps back. “Either kill me or free me from these chains. I do not care to discuss this. The goblins have drugged what little food they gave me. This exertion has almost done me in.”

Indeed, the minotaur was slumping. Huma came to a decision, overturned it, came to another, and finally settled again on the first. Even then, he did not act. Could he truly believe the words of the strange figure before him? The minotaurs were supposedly an honorable race, but they served the gods of evil. That was the way it was always taught.

Huma’s sword arm shivered, as much from his thoughts as from the long, awkward position he held it in. The man-beast waited patiently, as ready to die as to be freed. The calm and faith with which the former captive faced his rescuer finally made Huma’s decision for him. He slowly and carefully sheathed his blade.

“Which of these had the keys?”

The minotaur fell to his knees. His breath came in huge huffs, like a bull about to charge. “The one I threw. He will have them if any do. I never saw the keys. They had no reason for them. After – after all, why would they want to release me?”

While the exhausted defector rested, Huma went over to the goblin and checked the numerous pouches wrapped around the creature’s waist. Each held a large number of items, many of them disgusting trophies of war – knowing goblins, more likely looted from the dead – and a few unrecognizable. In one of the pouches, he found the keys.

The minotaur’s eyes were closed, and Huma suddenly worried that one of the goblins had, after all, inflicted some mortal wound. At the clinking of the keys near his face, though, the burly figure opened his eyes.

“My thanks,” he said, after Huma had freed both wrists. “By my ancestors twenty generations back, I will not rest until I have balanced the scale. You have my oath on that.”

“There is no need. It – it was my duty.”

Somehow, the minotaur managed a very human expression of skepticism. “Nevertheless, I will honor my oath as I see fit. Let it not be said that Kaz is less than his ancestors.”

Huma stood. “Can you walk?”

“Give me a moment.” Kaz looked around quickly. “Besides, I have no desire to be out in the open tonight. I would prefer some sort of shelter.”

“From what?” Huma could not imagine what would worry such a powerful fighter unless it was a dragon or some creature of similar proportions.

Kaz rose slowly. “The captain was a current favorite of the warlord. I fear he might have unleashed some of the renegade’s pets.”

“I don’t understand.”

The minotaur suddenly turned his attention to acquiring a decent weapon. He spotted the ax dropped by Huma’s first opponent, picked it up, and tested it. “Good. Probably dwarven.” To Huma, he replied, “Let us hope there is no need. I do not think either of us would live through it.”

In the hands of the goblin, the ax had looked large. Kaz, however, wielded it with the ease of one who was used to weapons of even greater size. The ax was meant for two-handed use; the minotaur needed only one massive paw to grasp it.

“In which direction did you plan to go?”

“North.”

“To Kyre?”

Huma hesitated. He knew that many knights, even Bennett, would never have released such a creature from its bonds. They would have marched it at sword point through the wasteland. Most certainly, they would never tell the minotaur the final destination. If the so-called prisoner was in actuality a spy, such a slip of the tongue might prove fatal for more than just Huma. Yet, Kaz seemed a person of honor.

Huma held back only a moment more, then finally nodded. “Yes, Kyre. I hope to rejoin my comrades.”

The minotaur swung the ax over his own shoulder and attached it to what Huma realized was a harness designed for just such a purpose. It was one of only two pieces of clothing Kaz wore, the other being a sort of kilt, or perhaps a large loin cloth.

“I fear that Kyre is an unwise choice for now, but I will not argue you out of it.”

“Why unwise?”

Kaz gave his imitation of a human smile, a smile filled with anticipation. “Kyre is now the front. My cousins, the ogres, must be there even as we speak.” He chuckled, sounding again like a snorting bull. “It will be a glorious struggle. I wish I could be there.”

Huma grimaced at the obvious pleasure in killing that his new companion expressed. Some of the tales concerning the strange minotaurs were evidently too true.

Steeling himself, Huma wiped the drying blood from his weapon. He glanced only briefly at his newfound companion, who seemed to recognize some of the revulsion in Huma’s face.

“You may come with me or go back to your own, Kaz,” Huma said. “Whatever you desire. You may find the knighthood leery of accepting you as a deserter.”

Kaz did not hesitate. “I know some of what you feel, Knight of Solamnia. I understand all too well our many differences. Still, I owe you a debt and I would rather face your comrades than return to my own ranks and to a slow torture before I am executed. I have no desire to face ogres’ tender mercies.”

Something howled in the night, far away. It was a wolf, Huma decided, yet not a wolf. It was too cold, too – evil.

“We had best be off,” Kaz quickly decided. “This is no place to be at night. The scent of death is sure to draw visitors here and I, Knight, would prefer to move on.”

Huma’s eyes were still staring back at the direction of the cry. He nodded sharply, suddenly much more pleased with the minotaur’s companionship. “Agreed.” He reached out his right hand in friendship. “My name, friend Kaz, is Huma.”

“Huma.” The pressure exerted by the hand that covered Huma’s was not enough to crush every bone, but it came close. “A strong name, that. A warrior’s name.”

Huma turned quickly away and picked up his bags. How wrong the minotaur could be! A warrior, indeed! Within his armor, Huma could feel every portion of his body shiver. He tried to imagine Bennett in his place, acting in the proper manner of a knight born to command. The thought only frustrated Huma more, for he knew that Bennett would never have ended up in a situation such as this.

They left the camp, with its dying fire and scattered refuse, and headed in the direction Huma had chosen. Neither spoke now, for varying reasons. Behind them – thankfully, sounding no closer than before – the cry rose again.

Chapter 3

The two wanderers found it impossible to travel too far before being forced to rest. Huma’s head still bothered him, and Kaz was not fully over the effects of the drugged food he had been fed following his capture by the goblins.

“I was a fool! They caught me napping like a newborn and trussed me up good! I am many things, but not crazy enough to try rising to face two pikes that had me pinned to the ground. Even goblins can’t miss at that range.” The last made Kaz laugh, though Huma found little humor in the statement.

They finally agreed to stop at a small rise that would provide some protection. It was uncomfortably too much like the position that the first goblin patrol had chosen. Still, it was better than wide-open terrain. Huma only prayed he would keep his eyes open long enough to wake the minotaur when it was Kaz’s turn to watch.

They talked a little while, perhaps because neither felt safe about sleep. Huma spoke of the knighthood and its basic beliefs and organization. Kaz found the Knights of Solamnia interesting. Many aspects about it appealed to the easterner, especially the great respect for honor.

Kaz went into very little detail about his own people. They were great mariners, it was true, but their lives were now controlled by the ogres. They still had their tournaments of honor, where one rose in rank by defeating his opponent, but the ogres cared little for this method and chose new measures more appealing to their ways. Because of that, Kaz had already built up a great hatred of his so-called masters before his deadly clash with his captain. Anything was better than servitude to their kind, he felt.

That Huma trusted Kaz with his life disturbed the Solamnian a little. He had already seen how savage the minotaur could become. Huma never could have snapped an opponent’s neck with the efficiency and – eagerness – that Kaz had shown. Yet he felt that the minotaur could be trusted where his word was concerned. The debate in Huma’s mind raged on until he fell prey to weariness. Then it became a moot point.

The night passed without incident, as did the first hours of day. They ate what little rations Huma had left. A brief look in the goblins’ bags had made the knight lose all desire for any food the creatures might have been carrying, and besides, the goblins’ food might have been tampered with.

The day was bleak. A chill wind was picking up, and Huma was thankful that he wore good, strong padding beneath his armor. Kaz, however, seemed unbothered by the cool weather. His race was one of explorers and mariners, as well as warriors, and the lands of his birth could get exceptionally cold in the dark months. The barechested footsoldier did not even wear boots. Had Huma walked as far in his bare feet, they would have been scarred, bleeding, and mangled. The lands here had been baked hard and rough by the past.

About midday, Huma noticed the riders in the distance. The riders did not come in Huma and Kaz’s direction, and soon the group was lost from sight. But Huma believed the Knights of Solamnia, and that meant odds were good that the column – or at least a portion of it – waited nearby.

Kaz, on the other hand, was not so confident about the identities of the riders. Here, so close to the front, they could be anyone.

“True, they appeared to be humans – or perhaps elves – but they may have been among those who serve Takhisis. You have never seen the Black Guard, the Warlord’s elite troops. Nor the renegades for that matter.”

The minotaur had used that puzzling word before. “Who are the renegades?” Huma asked.

“Sorcerers unschooled. Mad mages. All of them, somehow or another, have escaped the notice of the orders of magic. Not all are evil. It is said, though, that one with tremendous power has made a pact with the Dark Queen herself, and that she is so desperate for victory now that she has shunned her own Black Robes.”

Magic. Huma knew more about it than most of his comrades. He had grown up with it. His best – his only – friend had turned to sorcery. From the first, Magius had told Huma that some day he would be a great and powerful sorcerer, even as Huma leaned toward the knighthood that his mother had claimed was his birthright.

Thinking of Magius made Huma think too much of his early years, times that, while cherished in some ways, had left him bitter and unsure. He had not seen Magius in years, not since the day his friend had completed his studies and entered the tower for some sort of test that would decide his fate. On that very same day, Huma had made a decision of his own and had set out to confront the Knights of Solamnia and petition for a place among them.

Huma shook away the thoughts.

They continued walking. Kaz continually scanned the horizon, but he seemed a stranger to the terrain. At one point, he turned and asked, “Are all of the human lands like this?”

“You’ve never seen any of them?”

“Only the worst areas. Where else would the ogres put us but in the worst positions? In our own way, we are more expendable to them than the goblins. They trust neither of our races, but they know they can control the goblins.”

Huma nodded his understanding. “There are still lands untouched by the war, but they grow fewer each year. Where my home was, is now a wasteland akin to this.” With that came a rush of bitter memories. He forced himself to concentrate on the path ahead. The past was behind him.

The minotaur’s head snapped forward. “We have company of some sort.”

The knight squinted. More than three dozen figures, all human, headed in their general direction. Survivors of some village, he realized. Lost survivors, evidently, with two broken-down wagons hauled by animals half-dead and led by men who looked no better. There were women, too, and even a couple of children. As they drew closer, he suddenly realized that most of them were gazing at his companion. What he could read in those gazes, he did not care for at all.

“We must be careful, Kaz.”

“Against this pathetic rabble? You needn’t bother. I can take these all by myself.” Kaz started to reach for the ax strapped to his back, but Huma caught his arm.

“No!” he hissed. “That’s murder!”

The usually quick-reacting warrior hesitated. The mind of a minotaur worked much differently from that of a man. Kaz saw a threat; there were more than enough men to take him down if he failed to react. His world did not accept compromise. One triumphed or died. Huma stood dumbfounded; he did not want to fight Kaz, but he could not very well allow the minotaur to go tearing into the refugees.

Though Kaz lowered his hand, the damage was already done. The villagers saw only a monster who had threatened them. They already had seen their homes destroyed, and friends and relatives killed. Frustration at their helplessness had built higher and higher, with no outlet. Now, a lone minotaur who represented all that was evil, all their suffering, stood in their path.

Several men and women shuffled forward, a ragged mob. They were pale and frightened, a suicidal fright. All they wanted was one chance to strike back before they died.

Huma was appalled at the sight. The group moved like living dead. Farm tools, knives, rope, even various household items were clutched as weapons. Kaz stood his ground, but he gave Huma a quick glance.

“If they come a few steps closer, I will strike no matter what you say. I will not stand and die at their hands.” The minotaur’s eyes glared blood red. Before long, he would act. Huma jumped in front of the mob, sword raised in the air. “Stop! He means no harm!”

It was a pathetic attempt, and the results were as he had feared. The murderous mob came to a halt, but only to decide what to do about the young knight barring their path.

“Step aside!” one grizzled elder yelled. A cloth was tied over one eye, and the red stain on it indicated a recent wound. His skin was cracked, and his sparse hair clung to his head. “We want him! He’s got to pay for what he’s done!”

“He’s done nothing to you!”

A woman a little older than Huma, and apparently once pretty, spat at him. “He’s one of them! What does it matter whether he was the one who killed my children! If he’s not done it here, he’s done it elsewhere!”

It would have been futile to try to explain. They would not have listened to Huma, and, even if they did, it would not excuse the horrors they had suffered. Kaz was their only focus.

In desperation, Huma brandished his sword. There was some murmuring and a few less hardy souls stepped back, but the apparent betrayal by a Knight of Solamnia against his own race was more than some could stand. The mob moved forward again, but this time it was obvious that Huma was also their target.

Behind him, he could hear his massive companion pulling out the ax. “Have no fear, Huma. We will crush them.”

There was anticipation in those words, even more than the first time Huma had noticed it.

Not even the sight of an angered minotaur clutching a huge battle ax in one great hand was enough to deter villagers. Thin, bony arms, from which hung the rags of clothes, rose. Some were empty-handed, some were willing to strike with whatever was in them. Huma stepped back.

Would he really kill these people to protect one who had been an enemy only a few days before? No knight would do so. Huma knew that. Yet he could not leave Kaz to them.

“Kaz, you’d better run!”

“They’ll kill you now, Huma. Kill you for aiding me. Better we stand and fight.”

That was the last thing Huma desired, but there appeared to be no other choice. Either he moved aside and betrayed the minotaur or he stood and betrayed those he had sworn to defend. The sword wavered.

A strong wind rushed up from behind him.

The mob froze and all eyes stared upward. Behind him, Huma heard Kaz whirl and curse.

“Dragon!”

A cloud of dust kicked up, obscuring Huma’s vision as he turned. He could hear the flapping of great wings as the dragon evidently prepared to land. In his mind, he saw one of the deadly black dragons or perhaps a huge red one, come to strike them all down. His sword would be less than useless.

Even before the dust had settled, Kaz was charging. Dragon of darkness or light, it mattered little to him. He had no future, whichever the case. He only hoped to do some damage before the leviathan crushed him. The minotaur shouted a battle cry as he ran, and the ax whirled about his head. Huma got his first glance of the dragon as Kaz struck.

The knight raised a hand and shouted, although he knew it was much too late already. “No!”

The might of a minotaur was truly impressive. It was said that an ax in a minotaur’s hands could split boulders in two. Had Kaz struck, it was quite possible that he might have conquered. Instead, he suddenly froze in midswing and his momentum, great as it was, threw him headfirst to the ground beneath the dragon’s great maw.

The dragon glanced only briefly at the fallen berserker and then looked up to study the human. Huma stared back. As a knight, he was accustomed to the comings and goings of the Dragons of Light. They served as guardians and messengers, but he had never seen one this close.

It was tall and sleek. The entire body was silver, save the two eyes that glowed like sunshine. He knew instinctively that the dragon was female, although he would have been hard-pressed to explain his reasoning. The jaws were longer than his arm and the teeth were so long that the dragon easily could have bitten off Huma’s head with one snap. The snout was long and tapered.

The dragon’s voice, contrary to the beast’s appearance, was deep but melodious. “A Knight of Solamnia. What do you do out here? You are far from your comrades. Are you seeking this garbage here? Rest assured, the minotaur will go nowhere. Not while the power of my will holds him.”

Huma lowered his weapon. The villagers had melted into the background, although they were in no real danger.

“Are you well?” The question appeared legitimate. The silvery dragon was actually concerned.

“Please,” Huma choked out. “Don’t harm him! It’s not what you think!”

The glimmering orbs of the dragon seemed to appraise him. The leviathan was curious. “Why do you wish to spare the life of this creature? Is there information you desire? I can wrench information from him with little trouble.”

The dragon waited with the patience of one who measures time in centuries, not minutes.

“He is my companion. He has turned from the evil of the Dark Queen.”

Had someone informed Huma that the face of a dragon was capable of revealing very human surprise, he would have scoffed. This, though, was the case. He remained silent as the dragon digested this unusual piece of information.

“The minotaur would have struck me. It is obvious that he meant me great physical harm. How, then, can I justify your claims?”

Huma stiffened. “You must take my word. I have no proof.”

She actually smiled at that. On a dragon, even a smile was fearsome. Lord Oswal had once said that a dragon’s smile was like that of the fox who was preparing to eat the hen.

“I beg your pardon, Knight of Solamnia. I did not mean that I had no faith in your words. You must admit, it is not every day that one finds a minotaur fighting side by side with one of your kind.”

“No offense was taken.”

“What of them?”

Huma did not turn. He still remembered his indecision and what might have resulted. “Their fear and anger is understandable. They’ve suffered much. I hold nothing against them.”

She acknowledged his answer with a sinuous twist of her narrow, lengthy neck. To the villagers she said, “You travel off-course. Turn to the southwest. There are clerics of Mishakal who will care for your injured and give you food. Tell any others you meet on your way.”

She received no argument from them, something that Huma was quite thankful for. The dragon watched the refugees set out in the proper direction. Then she looked down at Kaz with near-distaste.

“If I release this one, his well-being is your affair. I have as little love for his kind as those unfortunates do.”

Huma was hesitant. “I cannot promise his reaction when you release him. He is quick to anger.”

“A trait of the minotaurs. If they were not constantly killing one another in their contests of strength and rank, I think they would have overrun Ansalon long before this.” She sighed, an action that forced Huma to close his eyes as hot air warmed his face. “Very well.”

With those words said, the minotaur suddenly leaped to life. He did not renew his attack, but rather paused some distance from dragon and knight, the ax ready in his hands. He eyed the dragon warily.

She returned the gaze with something akin to disdain. “You heard everything.”

It was no question, and the massive warrior’s expression indicated to Huma that Kaz had heard all too well. He still did not trust either of them, though.

“I heard. I am not sure what to believe.”

“I easily could have crushed you, minotaur.” The silver dragon lifted one massive claw as proof. Had either one of them felt the force behind it, there would have been little left to mourn.

Kaz turned his gaze to Huma. “You saved my life once, Knight Huma. It appears you have done so again, only this time with words.” The minotaur shook his head. “I shall never be able to sufficiently repay the debt.”

Huma frowned. Debts, again! “I want nothing from you, save peace. Will you put away the ax?”

The minotaur straightened, took one last look at the hulking figure before him, and hesitantly returned the ax to its resting place. “As I have said, I cannot go back. What is to become of me?”

The dragon snorted, sending small puffs of smoke floating. “I have no interest in you. Huma is the one who should decide.”

“Me?”

“You’ve shown excellent judgment so far. Would that more of the earthbound races showed such common sense.” There was no mockery in the dragon’s tone.

Huma felt oddly pleased by the compliment, coming as it did from a creature as regal as the silver dragon. He thought carefully for several moments, tossing about ideas that had half-formed during the trek, and then turned to the minotaur. “We must join the column. If you truly wish to prove yourself to others than myself, you’ll have to tell them what you know about the ogres’ movements and make them believe you.” Huma paused. “You do know something of use to them, don’t you?”

Kaz gave it long thought and then grunted. “I know more than I should know. If you can convince them not to slay me out of hand, I will do as you say. Perhaps what help I can give you will hasten the day when my people are free once more.”

“You’ll have to give me the ax.”

The minotaur let loose with a bellow of rage. “I cannot go among them unarmed! It would be a loss of face! This is not our way!”

Huma’s temper flared. “You’re not among your people! You’re among mine! If you step among them armed with that well-worn ax, there will be no hope for compromise. At the very least, you will become a prisoner. At the worst, you will be dead.”

The dragon leveled a glittery stare at the minotaur. “The knight’s assessment is quite accurate. You would do best to listen to him.”

Kaz snorted and snarled and called upon the names of some six or seven prominent ancestors, but in the end, he agreed to surrender his weapon to Huma when the time came.

The silver dragon spread her great wings. She was a magnificent creature, the very aspect of power and beauty joined into one. Huma had seen tapestries, wood carvings, and sculptures in Vingaard Keep that had sought to capture the essence of the dragons. They were all pale specters when compared to the actual being.

“I was flying to rejoin my kin in northern Ergoth when I caught sight of you. The situation was unique. It interested me, so I decided to land,” she said. “I should move on, but it will not take me far out of my way if I transport the two of you to your destination.”

The thought of soaring through the sky on the back of one of the legendary dragons nearly overwhelmed Huma. He knew that there were knights who fought astride the huge beasts and even talked with them, but Huma had never been so privileged.

“How do we hold on?”

“If I fly slowly, you should have no trouble hanging on with your arms and legs. Many have done it before, although you are the first to fly with me. It will save you much time and hardship.” She lowered her head so that it was level with his own.

Huma would fly! Magius had once said that this was one of his greatest reasons for joining the orders of sorcery – to float among the clouds.

Huma straddled the long, sinewy neck just above the shoulders and could not help but smile at the dragon, who had turned to watch. He knew she understood his enthusiasm all too well. Reddening slightly, Huma reached down a hand to Kaz. The minotaur stared at the offered hand and at the back of the dragon.

He shook his head vehemently. “My people are creatures of the land, sailors of the seas. We are not birds.”

“It is perfectly safe.” The dragon appeared slighted. “A babe could ride with no fear.”

“A babe would be foolish enough. I am not.”

“There’s nothing to fear, Kaz.”

Huma’s remarks stung well, as the knight had hoped they would. If a mere human could face this challenge, then so could he, a minotaur. Snorting furiously, he took hold of Huma’s hand and climbed up. He sat directly behind the knight and did not speak, although every muscle in his body tensed. He gripped the dragon’s neck with his hands and legs.

“Are both of you prepared?”

Huma looked back at Kaz, who stared ahead without seeing. The knight turned back. “As best we can be, I guess.” His heart was pounding, and he felt more like a small child than a Knight of Solamnia. “Will we fly high?”

The silver dragon actually laughed, a deep, throaty chuckle. “Not as high as you might like, but I do not think you will be disappointed.”

She gave the minotaur one last amused glance, then began to flap her wings. Huma watched in fascination as the ground fell away beneath them. Within seconds, the silver dragon was spiraling high in the sky. Huma lowered his visor to keep some of the wind out of his face. Kaz merely held on for dear life and changed neither method nor mind even when the silvery leviathan ceased climbing and finally maintained a slow and steady flight.

Huma raised his visor and leaned as close to the dragon’s head as was possible. “This – this is fantastic!”

“Perhaps you should have been a dragon yourself!” she shouted back. “If you could see the world as I see it!”

She did not try to explain, and Huma did not ask her to. For a brief time, the war, the knighthood, all his problems vanished.

Huma settled back and absorbed the splendor.

Chapter 4

The war was meant to be swift and final. Takhisis, Queen of Darkness, Dragonqueen, had sent forth her children, her slaves, her warriors, her mages, and mystics in one great collective force. The focus of her attack was the Knights of Solamnia, for she saw in them the power and danger that the elves once had represented. The elves were now a shadow of their once-mighty strength; their self-exile from the outside world had sapped them of vigor. They could wait for her attention until the knighthood had been ground under.

Yet the knights had their own allies and, most important, the discipline and the organization that were sorely lacking from the Queen’s followers. The knights also had dedicated their lives to her eternal foe, Paladine.

It was said that Paladine himself had created the knighthood. Certainly it was true that Vinas Solamnus, the Ergothian commander who had turned against the tyranny of his emperor, introduced the Oath and Measure by which his soldiers would abide, but it was always his claim that he had stumbled across a grove on far-off Sancrist Isle – a place beyond the western shores of Ansalon itself – in which Paladine himself awaited. With his twin sons, the gods Kiri-Jolith and Habbakuk, Paladine had introduced Vinas Solamnus to the creation of a powerful force for good.

From Habbakuk came the Order of the Crown, which looked to loyalty as its greatest aspect. All new knights became members of this order, the better to learn to act in concert, to aid one’s comrades, and to follow faithfully the Oath and the Measure.

From Kiri-Jolith, god of just battle, came the Order of the Sword. Those who wished to, could choose to enter this order once they had proved themselves as members of the Crown. Honor was first and foremost to a Knight of the Sword. No hand was to be raised in unjust anger, no sword drawn because of personal jealousies.

Last, from Paladine himself, came the Order of the Rose. These were to be the elite, those knights who had so come to embrace the workings of Paladine that nothing mattered more. Wisdom and justice ruled their lives. From their ranks most often would be chosen the Grand Master, he who would command the knighthood overall.

Although it had never been so during the life of Vinas Solamnus, the Order of the Rose became the order of royalty. Whereas all knights laid claim to royal blood, the Order of the Rose was open only to those of the “purest” blood. No one ever defied this rule, although it went against all the teachings of Paladine.

The war had settled down to the most horrible stalemate. Men, dragons, ogres, goblins – the casualties mounted, the carrion creatures fed, the plagues began.

“I had not believed …” The silver dragon’s voice trailed off. Huma had not realized how quickly the destruction would spread across yet another once-unspoiled region. Below them, frighteningly real, lay the evidence.

Whole groves of ancient, proud trees had been thrown free of the earth, either by dragons or magic-users. Fields were no more than great mounds of upturned soil with the tracks of many feet trampled into them. The dead reposed in great numbers, knights and ogres both, although there did seem to be more of the latter – or was it merely blind hope on the part of the Solamnic knight?

Huma’s face paled. He looked at the dead scattered about, then covered his eyes while he regained his composure.

“A futile struggle here,” Kaz was shouting in his ear. The minotaur had lost his fear of flight in his great interest in the battle. “Crynus picks and picks, and the knighthood’s commanders return the favor with little bites of their own. Neither will gain from this.”

The words made Huma stiffen. Kaz could not help his nature. A battle was a study in skill and position to him. Even personally involved, he would ponder strategy and tactics. Even as his ax screamed through the air.

The silver dragon turned her head toward them. “Obviously, we cannot land here. Kyre is certainly lost, to both sides, it would seem. These fields of wheat will feed no one.”

Huma blinked. “There is hope, then. The supply lines of the ogres must be strained. The knighthood sits more securely with its.”

“But their strength is not as great as that of the ogres,” interjected the minotaur.

So intent were they on the desolation below that none of them had noticed the large, dark forms riding toward their general position. It was Kaz who spotted them. He suddenly gripped Huma’s shoulder tightly. Huma turned his head and followed the minotaur’s gaze.

“Dragon!” he shouted to the silver leviathan bearing them. “Six at least.”

As they neared, Huma began to make out more definite shapes and colors. Reds – led by a black dragon? Squinting, Huma realized it was true. An enormous black dragon – bearing a rider. As they all were!

“I cannot fight them all,” said the silver dragon. “Jump when the earth is close. I will attempt to lead them astray.”

The silver dragon skimmed down near the trees, trying to locate some place suitable to land before her deadly counterparts reached them.

“You must jump when I say so! Are you ready?”

“It galls me to flee from any battle, even among the clouds. Is there no way we can help, Huma?”

Huma kept his face turned away from the minotaur. “No, we’d best jump.”

“As you wish.”

They passed over what had once been a farmhouse; it was now little more than a low, crumbling wall of bricks forming a crude rectangle. Beyond that, though, was clear field.

“I’m slowing! Ready yourselves!”

They poised.

“Now!”

Kaz moved first. He toppled over as if struck in the chest by an arrow. The silver dragon’s talons fairly touched the earth as she glided into another turn.

Huma leaned to jump – and hesitated.

“What are you doing?” the silver dragon screamed at Huma as the six dragons drew nearer.

“You cannot fight them alone!”

“Don’t be a fool!”

“Too late!” he shouted quickly.

Each of the dragons carried a tall, sinister figure clad in unadorned ebony armor. Their faces were hidden by visored helmets. Whether they were human or ogre or something else was beyond Huma’s ken.

The rider of the tremendous black dragon, a hulking figure who dwarfed Huma, motioned to the others. The reds pulled back to await the outcome. The black dragon shrieked eagerly as the rider prodded it.

The two dragons closed with much bellowing. Claws slashed and one talon dug into a forearm of the silver dragon. She, in turn, raked the open chest of the black, leaving great gash marks across it.

The armored rider swung a wicked two-headed ax, and Huma automatically dodged the attack. As the two dragons grappled, Huma was able to angle close enough to strike back.

The other riders hung back in nervous anticipation, their dragons shrieking angrily at being unable to participate.

Then the silver dragon caught the black across one wing with her claws, and the other shrieked in pain. The black rider was thrown to one side, and left open to Huma’s thrust. Without thinking, the knight struck at the opening below his opponent’s shoulder. The point easily cut through the thin mail, and momentum carried it deeper. The rider grunted and slumped backward.

A chorus of cries from riders and dragons alerted the black to the injury of its charge. With frenzied movements, the black tore away from the silver dragon.

Huma readied himself for the mass attack that would surely follow, but, oddly enough, the enemy did not press its advantage. The remaining dragons formed a protective circle around the black dragon and its badly wounded rider, and then all six great beasts turned in the direction from which they had come. While knight and silver dragon watched in stupefaction, the enemy flew away.

Huma found himself breathing calmly again.

Below him, the silver dragon also had regained her poise. Her wounds still bled, and Huma wondered just how severe were the injuries.

As if in response, she turned to look at him, concern obvious in her every movement.

“Are you injured?”

“No. What of you? Do you require aid?” How did one treat a dragon? “I don’t know if I can help, but I can try.”

She shook her glittering head. “I can heal myself. I merely require rest. What concerns me more is the odd circumstances of this battle. This was more than merely a patrol. I cannot put my mind to the answer, but I believe this is a sign.”

Huma nodded. “We must pick up Kaz and hurry to Lord Oswal. He will want to know all.”

The silver dragon edged downward and saw something that made her smile cynically. She said, “It appears we have more visitors. Ones who, I believe, will not be pleased to discover a minotaur in their midst.”

Following her gaze, Huma saw them. Knights of Solamnia. More than twenty, he estimated. A patrol of his own colors. The silver dragon was right. The knights would be likely to run Kaz down, at the cost of a few of their own lives, no doubt.

Kaz, hidden in the wreckage of a farmer’s wagon and oblivious to the riders coming from behind, rose to wave at Huma and the silver dragon. Even if the knights had failed to see the minotaur, they could not miss the landing of the dragon. One knight spotted the bull-headed creature and yelled out a warning to the others. Immediately, the patrol went into a full charge. The minotaur whirled at the thundering sound and stood momentarily poised. Then the battle ax, which Huma had allowed Kaz to keep, was suddenly out and swinging expectantly. Swords were raised and lances aimed.

Huma could think of only one thing to do. He shouted out his plan to the silver dragon. The oncoming warriors looked up in astonishment, and their orderly riding became haphazard as they momentarily forgot all else at sight of the magnificent denizen of the air. The silver dragon came down behind Kaz and was able to grab the minotaur by his shoulders. Kaz let out a startled cry and dropped his ax as the great talons applied pressure to both shoulders and hauled him off the ground. The knights tugged hard on the reins, desperately trying to halt their steeds while cheering for what they thought was the end of a marauding minotaur.

Kaz continued a stream of curses that would have made the worst brigand blanch, but he was powerless in the grip of the silver dragon. When they were some distance away, the silver dragon dropped the minotaur gently to the ground and then landed nearby.

Huma leaped off her back and immediately confronted Kaz. If not for the minotaur’s oath to serve him, Huma suspected he would have been slaughtered then and there. Fire glowed in the minotaur’s deep-set eyes, and he snorted continuously with anger.

“No fighting!” Huma ordered.

“They will kill me! At least let me fight to the death, not stand there like some ineffectual gully dwarf!”

Very quietly and with a cold anger that surprised him, Huma repeated himself. “I said no fighting.”

The minotaur exhaled sharply and seemed to slump. He stared at Huma. “As you wish. I will put my faith in you who have saved my life twice.”

That again! Huma let out an exasperated breath and turned as the reorganized patrol rode hesitantly up to the odd trio. The patrol leader, the only one seemingly unaffected by the sight of the great dragon, called a halt and then leaned forward to study the young knight.

“It seems Bennett is not rid of you after all, Huma.”

Belated recognition dawned on Huma. “Rennard!”

Rennard raised his visor. Some of the other knights shifted uncomfortably. Rennard’s face was deathly pale, and when he spoke it was almost as if his features did not move. He might have been a handsome man, but that handsomeness had been ruined by near-death in his youth, from plague. His face was gaunt and lined, and some of his detractors liked to joke that Rennard had, in fact, died of the disease and just never realized it. Such colorful comments never were spoken in his presence, though. Few knights were his match.

Huma was pleased to see Rennard. The older knight had taken Huma under his wing from the first, when he came to Vingaard to present his petition for entry into the knighthood. Rennard had supported him when others had urged that he be rejected – a boy who could only claim his father was a knight and whose mother could give no evidence to support him.

The knights had gotten over their awe of the dragon by this time, and now all eyed Kaz. There was a great amount of muttering, much of it concerning what so strange a being as a minotaur was doing here. Rennard beckoned to one of the other riders. “Bind the minotaur. I’m sure that Lord Oswal will be most interested in him and what he is doing this far from the action.”

Kaz stepped back, fists raised. “Try! The first who lays a hand on me will never do so again!”

One of the knights drew a sword. “Insolent beast! You won’t live long enough!”

“No!” Huma stepped up to Rennard. “He’s no enemy. He was running from the ogres. I found him a prisoner of goblins and rescued him. He killed an ogre in order to save human lives!”

Several of the men made snide comments on the gullibility of the young knight, and Huma knew his face had glared crimson.

Kaz snorted. The slur on Huma’s honor was as much a slur on his own, since he owed his life to the human. “This is the honor of the Knights of Solamnia? This is how they treat one of their own? Perhaps I was mistaken to believe the knighthood might be as honorable as my own race!”

The knight who had drawn his sword began urging his horse forward. “I’ll have your head, minotaur!”

“You will do nothing of the sort, Knight Conrad.” The angered knight tried to face Rennard down, but, as had happened countless times before, it was the pale knight who was victorious. No one could face the ice-blue eyes.

“In truth, there is nothing any of you could say against Huma’s ability to judge,” continued Rennard. “And you know it. Act like knights, not petty Ergothians or high, mighty elves.”

The other warriors quieted, although it was clear they were not pleased with being scolded like children. Rennard did not care, Huma knew. Rennard was concerned only with Rennard.

To Huma, he said, “The minotaur is placed in your custody, Huma. I know more about their kind than these others apparently do. If he will pledge to come among us in peace, that will be all the assurance I need.”

Huma looked at Kaz, who stared at the patrol in general and at the gaunt knight in particular. After some consideration, the minotaur finally agreed. “I pledge to you that I will come in peace and that I will accept Huma’s judgment in all matters.”

The last was a criticism of the knights’ lack of faith in one of their own. The knights shifted uneasily. They did not like the idea of so powerful a prisoner riding loose among them. The silver dragon looked on with an expression of mild amusement. Rennard’s face was devoid of reaction, but Huma felt he was amused by the remark.

The patrol leader jabbed a thumb behind him. “We have a few extra horses, which we recovered about a mile from here. One of them is tall and strong enough to carry the minotaur, I believe. When you are satisfied, I want the two of you up front. We have much to discuss, and you, Knight Huma, must have a rather interesting report.”

The other knights made room as Huma and Kaz stepped into their midst. There were five extra horses – four warhorses and one drafthorse that apparently had been abandoned by its owner. The drafthorse and two of the warhorses proved to be unfit for riding and had been taken along mainly for the meat on their bones. The tallest of the horses, and the only one capable of supporting the massive form of the minotaur, was skittish, but not so much that Kaz could not control him. Huma found a greyish silver steed and took an immediately liking to it. When they were mounted, they rejoined Rennard.

Huma scanned the desolation. “What happened here?”

The lack of emotion only made Rennard’s words the more frightening. “What usually happens, Huma? Mages fight their own private wars and tear up the lands, leaving nothing but rock and craters for those bound to the earth. Dragons burn or freeze or tear up the remaining fertile, green regions. By the time the armies clash, there is little if anything worth fighting for.”

Mages were a sore subject with Rennard. No one knew why. Huma had never mentioned Magius to him for fear of alienating him, and losing one of Huma’s rare champions.

“Did we lose?”

“Stalemate. The fighting just moved north, although we were sent to assure that their northerly retreat was no feint. We were just about to turn back when we saw you.”

The silver dragon, who had stayed patiently silent all this time, finally interjected. “You did not see the dragonriders, then?”

Rennard’s head snapped up and the other knights stiffened. “Dragonriders, did you say?”

“Six of them. All clad in black and all riding red dragons, save the leader, who rode a huge black dragon. They seemed to be searching until they noticed us. I tried to buy some time, but your fellow knight refused to leave me. He insisted on joining in the battle.”

With most of the faces hidden by visors, Huma could not properly gauge the reactions of his comrades. Some few seemed to indicate approval with slight nods, while one was heard to mutter something about unnecessary foolhardiness. Rennard, meanwhile, seemed preoccupied.

“A huge black, you say?”

“The largest. Young, though. The rider chose to fight us one to one. We did, and then a strange thing occurred. Huma wounded him severely and the black was forced to retreat from the battle. Rather than seeking revenge, the others joined the black to seek help for their crippled leader. They would have slaughtered us had they all come at once. I still do not understand.”

Rennard’s face remained typically blank. How much this disturbed him was impossible to say. When he spoke next, it was as if the tale of the attack had already slipped his mind. “I can only thank you for the service you have given one of our own. Will you be joining us? I am unfamiliar with the healing of dragon wounds, but if the powers of a cleric of Mishakal will help, there are a few with the main force.”

The great beast flexed her wings – which unnerved more than one knight and many of the horses – and declined his offer. “My own talents will suffice. I merely need rest. I will rejoin my kin. You might possibly see me afterward.” The last comment was directed more at Huma than Rennard.

“It has been fascinating to know you even this brief time, Knight Huma,” the dragon continued. “Good tidings to you. May Paladine watch over you.”

Without further ado, the silver dragon lifted herself high into the air. Huma and the others were forced to look away as the dust rose. When it had settled at last, the astonishing creature was already far away. The group watched her vanish into the clouds, still awed by her presence. Rennard turned and took stock of those under his command – including Huma and Kaz – and turned his horse. He gave no command, and none was expected. The others simply followed, the two newcomers riding just behind the patrol leader.

It was not until they were well on their way that Rennard motioned the two to ride beside him. He continued to watch the path ahead as he spoke. “These riders. Have you ever seen or heard of them before, Huma?”

“Should I have?”

“Perhaps. Minotaur —”

“My name is Kaz.” He appeared tired of being addressed as if he were not quite there.

“Kaz, then. Surely, you must know them?”

“They are the Black Guard. One of many of their names. They serve the renegade mage Galan Dracos and the Queen’s warlord, Crynus.”

“What of the warlord himself?”

Kaz shrugged. “He is a giant, although whether an ogre or human or something else, only a special few seem to know. He is a master strategist who is willing to take chances, even with himself. His favorite mount – mount …” The minotaur stopped speaking, and his eyes widened.

A thin, deadly smile spread across Rennard’s face, a frightening sight on that deathlike visage. Rennard turned to Huma. “What I believe he was going to add was that the favored mount of Crynus is a huge black dragon called Charr. Both man and beast are obsessive risk-takers and one-to-one combat is something they relish greatly.”

“And … and I fought against him.” The realization shook Huma. He had faced Crynus himself and lived.

Then, he suddenly thought, so had the warlord. He had been badly wounded, true, but Huma was sure he lived – and somehow Huma knew that the warlord would seek him out. To regain face. To regain honor. To more than balance the score.

To kill him.

“I understand the warlord takes his battles very personally,” Rennard added, almost casually. He suddenly urged his horse to a quicker pace and the others followed suit as quickly as they were able. Even then, they did not move fast enough to suit Huma, who suddenly watched the sky nervously.

Chapter 5

If the devastation had looked terrible from above, a close view proved it to be even worse than that. Now, Huma could see with what thoroughness death had swept through this region. Kyre, a once-teeming city near the border with Ergoth, was no more. The fields were scorched. The dead lay scattered like broken toys. Most of the buildings were mere shells, if that much. As the patrol swept around the city’s east walls – or what was left of them – the stench of grisly decay rose. Huma prayed he would not lose control, and it gave him no satisfaction that several of the other knights looked sick. Rennard rode on in seeming indifference.

By the end of the day, their horses and their armor were covered with mud. Realizing that they would not reach the main force for hours and knowing of the treacherous paths ahead, Rennard called for a halt at a dry location in the vicinity, along hard-packed earth that had once served as a country road. Behind them, they could make out curls of smoke rising from Kyre. The fires had long gone out, but the smoke refused to die, as if a reminder of the knighthood’s failure.

The night passed without incident. Kaz, true to his oath, attempted to stand guard over the young knight all night long, until both Rennard and Huma insisted that the exhausted minotaur take his turn sleeping.

They continued on at first light, Huma and Kaz again riding beside the patrol leader. Huma attempted to draw Rennard into conversation, but the other knight was as taciturn as ever. He would speak when he deemed it necessary, not otherwise.

By noon, they neared the outer fringe of the southern flank. The battle had become nothing more than one great series of skirmishes, as each side tested for weaknesses. The patrol had been fortunate. Had they arrived at another time of day, they might have ridden directly into such a battle.

Some of the knights gave a ragged cheer at the sight of the riders, mistaking them for reinforcements. Morale appeared low, and when the knights recognized Rennard and Huma, the cheers died on their lips.

The camp of the southern flank lay southeast of the ruins of the city. Rennard pulled his mount to a stop. Before the patrol lay a great tent surrounded by Knights of the Sword. The pale knight did not dismount. Instead he summoned the captain of the guard. At the sight of Rennard, the knight in question blanched and quickly saluted.

The deathly face stared down at him. “Who is in charge here?”

“Lord Killian. You will not find him here, though. He has gone out among the men in an attempt to boost spirits.” The guard sounded as if he had very little faith in the attempt.

Rennard nodded. “Perhaps you might assist us, then. Where will we find Lord Oswal’s command headquarters? When our patrol set out, it was located near here.”

Under Rennard’s cold gaze, the guard informed them that command had moved another full day’s journey, this time to the northeast. The ever sardonic Kaz muttered something about chasing one’s own tail, but a stern look from Huma quieted him. The group was on the move again within seconds.

The lands to the northeast proved to be in much fairer shape. The first living trees came into sight only an hour after the knights had resumed riding. As the minutes passed, more and more trees dotted the landscape. They were short and stubby, for the most part, but they were trees! The mood of the party lightened a little.

Not once during their trek did they lose sight of the two vast armies maneuvering for position among the hills and trees. To the north lay the mountain ranges that marked the boundaries between Solamnia and old Ergoth. The ranges included several heaven-shattering peaks, home to a large colony of fearsome ogres. Those who dared travel through the mountain regions risked their lives and limbs.

Huma’s mind wandered as the ride dragged on. What would Lord Oswal say when Huma confronted him? There had always been bad blood between the High Warrior and the Grand Master, and Lord Trake had been none too pleased with his brother’s decision to back young Huma. Such a decision could, in the long run, prove disastrous for Lord Oswal. In his position, he stood to lose much influence and power if Huma failed as a knight. The knighthood, for all its vaunted good, was a political organization. Not that this was Huma’s true concern. Rather, he wondered what would become of the army if someone other than the High Warrior commanded it. Lord Oswal was the knighthood’s most brilliant general.

Rennard called out and pointed to the west. All eyes turned. The already overcast skies were becoming pitch black in the space of moments. The watchers saw the darkness advance like a plague of locusts in a field of grain, and they knew what they viewed – sorcery of the vilest kind. The Queen’s minions were once more at work in their attempt to shatter the lines of defense.

Rennard slowed, looked at the others from behind his visor. He stared at Huma and Kaz. “Will the minotaur fight for us if you ask him, Huma?”

Kaz snorted loudly. “Ask me yourself, ghoul!”

The pale knight ignored the jibe as he might ignore the wind in his face. “Will you fight for us?”

Huma felt Rennard’s eyes burn into his. “The decision is yours, Kaz.”

The bovine face broke out into a savage, toothy grin. “Then I will fight, and gladly, as it will give me a chance to stretch my muscles. Besides, I was outcast from my kind the moment I chose to smite the ogre and run. They would kill me the moment they captured me. With you, I still have a chance to prove that my honor is not dead.”

“Then let us add our strength to our brethren.” With those words, Rennard spurred his horse. Someone shouted a battle cry. Huma gritted his teeth, hoping that someone would take his grimace as raw determination and not an attempt to quell some of the feelings tearing his body apart.

The creeping darkness came forth to greet them.

*

They might as well have been fighting at midnight without a moon. There were screams from the wounded and dying and lusty cries from warriors of both sides. Murky, huge shapes soared through the air. Sometimes they struck at the figures on the ground, but rarely with full strength. The dragonfear had not yet been unleashed. There was too much chaos on the ground; the dragons might very well consume their own allies.

Brilliant flashes of pure power revealed some of the carnage wrought on the field. Mages of white and red contested with the black. Concern for sage limits held the Red and White Robes from victory. Carelessness prevented the Black Robes from the same. Still, there was some effect; the vast inkiness that had come so swiftly now halted its deadly progress and even reversed a little. The Black Robes could not maintain the attacks against their colleagues, and the strength of the dark cloud, for more than a short time.

The sky suddenly was filled with dragons, more than any person possibly could have imagined. They had been gathered, slowly and quietly, just for this moment. As the darkness retreated, they boiled out of the cloud cover. There were far more than those who fought alongside the knights. Red, black, green, blue – the sky was filled with colors of death.

Although outnumbered, the dragons of light rose to face them. They were not enough. The Dragonqueen’s children quickly began to penetrate the ranks of the knights. Their ultimate goal lay beyond. They were flooding the hilly regions with their numbers, protecting the ogres and other landbound allies who even now flowed forth in greater numbers from within the hills themselves. Already beset by far too many foes, the sorely beleaguered knights looked to the party of newcomers for respite.

Swords high and lances straight, Rennard’s patrol regrouped into charge formation. The dragons racing above them did not faze them. The line would hold.

Huma was among those without a lance, but he knew that his sword would find an opponent soon enough. Eager to break the stalemate, the ogres already were pushing forward. The first wave had chosen to strike even as Huma and his companions had reached the fighting. The hilly ground slowed the warhorses. Huma saw one man go down as his horse lost its footing, and several more stumbled. Then they were striking at the fore of the ogre assault.

Metal flashed all about him, and everyone seemed to be screaming at full pitch. Huma desperately fought off each weapon hurtled at him and struck down several of the ogres while barely realizing it. An ogre face peered into his; it was hairy and savage with long sharp teeth like the minotaur’s, and a broad, flat visage with red-rimmed eyes. The ogre’s breath was fetid. Huma kicked the attacker away.

Laughter, oddly appropriate because of its ferocity, assailed Huma’s ears. Among the combatants, his ax swinging to and fro, the mammoth Kaz was an avenging force of chaos and death. Each swing took its count. Bloodlust glittered in the hulking creature’s eyes and then Kaz was lost from sight as more ogres sought the young knight’s life.

An ax nicked Huma’s leg. The only thing that saved him from losing a limb was that his strike had been first and true. The creature had been dead even as it retaliated. Shock, though, caused Huma to briefly lose control. He nearly dropped his sword and would have been cut down then and there if not for Rennard. The tall knight was cutting through the enemy at a methodical rate. The ogres attempted to flee this killing machine, but Rennard sought them out. Huma stared. At that moment, there seemed little difference between knight and minotaur.

Even so, the charge was insufficient, and it looked as if the knights would be routed. Then more huge forms joined the battle – this time from the Solamnic side. Reinforcements had arrived. The ecstasy was brief. Another ogre hurled itself at Huma.

As abruptly as it had been created, the stygian blackness vanished. Resistance from the Queen’s magic-users lessened. The knights pushed forward with renewed hope. Huma saw the ground erupt, and he shivered inwardly as countless enemy warriors were thrown high into the air, only to come crashing down seconds later.

“Huma!”

The voice was Rennard’s, and it seemed to be warning him. Huma turned toward the voice as shadow resurged abruptly. Someone grappled with him. Huma succeeded in manuevering his blade between them and thrust it through his adversary’s throat.

Huma turned his horse in the murk, seeking out his companions by hearing alone. It proved his undoing, for something heavy flew through the night and struck him soundly on the back of his helm.

He crumpled forward and slipped from his steed.

*

Huma had not known death would be so beautiful or kind. She reached forward and mopped his brow, then lifted his head slightly so as to allow him to drink a little water.

The water cleared his head slightly, and he knew that he was not dead. The face above him was not death, but that of a young, beautiful woman with white – no, silver hair. The hair fascinated him so much that he attempted to reach out and touch it. To his surprise, the agony that this simple motion produced was enough to whirl him back into unconsciousness.

*

“Are you ever planning to wake up?”

The gruff but concerned voice broke through the haze in Huma’s mind. His eyes fluttered open, then shut tightly against the light.

“A little light shouldn’t kill you, not after ogres and dragons failed to.”

Huma dared to try again, more slowly this time. A tiny amount of light filtered through his eyelashes.

He opened his eyes a little further, and forms began to take shape around him. Chief among those was the ugly, inhuman face of a minotaur.

“Kaz?” His voice frightened him; it was little more than a croak.

“A good guess.”

Huma stared at his surroundings. He was in a tent used by the knights for their wounded. Most of the other cots were empty, and the few that were not contained figures deep in sleep – or perhaps deeper than sleep. He shuddered. It brought the pain back.

“What happened to me?”

The bestial face broke into a near-human grin, and Kaz let out a deep chuckle. “What didn’t? First, you nearly looked right into the flat of an ax – don’t worry, it only creased one side of your head. You slipped and fell and nearly got trampled to death. The good news is that you were unconscious all of the time. It’s a wonder you didn’t break any bones, friend Huma. You certainly are bruised enough.”

“Everything hurts.”

“It should. Tell me, are you usually this careless?”

Huma smiled, but the smile, like everything else, proved to be painful.

“He is awake?”

He turned his head quickly toward the melodious voice, forgetting the pain, and gazed on the vision from his dreams. The silverish hair swept around her head. She wore a gown akin to that worn by healers of Mishakal, save that no medallion graced her smooth, ivory-colored neck. The gown did not hide her feminine attributes, and Huma forced himself to look away before embarrassment ruined all.

“Awake, alive, and in less pain than he thought, apparently.” The minotaur rose. “I shall leave you in the hands of this healer, Huma. While you have been resting, I have been put to work identifying what I can of my former masters’ battleplans.”

“They allow you freedom of the camp?” It was an astonishing gesture on the knighthood’s part, if true.

Kaz snorted in contempt. “Only as long as I am accompanied by two armed guards. They deigned to allow me to visit you privately.”

“You wrong us, Kaz.”

The man-beast shook his fearsome head. “No, I may wrong you and a few others, but I do not wrong the knighthood.”

Kaz stalked off without another word. Huma watched him leave. The inflammatory words had taken their toll on him. Did the knighthood deserve such scorn? It could not be.

“You have interesting companions.”

Huma turned his attention back to the woman. “What?”

She smiled, and there seemed to be only perfection in that smile. Her lips were full and red, and above them, perfectly positioned, was a pert nose and two almond-shaped eyes. The eyes were like sunlight in color, a direct contrast to her glistening mane. Overall, she did not look quite human, and Huma suspected she drew much of her beauty from elven ancestors.

“Are you quite through?” she asked in apparent amusement.

He realized that he had been staring at her in abject fascination. His face reddened, and Huma began to study the ceiling.

“I apologize. I didn’t mean to annoy you, milady,” he said, reddening more deeply as he stammered slightly.

The smile broadened and became – impossibly – more perfect. “I never said I was annoyed.” She took a moist cloth from a bowl near him and began to mop his head. “I am also no ‘milady.’ Gwyneth will do nicely. It is my name, after all.”

He dared to smile back to her. “My name is Huma.”

She nodded. “Yes, I know. Both the minotaur and knight who brought you in used your name several times. I’d never seen a minotaur before this one.”

“Kaz is a friend.” Huma decided to leave it at that. He lacked the energy to explain further. A thought occurred to him. “You said a knight. Do you know which one?”

“I could not forget.” A shudder ran through Gwyneth. “He was much like a dead man in form and voice. I felt, though, a certain sadness within him.”

Huma had never heard Rennard described quite like that, but he knew that somehow the pale knight had delivered him from the field of death.

“Are you better?”

The pain seemed less now. “Yes. Do I have you to thank for this miracle?”

She blushed. “No, I am only assisting the healers.”

Huma attempted to rise and discovered he was still too weak for such a maneuver. He grimaced in pain. Gwyneth eyed him as one might eye a bad child.

“Do not try that again.”

“I do not think I could. Did not one of the clerics heal me?”

“There are only a very few of them in camp. You will have to accept what little aid they could give you. Even healers have their limits.” Although she still smiled, Gwyneth’s tone indicated that she thought the clerics overtaxed.

“Where are we?”

“In part of the westernmost woods of Solamnia. You were unconscious for a day’s ride. We are about that far from the front.”

“We won?” Huma could not believe that the lines had held.

“No one won. It was the same as always. If not for your group, the ogres might have broken through. Fortunately, they have failed again.” She paused, deep in thought, and then resumed in a new vein. “Enough of this war talk. Do you feel like eating something? You’ve not had food for the last two days.”

Huma agreed readily to some nourishment. He was dismayed, though, when Gwyneth began stirring a chalk-colored paste. She looked up, saw his expression, and smiled pleasantly. The spoon came out of the bowl. Gwyneth leaned down to feed some to Huma. He glared at the substance.

“It is not as bad as it looks, Huma. Taste some.” Feeling like a child, he gingerly opened his mouth. It was true, he discovered; the paste tasted better than he’d imagined. He forced himself to continue eating, more because he did not want to look foolish in her eyes than because of any desire for such food. Huma was quite pleased when the last of the stuff was gone.

Gwyneth also seemed pleased as she put the bowl away. “I’m sorry to leave you, but I do have other tasks. I’ll look in on you from time to time, I promise that.”

He reached out a hand to her. “Thank you again.”

She hesitated, and Huma dropped the hand out of embarrassment. They were saved any further awkwardness by Rennard’s appearance at the tent opening. Gwyneth gathered her things and whisked out of the tent. Huma’s eyes watched her leave, then focused on the knight.

“The minotaur said you were awake and recuperating. I was pleased to hear that.” The flat level of Rennard’s voice made it sound as if he were reading off a supply list, but Huma believed his words. Like Gwyneth, he knew that there was something behind Rennard’s perpetual mask of indifference.

Rennard’s visor was up. Huma had no trouble now staring into the face that so many turned away from. Rennard’s presence here was important. Few other knights cared enough about Huma to visit him.

Rennard kneeled next to him. “Keep your guard up at all times, Huma. It is your one failing.”

“That and being struck on the head.”

The thin lips pursed into a slight smile for only a moment. “Yes. You must put a stop to that as well. It could prove detrimental.”

Had he not know better, Huma would have taken the statement as serious. “What goes on? Gwyneth —?”

“The young woman?”

Huma reddened. “Yes – she said that we were back at a stalemate once more.”

Rennard sighed and reached up to remove his helmet. The act revealed frost-colored hair plastered to his head. Rennard was one of the few knights who chose not to sport the long, thick mustaches but rather to go clean-shaven; he was also one of the few who kept his hair cut short well above his collar. No one questioned these decisions; Rennard was Rennard.

“For the moment, that appears to be where things are. Bennett claims this is a sign that victory is ours. He repeats over and over that the big push by Crynus has crumbled. No one has seen or heard of Crynus since your brief battle with him. Bennett has even gone so far as to praise you in his own fashion.”

“Praise me?”

“I quote: ‘Thanks in part to that one’s astounding luck, the warlord Crynus may be dead or at least incapacitated.’”

Huma turned away. Bennett was right, though. He had been lucky. A true knight would have made better use of the opportunity and assured himself of the warlord’s destruction.

“I know what you’re thinking, Huma. Stop it. You are every part the knight that Bennett and his lapdogs are. More so. You’ve not lost sight of the true world.” Rennard lapsed into an uneasy silence as Huma turned back to him.

“How long before they release me?”

“When you’re ready, no sooner. There’ll be more than enough waiting for you when you’re fit.”

“Lord Oswal – does he have anything to say?” Huma felt a tremor of fear. The elder knight was like the father Huma had never known.

Rennard stood up and replaced the helmet on his head. He nodded. “The High Warrior wishes you the best and speediest of recoveries. He says he still has the utmost faith in your abilities.”

Which was the High Warrior’s way of stating how proud he still was of Huma. It was a rare boost for the young knight’s confidence.

“Rest well, Huma. I will attempt to see you when next I’m free.”

Rennard departed, leaving Huma to his own thoughts. He wondered whether he would ever truly be a knight such as Bennett, Lord Oswal, or Rennard. He thought of the evil warlord Crynus and wondered if that dark figure would bother to seek personal vengeance on an insignificant person such as Huma.

Something padded softly by the tent where Huma lay. Not a horse, more like a hound. A slight stench wafted to his nostrils. He heard something scrape against the wall, as if to test its strength. The light of the gray day allowed Huma only the vaguest glimpse of something.

A cleric of Mishakel entered the tent to check on the conditions of the wounded. The form on the other side of the wall scurried away, nearly silent despite its sudden movements. The odor quickly dissipated.

“Cleric?”

The mere presence of the elderly cleric soothed Huma. The cleric was short and slightly rounded. There could have been no more than two dozen hairs on his entire head.

“I am Broderin. May I be of assistance to you?”

Huma thought carefully before speaking. “Are – are there any wolves near the camp? Wolves or large dogs?”

Broderin stiffened as if he expected some great beast to come lunging through the tent flaps. Then he regained his composure. “Wolves? Dogs? There may be a few of the latter, but not anywhere near here. As for wolves …” The cleric chuckled nervously. “A wolf among the ranks of Paladine’s knights? I think not. There are no wolves save those on the other side of the field, my son. Regrettably, most of them are of the intelligent kind. Why do you ask?”

“I thought I saw one.”

This sent the old man into another fit of anxiety. Though this voice was more or less steady, his eyes darted hither and yon, as if seeing wolves everywhere. “You must be mistaken, my son, or perhaps you are suffering delusions due to your wounds. Yes, that must be it.”

“Are you positive?” It had seemed very real.

“I will have someone take a look around. Perhaps a stray hound escaped from somewhere. It is always possible.” The cleric turned to one of the other wounded, indicating that the conversation was at an end as far as he was concerned. Huma watched him momentarily and then closed his eyes.

His sleep was, thankfully, restful and uninterrupted save for one brief dream in which something pale stalked him through an endless forest. The stalker was always just out of sight and just behind him.

As with most dreams and nightmares, he did not remember it upon waking.

Chapter 6

Huma stepped outside the tent to view the camp for the first time. He did not know his exact location, but he could see that command had moved once again, nearer the border, apparently. This close to Ergoth, the land was dotted more regularly with trees – healthy ones. For reasons that could only be guessed at, the ogres had been more careful about avoiding the destruction of the landscape nearer the mountains. It could hardly have been due to the beauty of the land; as far as anyone knew, the ogres were not the most appreciative of races when it came to beauty. In some areas there was actual forest – tall, ageless trees that perhaps remembered quieter times, perhaps had even seen the first elves.

Huma estimated that two to three hundred knights were encamped in the general area. The men stationed here were a mixture, consisting of the personal guard of Lord Oswal, wounded knights in various stages of recovery, a few outriders who were assisting the knighthood with their knowledge of the region, and even a few mages to add to the clerics. The mages and clerics remained as far apart as possible. Mages distrusted most clerics as religious zealots, while the clerics, albeit more tolerant, still did not trust the independent ways of the magic-users, who concentrated more on power than on belief in the gods.

No one really trusted the mages. That was why they were not allowed to carry arms. That left them vulnerable in at least one way.

“How are you feeling today?”

Huma’s face lit up briefly, but he quickly masked it with an expression of brave seriousness. Gwyneth, a bucket in one hand, came over to him. Despite his best attempts, Huma could not help smiling.

“I am sick and tired of that tent and more than happy to see the world, even if it is just the camp.”

She laughed gaily, then suddenly became serious. “Will you be going soon?”

He nodded gravely. Rennard had been to see him several times. Huma knew he was checking up on the young knight for Lord Oswal. If Huma hoped to keep his self-respect before the High Warrior, he would have to assure his readiness as soon as possible.

The wind picked up and blew some of the long, thick locks into Gwyneth’s face. She brushed back the hair and appeared to be about to say something when a familiar, hulking figure came into view, escorted by two Knights of the Sword.

“Huma!”

Kaz came up and attempted to greet his one true human friend with a hug that would have sent Huma back to the tent with three or four broken ribs. Huma succeeded in sidestepping the minotaur and, therefore, ended up with only a bruised shoulder where Kaz slapped him in pleasure. It had been four days since Huma had laid eyes on Kaz. As Lord Oswal’s trust in the minotaur increased, the latter’s counsel was becoming more and more important. The knighthood had been battling the ogres for years but knew very little about them. Kaz, raised under the oppression of his cousins, knew all too well.

“Gwyneth,” Huma said, remembering the woman, but turned toward her too late. She had vanished.

The minotaur was more perceptive than his appearance would indicate. “Have I come at an inopportune time? You have my apologies, if I have intruded.”

Huma waved off the apology. “I should apologize to you. It is good to see you, Kaz.”

“I had no idea that your kind could ask so many questions – and over and over! I have been drained of all knowledge, yet still they press for more.”

“They’re desperate, Kaz. We want to break —” Huma cut off as a tall figure, clad in crimson robes and cowl, made his way past them with no acknowledgment whatsoever. The face was narrow and bony, and the man reminded Huma of a fearsome instructor he had once had during his early days as a squire.

The minotaur’s eyes followed the red-robed figure. “The mages are extremely nervous. I can smell their fear. It sickens me on occasion.”

Huma found he had to favor his left side a little. He was not yet fully recovered. “What frightens them?”

“The unknown. They are quite accustomed to dealing with their black-robed counterparts, but it is rumored that Galan Dracos has unleashed his fellow renegades. You saw part of the magical battle?”

“Who could not? It fairly covered the heavens.”

“There were a dozen powerful mages on our side when we entered. Four of those died, and another may never regain full use of his mind and body. Do you know how many opposed them?”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“Three?” The knight shook his head. “They must have been powerful, but how do the mages know they were not black-robed sorcerers?”

Kaz smile knowingly. “Two were Black Robes, so they say. The survivor, who escaped, was not. His powers were too wild and unpredictable for one brought up under the tutelage of the three orders. A renegade. More than that, they would not say.”

Huma could not help but think of Magius, whose tall body and handsome features would have been more at home in a royal court then in the dank, secluded towers of the spellcasters. Even up to the time of his Test of Sorcery, Huma’s childhood companion had been a maverick. His skills were such that he had long before surpassed his instructors. Magius always had been one to experiment, even when his life was put into danger. But at times, he had talked of abandoning his schooling.

Kaz was summoned once again and, with a groan, he bid his farewell. Huma returned to the tent and slept for the better part of the day. Rennard stopped by to inform Huma that fully recovered or not, the younger knight was to be ready for guard duty within the next day or so. Huma might have complained, but he was more than happy to be given another chance to prove himself.

Gwyneth also stopped by, but the conversation was short and served little purpose. She seemed to want to say something, but whatever it was, was unspoken. He did not see her again during his recovery.

*

On the day that Huma was to receive his first duties since being nearly trampled to death, the camp became a flurry of activity. Columns of knights rode past the command center, a massive tent topped by a banner bearing the kingfisher symbol and guarded continuously by a contingent of Knights of the Rose. Here was where Lord Oswal and his officers planned their strategy. Huma could only guess at the reason for all the movement. Rumors abounded that the mountainous eastern border had fallen to the ogres and that the creatures were making their way toward Vingaard Keep. Another rumor warned that plague had struck one of the towns which the knights had been using as a waystation. Huma took the rumors for what they were – fearful wondering.

When Rennard approached, Huma was assisting the clerics, carrying hot and cold water for them and bringing them food. It was not much, but it helped. It also kept Huma’s mind from straying to more unpleasant matters.

Huma stood erect when the other knight appeared. The act almost drenched Rennard with freshly boiled water as the buckets went swinging to and fro. The blank features twitched, but whatever emotion that indicated was lost on Huma.

“I see that you are more than fit enough to resume your duties as a knight,” Rennard said gravely.

The hard work had made Huma sweat profusely, and moisture had accumulated around his brow. His face was grimy, and his clothing was stained. He did not dare speak, not knowing what he might say, so he merely nodded.

Rennard folded his arms. “You are captain of the guard tonight. Lord Oswal thinks you’re ready for such responsibility.” He looked up and down Huma’s form without a change in expression.

It was already near dark. Huma swallowed. “May I be permitted to clean up and suit myself?”

“By all means. I’ve already assigned the watches. When you’re ready, come see me.” Rennard unfolded his arms and walked off. Salutes had always been unnecessary with him.

Besides, saluting was difficult with a bucket in each hand.

*

Huma had feared that some knights would resist his appointment as captain of the guard. Such was not the case. The guard consisted of knights who either were unfamiliar with their captain or were too new to have been influenced by Bennett and his associates. This was not to say they were green, untried knights; no squire who passed into the ranks of knighthood was untried.

A few veterans were mixed in for safety’s sake, but these men were loyal to Lord Oswal and would judge men on merit, not on birth.

One such veteran snapped to attention as Huma passed. Huma felt uncomfortable at commanding men twice his age and ten times his experience, but he knew that every knight, save the commanding officers, was required to stand guard duty now and then. Nevertheless, Huma felt a tremor of nervousness as he took the report from the older sentry and breathed easily only when he was on his way to the next. It did not matter whether that man would be less experienced than the first; commanding was what frightened Huma. If something should go wrong, he would be to blame.

The perimeter of the camp took him to the edge of the forest region, and Huma eyed this area with some trepidation. Anything could be hiding out there, and it was not hard to imagine eyes and flitting, shadowy figures everywhere he looked.

It was not until after midnight that he came across the vacant position.

The slope of the land kept the position from view until he was almost on top of it. Huma stood there a moment, transfixed by the realization. He could have assigned someone else the task of checking on the sentries, but as his first command, he had wanted to do it himself. He should call out for assistance or run back to warn Lord Oswal and the others, but he knew that either option would take too much time and would alert whoever – or whatever – was out there.

Sword drawn, Huma stepped into the dark woods. By rights, he knew he might be bringing trouble down upon himself, but some mesmerizing presence within the forest seemed to draw him in. He could not see it, but he felt its power. Helpless, he plunged deeper into the woods, the urge a part of him now. He had forgotten his real reasons for daring to enter, save that someone or something that he was determined to locate lurked within.

A shadow padded alongside Huma, red but sightless eyes locked on his presence. Another shadow stalked the knight from his other side. Huma saw neither, heard neither – and would not have, even if all his faculties had been intact. It took great willpower to see the night beasts when they stalked the forests.

A flickering pattern of glittering lights danced before the entranced knight. Most of the gleams fluttered away at his approach, but two remained fixed, staring at him. Huma stumbled toward them, mindless of the still, armored form he had nearly tripped over. The gleaming orbs beckoned, and a dark shade seemed to materialize about them.

For the first time, a voice broke the silence. It was little more than a hiss, but it demanded all of Huma’s attention.

“Brave knight. So secure with your little toys.”

The form shifted to the side a little. Huma’s eyes followed obediently. The shadowy figure seemed to examine its catch. “Could you be the one, I wonder?”

A leathery hand reached up to take hold of Huma’s chin. His head was turned left and right, although the knight’s eyes never left those of his captor. “Yessss. Dracos will be pleased – even the warlord will be pleased. It cannot be coincidence. He has had his hand in this to save his own neck.” The eyes and hand traced a downward path to Huma’s sword. “There will be no need of this anymore.”

A gleam far behind the shadowy figure suddenly pulled Huma’s gaze away. His captor, caught up in the capture, failed to notice the odd light. Others, though, marked the action. There were gutteral growls, and the stench of death became strong.

The gaze of the creature returned quickly to the face of its captive.

Two pairs of eyes met. Huma’s were no longer entranced.

The knight reacted instinctively. The sword was driven with a strength born of shock and fear. The physical form of the dark figure proved to give little resistance. Claws scratched wildly at Huma’s face, but he ignored them, attempting to thrust his weapon as far as it would go. Suddenly, he met resistance, although the shadowy foe did not fall. The clawing finally stopped, however. The figure shuddered twice and was still.

Huma slumped to his knees, exhausted by the effort.

Things of the dark padded toward him for a moment, then hesitated, as if sensing something unexpected. Huma raised his head and caught a glimpse of something pale and vaguely wolflike in form. Then it was gone.

How long Huma stayed there, he did not know. Gradually, he came to notice the soft footfalls of someone walking in his direction. They were coming from the wrong direction – from deeper within the forest. Huma rose, albeit a little unsteadily. He had not recovered completely, he realized.

“Here, let me help you.” The voice was strong, and the hands that held Huma were powerful. While the knight took a deep breath, the newcomer looked over the remains of the attacker, chuckled, and said, “Well done. You’ve pinned him to the tree trunk. An impressive display of strength and quite deserving where that one was concerned.”

“Who —?”

“Save your breath for walking. You’ve gone deeper into the forest than you think.”

As they walked, Huma dared to cast a wary eye toward the newcomer. He was tall, this stranger, and clad in extravagant, well-made clothing. Elegant gold locks of hair gave him the look of a regal lion. The stranger’s countenance was less visible, but Huma received the impression of a handsome, almost pretty face, one well at home in the royal courts, perhaps flirting with young, well-to-do maidens. There was a familiarity to it, too. Someone he had not seen in years. …

“Magius!” Huma blurted out the name in shock.

They stopped. The newcomer released him. They stared at one another, and the knight noticed that the other seemed to glow from within.

“Huma. It’s good to see you, even under the circumstances. I wondered how long I might – if you’ll pardon the expression – keep you in the dark.”

“You’re alive!” Huma had never been sure what happened after that test in the tower. “You’re alive!” he repeated in wonder.

The face of Magius was visible, even in the dark. His mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “Yes. I apologize.”

The smile on Huma’s face crumbled, and he asked, “Apologize? Why should you apologize?”

“Do you think I was out here by pure coincidence, Huma? I hope not. It was because of me that your life was placed in jeopardy.”

“I don’t understand.” The thought of danger made Huma reach for his sword. As his hand touched empty air, he remembered what had become of his weapon. He turned. “My sword! I have to go —”

“No!” The mage’s voice was loud and commanding. “We should not stay out here alone any longer than we need to. Go back when you have men at your back. The dreadwolves may have fled, but I could be wrong. It would not be the first time. The gods know, it would not be the first time.”

Magius urged him back toward the camp, and Huma saw the wisdom. He would, however, get some answers.

“What was that back there? What did you mean earlier?”

Some of the magnificence of his old friend seemed to evaporate. Magius was suddenly an older man than Huma, although both were the same age. The mage did not look directly at the knight. “I think you had better ask one of the Red Robes back at camp. He should be able to give you the official version.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“Trouble of the sort which I will be sure to lead away from you now. I was a fool to even think of coming to you.”

The glow of dim fires was the first evidence that the camp was near. Huma heard the sounds of men in action. Someone had noticed the absence of the two knights – one the captain of the guard, no less.

Magius also heard the activity. He stopped abruptly. “Whatever you hear, I have not changed, Huma.” The mage grabbed his dearest friend by the shoulders. “Believe me! If the test did anything, it proved that!”

The glow that had surrounded the magic-user so pompously suddenly vanished, but not before Huma caught sight of the fear in his friend’s face. Not just fear for himself, but fear for Huma as well.

“Listen.” The shadows covered the mage’s face now, giving him an unearthly aspect. “The creatures won’t bother you any longer. It’s me their masters are after. They sent them after me once they learned I was gone.”

With a chill, Huma said, “You’re running from the Dragonqueen’s creatures.”

Something snapped a dried branch. Both men froze. Huma studied what he could of the forest but saw nothing. Magius leaned close and whispered. “I must leave. You know me, Huma. You know what I am capable of. Believe in that. If things take a turn, either good or bad, I will contact you.”

Tall, dark shapes became visible between the trees. Magius glared at them and whirled away. Huma opened his mouth to speak but realized that would be dangerous folly. He prayed Magius had been right in leaving Huma’s sword at the tree, pinning the abomination to the trunk.

Summoning up his courage, Huma resumed the trek back to camp, praying as he walked that the first thing he met would be a fellow knight and not something out of a mage’s nightmare.

*

As it happened, he met the searchers only minutes from the site where the sentry had disappeared. Huma felt guilty about forgetting the hapless sentry, one who had been even less experienced than he. There was nothing Huma could do for the man, though, and he knew he should be more concerned with what might very well still be lurking outside the camp, and what that might mean. If the enemy had infiltrated this far past the line …

Rennard took his report, none too surprised, it seemed, that it was Huma who had stumbled upon trouble. News of the attacker, who could have been only a mage, did trouble him, although no emotions were evident in his mien. A party that included Huma and Rennard returned to the spot where Huma had been led. The lifeless form of the sentry showed no marks, as if the unfortunate man had merely fallen to the ground, dead. Rennard spat, and in an unprecedented display of emotion, cursed all mages in general. Huma cringed. He had left out all mention of Magius, though it went against the Measure and the Oath. How honorable was a knight who lied?

Magius, though, was his friend.

Seen with clear eyes, the shadowy attacker proved to be all too solid. Rennard removed the sword from the tree and let the mage’s body fall. Much to his own surprise, Huma reached down and pushed the cowl back from the face. Even in the dark, the face repelled. Only Rennard seemed untouched by the evil stamped on it.

Human the mage might have been, but he looked more like a reptile. His skin was dark and scaly, and it glittered in the light of the torches. The eyes were narrow slits, and the nose was nearly nonexistent. Huma noted teeth that would have put the minotaur’s to shame. More than one knight called on Paladine.

The corpse was muffled within a thick, coarse robe of brown cloth. Rennard fingered it, then released it as he would a viper. “He does not wear the black of the Dragonqueen.” He pointed to a pair of knights. “Take this thing back to the camp. I want to see what the spellcasters have to say. The rest of you, fan out. Make sure he left no surprises behind. Huma, you stay with me.”

They watched the others depart, and then Rennard swung around and glared at Huma with such anger that its very appearance on the otherwise bland face made the younger knight step back.

“Who was the other?”

“There was no one.”

“There was another.” A chill followed his words. “I know. I see no reason why you would seek to hide the presence of a mage, unless …” He stared intently into Huma’s eyes. Huma met the gaze and battled with it. Surprisingly, it was Rennard who was forced to turn away.

It was a hollow triumph. “Obvious. For such effort, I can think of only one you would protect – but why would Magius be out here?”

“I didn’t —” Huma could think of nothing to say. How did Rennard even know about his childhood friend?

“You are a fool, Huma. A brave, competent knight, but you have too much humanity in you, too much trust in others. A mage, especially. You cannot trust mages. They will always turn on you. They are treacherous.”

Despite his respect for Rennard, Huma stiffened at this insult. “Magius is none of those things. We grew up together. He would not betray what he believed in.”

Rennard shook his head sadly. “You will not understand until it is too late.” Then, as if all had been said that could be said, Rennard dropped the subject. “Come. We’d best return to camp. I think this is something Lord Oswal should hear about.”

The pale warrior returned the sword to Huma. Without waiting to see if Huma followed, Rennard began walking. Huma hurried after him, wondering what the other knight would report and what Huma himself would say, knowing all too well that one of those who listened would already know he had lied.

What would the Oath and Measure demand?

Chapter 7

Once there had been an instructor, Garig, who was determined that the young squire Huma would fail the preparations for knighthood. Garig was a beast of a man who more resembled a bear in face and form. Some wondered that he was a knight at all, brutal as he could be. As a matter of fact, Garig intended to wear Huma down inside of a month.

Huma had stayed, though. Stayed, learned, and excelled, though Garig frightened him immensely. Lord Oswal, the High Warrior, had encouraged him. Like Rennard, Lord Oswal had seen something in Huma that he was determined to cultivate, despite the boy’s dubious bloodline. At last, the squire stood up to the overwhelming instructor and defeated him soundly in what could only loosely be called a mock combat. That was a victory as much over fear as over Garig.

Now, Huma was afraid again as he stepped into the presence of the man who had helped him overcome that earlier hurdle.

The High Warrior was dressed and fully awake. Huma marveled – as did many others – that the elder knight never seemed to rest. The commander of the military expedition sat on a plain wooden stool that contrasted sharply with his elaborate uniform. His helmet lay on the table beside him, and more than a dozen charts lay scattered on the same table. Huma felt as if the helmet, too, were inspecting him, somehow.

Only two other knights were in the room. One was a shorter, round man whose very appearance belied the strength and intelligence within. Very little hair graced his head, save for a small goatee and a few wisps in the back. Arak Hawkeye was not a man of much humor. His latter name had come from his precision as a bowman. Even the nomadic tribes of the southern regions knew of Hawkeye. He could outride and outshoot any of them. It was his personal goal to teach a band of knights to ride and shoot much in the manner of the plainsmen. He wore crests representing the Order of the Crown, of which he was ranking commander for this campaign.

Between them, and only barely noticing the young knight, stood Bennett, son of the Grand Master, nephew of the High Warrior, and the representative of the Order of the Sword. Bennett’s presence here unnerved Huma the most. The personification of knighthood, Bennett could recite every line of every volume of the bylaws put down by Vinas Solamnus so long ago. He lived by them, which was why Huma had been able to remain in the order so far. Despite his influence, Bennett would do nothing that went strictly against the Oath or the Measure. When charges concerning Huma’s parentage had failed to oust the new knight, Bennett did not turn to more unsavory methods, as some, even in the knighthood, would have done. Instead, the Grand Master’s son treated him as a necessary evil, to be ignored whenever possible. Influential as Bennett was, Huma found it difficult to make any friends as time went on.

Bennett was much like his father and his uncle in appearance, though he was definitely more like the former. Those who had known Lord Trake in his younger days swore that there was no difference between sire and offspring. Both had the same hawkish features, the look of a bird of prey. The House of Baxtrey was of the oldest royal blood. The same features could be found on many of the nobles of the Empire of Ergoth. As Bennett turned away, his mind supposedly on the business at hand, Huma’s eyes briefly met his. The glance was cold.

“You may leave or stay as is your desire, Rennard.”

Rennard stiffened. “I will stay, if it pleases the High Warrior.”

It did not please Bennett, that was obvious. Trake’s son hated Rennard almost as much as he hated Huma, but for different reasons. Only one person other than Lord Oswal could defeat the Grand Master’s offspring in mock combat. Soundly, too. For someone like Bennett, who prided himself on perfection, it was almost intolerable. These two rivals stared openly at one another now, Rennard with as much regard as he would give a blade of grass.

Lord Oswal turned to Huma. “Normally, Lord Arak would take your report, but seeing as we are dealing with situations that change from one minute to the next, I would like us all to hear it immediately. Both Arak and Bennett have agreed to this.” Bennett glanced at his uncle and then away again. “If you would begin, then?”

“Milord.” Huma cleared the lump from his throat. After the first few words, his uneasiness fell away and he poured out the details of the attack in crisp, precise sentences. The three commanders listened carefully. Huma did not omit the presence of Magius, though he did leave out most of their conversation.

When he was done, he stood there silently, his eyes staring straight ahead at nothing, his body at full attention. The Lord Knights turned to one another and discussed some of the points. They whispered, preventing Huma from knowing what had caught their attention.

Lord Hawkeye stepped away from the other two and turned to Rennard. “Knight Rennard, have you anything to add?”

“Only that I have men searching the woods for any sign of infestation and that I appointed a new captain of the guard in Huma’s absence.”

The urge to react was nearly overwhelming, but Huma’s training enabled him to resist. Rennard had stood by him.

“I see,” said Lord Oswal. “That will be all, then. Knight Huma, it is my recommendation to Lord Arak Hawkeye that you be allowed a second chance. It is obvious that you were pitted against magic of exceptional magnitude and that your leaving the camp without giving warning was due to this.”

Bennett’s stare was deathly, but Huma was too relieved to care.

“Thank you, milord – milords.”

The High Warrior waved a hand. “You two are dismissed.”

Lord Hawkeye added, “Knights Huma and Rennard, you are both relieved from duty for the night. Get some rest.”

Rennard merely nodded as if he had known all along how the meeting would turn out. They left as the three commanders turned to one another. Bennett’s voice was rising in anger. He apparently felt that the Measure demanded far greater punishment for what was to him an obvious act of deadly thoughtlessness. Both Huma and Rennard, however, were out of hearing range before any reply was made.

“That went well,” Rennard added casually.

Huma could not look at him. “Thank you, Rennard.”

“For what? That? Someone must save you from yourself. Besides, I would not give Bennett the satisfaction. Not even for the Oath. Or the Measure.”

His words left Huma hanging. Rennard lived by a code of his own, it seemed.

They walked in silence the rest of the way.

A great bronze tower loomed before Huma. It hung on the edge of nothingness, and that nothingness was known as the Abyss. The tower, though metal, was crumbling from great age.

Huma felt himself drawn unwillingly toward the single gate of that tower. Things that should have been dead offered to lead the way. Lepers gave lipless smiles. A plague victim, once a woman, reached out to take his hand. With a convulsion of horror, he saw that it was his mother. Huma cringed, and she vanished.

The mold-enshrouded gate descended for him. From within, a hand beckoned him forward. A tall figure awaited, dressed in tattered clothes with a rusting crown upon – its head? There was no face beneath that crown, only two red orbs in a sea of infinity.

Behind him, the gate closed silently.

Huma awoke sweating. The camp had not risen yet, although the knights would be stirring soon. Huma was thankful for that. After the dream, he had no great desire to return to his slumbers.

Such vivid dreams had never plagued him before. There were those who said such dreams held significance, although what this one meant was beyond Huma. Not that he did not recognize the bronze tower and the evil that dwelled within it. It was a vivid page from his education, when a cleric of Paladine had introduced him to the gods who would throw down light. The name by which this particular evil went was Morgion, and he thrived on decay of the world.

If ever a god had profited by this endless war, it was Morgion. Decay was everywhere, even in those cities untouched by the war itself – and if not physical decay, moral decay, as in the jaded city of the Ergothian emperor himself, a man who, it was rumored, was so pampered he did not even know there was a war on.

If decay was rampant, disease had become a natural way of life. Huma hugged himself at the memory of his mother. Her death by plague had changed everything. Alone, he heard the calling of his father, the man he had never known but who controlled his very existence. The price, though …

Shaking off the dream, he rose and readied himself for the day ahead. Rennard had promised to speak with Lord Hawkeye about increased command for Huma. The incident concerning Magius was forgotten as far as the gaunt knight was concerned. There were more important things to attend to.

A muffled groan made him look down. Kaz, waking from the noise, blinked and revealed two blurry eyes. The expression was so much like that of a farm animal awakening that Huma could not suppress a brief smile.

The minotaur settled back down to sleep. As of yet, Kaz knew nothing of the night’s events. Satisfied that they had finally drained him of all information possible, the commanding knights had finally allowed the minotaur a decent night’s sleep.

Yawning, Huma gazed out beyond the fringe of the camp to where the first glint of dawn was revealing itself between the trees.

His eyes locked in gaze with the sightless orbs of what could only be the creature Magius had called a dreadwolf.

In some past time, it might have been a true wolf. The general body structure conformed, but it was as if some perverse necromancer had raised it from the dead and only partially succeeded. Not one hair graced its bone-white body. There did not even seem to be skin. It was like the ghost of some animal killed and skinned by a hunter. Although it was a good twenty feet away, Huma could smell the odor of the night before. The stench of decay. Of death.

It knew he was there. Despite the obvious sightlessness of its eyes, it sensed him, knew him. Behind the dead eyes was a cold, evil intelligence that seemed to mock the knight.

Without taking his eyes from it, Huma leaned toward the minotaur. “Kaz.”

He felt Kaz stiffen. A husky whisper came back to him. “Huma?”

“Roll over. Look beyond me.”

The minotaur did so. The eyes opened – barely – and at first Kaz did not see it, as blurry-eyed with sleep as he was. Only when he dared to open them farther did Kaz notice the horrid creature. The stench filled the minotaur’s nose.

“By my ancestors,” Kaz hissed. “A dreadwolf, Huma!”

“I know.” The minotaur knew of them, then. What was the wolf creature doing here? the knight wondered. Magius had said they would leave when they discovered him gone. Why was the foul creature still here, and daring the dawn as well? How had it made its way past the sentries?

The dreadwolf continued to stare at Huma with its dead eyes. It was here for him, there was no doubt about it. It was, he realized, a messenger of some sort.

“I must go closer.”

Kaz rose quickly, ax in hand. The creature, though, scarcely glanced at Huma’s unusual companion. It seemed to grow more eager as Huma took a couple of tentative steps toward it.

“Huma, no!” Kaz was speaking loudly now. That no sentry came running disturbed Huma. Was the beast’s master so powerful that he could lock an entire camp into slumber?

Huma shrugged off the minotaur’s hand and moved even closer to the dreadwolf. The tail of the abomination wagged back and forth in a lazy motion. It opened its jaws and Huma now could make out the rotting, yellow teeth still sharp enough to tear the flesh from his arm. The dreadwolf licked its jaws, and the mouth settled into what Huma feared was a knowing grin.

When the knight had dared to step within ten feet of it, the creature opened its maw again. What came out startled Huma so much, he was almost ready to turn and run.

“Huuuuumaaaaa …”

Behind him, Kaz swore an oath. Huma steadied himself. His sword was out, but he did not know how much good it would do against an unliving thing like this.

“Huma.” His name came more clearly now, and it was followed by dark laughter.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

The dreadwolf seemed to contemplate him before it spoke again. When it did, the amusement was more than obvious. “You gave us a merry chase, Knight of Solamnia. Cost us a valuable servant, too. We think you be as great a danger as your treacherous friend, Magius.”

“Magius.” Huma showed no reaction to the foul creature. Did they have Magius?

“We know where he is now. He will learn what it is to betray Galan Dracos.”

Galan Dracos. Leader of the renegades, Servant of the Dark Queen. Huma knew the name and knew the evil behind it.

As if in contempt, the dreadwolf sat on its haunches. Huma wondered briefly whether it had any reasoning of its own or whether it was merely a puppet of a controlling force.

“Crynus was very taken with you after that brief clash. He was very near to capturing your friend when you happened along. No surprise when we realized who you were. Your good friend Magius used you as a decoy, young knight. Did you realize that?”

Heavy footsteps beside Huma told him that Kaz had moved closer. The dreadwolf turned its sightless eyes toward the minotaur briefly and then ignored him, resuming its speech.

“It was the desire of Crynus to pluck you from the camp personally and remove you to his citadel, there to battle with you at his leisure.”

Huma’s throat felt dry. “I was lucky.”

“Luck is a skill. Were you to live much longer, you might learn that.”

Both knight and minotaur tensed. Each expected the forest to overflow suddenly with the ghoulish forms of countless dreadwolves. Nothing materialized, and the single creature mocked them again with its nearly human smile.

“You have nothing to fear from me. No, if anything, you should fear yourself, Knight of the Crown. At the moment, you are your own worst enemy.”

With another laugh, the dreadwolf sprang to its feet. Kaz swung at it, but the creature merely spun around and sprinted off into the woods. Both knew there was no following.

“What was that all about?” the minotaur wondered.

“He came to mock me, it seems.” Huma sheathed his sword. “But why would Crynus even bother with someone like me?”

“Perhaps he is more interested in this friend of yours. Perhaps this friend is not so close to capture, and this is merely some ploy. Who is this Magius?”

Huma briefly related the details of the night’s incident. The minotaur’s face darkened as he realized all this had happened while he slept. As Huma finished, some of the other knights began to stir.

“What should I do?”

Kaz shook his head. “I know what I might do, but your ways are not mine, Knight of Solamnia. I suggest you try the walking corpse. He seems to be your ally.”

Kaz was right, Huma decided. Maybe Rennard could explain the words of Galan Dracos.

Suddenly a great wind picked up and several huge shapes seemed to materialize out of the sky itself. All around the camp, knights were looking up into the sky at a sight that could only inspire them. Majestic, winged creatures circled the camp several times; gold, silver, bronze, copper, the dragons were magnificent in their glory. A few brass dragons flew alongside, but only a few. They much preferred the heat of the deserts.

Huma estimated some thirty to forty of the creatures, quite a massive force, especially if organized. That was the one advantage they had over their dark cousins; the dragons of Takhisis were apt to fight among themselves, sometimes even in battle. The dragons of light were always quick to take advantage of such incidents.

With the coming of the dragons, Huma momentarily forgot his fears. The presence of dragons always filled him with an almost childlike delight. He began to hurry to where they were landing, ignoring the shouts of Kaz, who had no desire to confront dragons so soon again.

Huma was not the only one running. Even the veterans came rushing, for a visit by the dragons often meant news of great importance.

When Huma arrived at the place of landing, he saw that the three commanders of the army were already engaged in conversation with an immense dragon of gold. Despite its massiveness, the dragon spoke in quiet, almost scholarly tones. The creature’s news must have proved troubling, though, for Huma noted the dark look on Lord Oswal’s face.

Huma spotted Rennard. The knight seemed even more pale than usual and looked surprised when Huma called to him.

“What news, Rennard?”

“The eastern forces are in retreat.”

The tonelessness of Rennard’s voice caused Huma to miss the magnitude of the gaunt knight’s statement. When realization did hit, Huma could only stand and gape before finally drawing enough breath to spit out the same words he had just heard. He repeated them once more, then shook his head.

“It’s not possible! The knighthood has never suffered such a defeat!”

“It has now.”

They were forced to wait while the commanders and the gold dragon continued their discussion. Kaz stepped up next to Huma, the look on the minotaur’s face indicating that he had heard the news. The young knight wondered how the mammoth easterner felt. Still, the minotaur could not return to the enemy after killing one of his commanders.

As if reading his thoughts, Kaz looked down. “I have not regretted my act, Huma. I chose to strike down the ogre, and I would do so again. Besides, there is no true home for me among my people now. To them, I would be a coward and a weakling for showing pity to the helpless.”

Most of the other dragons had landed by this time. Huma noticed one silver dragon that, if possible, seemed familiar. He was about to discard that as a ridiculous notion when the dragon turned in his direction and nodded. It was the same creature that had carried them to safety, the same dragon that had confronted the deadly black beast upon which had sat the warlord, Crynus, himself.

A horn sounded from the direction of the front, a single mournful wail that died a slow death, as if he who blew the horn had lost all hope. As well he might have.

The blackness once more was spreading across the heavens. Within minutes, it would overwhelm the first lines of the knights. Only the gods knew what would happen within its range.

Bennett and Arak Hawkeye cursed loudly, while Lord Oswal now truly looked like an old man. His shoulders sagged, and he was forced to turn away from the dragon. The leviathan said nothing, but sympathy was evident.

“Milord!” Bennett was now shouting. A wind was picking up rather quickly. Some of the dragons beat their wings nervously, sensing, perhaps, the sinister powers summoned to conjure this new threat.

Lord Oswal seemed to recover at the sound of his nephew’s voice. Wasting no more time, he ordered the men to prepare for battle and lie in the nearest hollow. The camp would be left at the mercies of the wind. Now was not a time for tidiness. Now was life or death.

Lowering his visor, Rennard shouted, “It was a ploy, our defeat of that other darkness. I’ll wager that the mages will find themselves up against even greater odds when they attempt to push it back, and I’ll wager they lose.”

The wind forcing his breath back into his lungs, Huma followed the other knight’s example and lowered his visor. He gasped for air. Kaz, beside him, was forced to tolerate everything. Huma knew that the minotaurs sailed the roughest seas with relative ease, but still, Kaz had his hands over his face and he had fallen to one knee.

Even so, the wind continued to grow.

Loose equipment was beginning to blow away. The horses snorted wildly as a tent was torn from its stakes and tossed among them. Huma rushed over and pulled it free of the beasts. Unable to maintain his hold on the tent, Huma watched it go whirling away into the woods.

The entire area became a deathtrap of a hundred assorted forms. The campfires were blown high and wild by the wind, and some tents burst into flames.

Kaz was forced to cover his eyes lest he be blinded by the dust rising from the earth. “Sargas forgive me! It’s the king of all hurricanes, but on land!”

Indeed, the minotaur’s words seemed to ring true. No tornado or storm that Huma had ever witnessed contained the power to cause such destruction. Trees were bending perilously close to the ground. A little more pressure and they would be torn from the earth and flung skyward, and there appeared to be no letup in the raging darkness. It was only a matter of time.

Huma battled to maintain some sort of balance. How much more terrible was it out there at the front? Only the single horn blast had given them any warning. Crynus had planned well. Galan Dracos had planned well.

Suddenly, calm reigned. The wind died to near-nothing and refuse rained upon the ground. Kaz stood, and Huma opened his visor to get a better view.

“The spellcasters! They’ve done it.” They were there, far to his left.

There were twelve in all, six of the Red Robes, six of the White. Even from his position, Huma could see the strain they were under. This was not the storm of the other day. That had been only a pale illusion, perhaps a test, or even a trick. Whatever the case, these mages were now dealing with a power far, far stronger than they had anticipated.

One of the Red Robes fell, exhausted.

A breeze developed.

A horseman cut off Huma’s view. Huma looked up to see Bennett, fully in charge of himself and the situation, despite all the confusion. At the moment, with his hawkish, regal face and his intricately decorated armor, he might have been one of those who had ridden with Vinas Solamnus.

Bennett scanned the area, then turned his gaze to the younger knight. “Get the horses. If we don’t release them, they’ll be killed when the magic-users fall.”

As he spoke, another Red Robe wavered and then stumbled. The breeze increased to a squall.

“We’re pulling back!” The wind forced Bennett to yell. We must not rout, though! If we do, nothing stands between the Queen’s jackals and Vingaard Keep! Nothing!”

The ten remaining mages could no longer keep a unified effort. Several collapsed, and the few left standing were insufficient for the task. What kind of power were they up against?

The sudden earth-shaking gale nearly threw Huma and Kaz to the ground. Bennett was only barely able to keep his horse under control. The warhorse was used to blood and steel, not wind so strong that it nearly swept the rider from the animal’s back. The steed’s natural instincts were to run for cover.

Bennett shouted something unintelligible and then raced off. Huma, remembering his earlier instructions, half-crawled toward where the horses screamed their protests. Kaz followed. His balance restored, he now moved more easily than the knight, thanks to his bulk.

Releasing the warhorses proved to be difficult. They had been worked up to a frenzy and regarded any moving object as a threat. The nearest kicked at Huma, and others snapped at his arm. Despite the danger, Huma had to get closer if he was to release them.

As he drew near, iron-shod hooves came down on him, and only because a heavy form bowled him over did he escape crippling punishment. One hoof struck his right arm, a glancing blow but still sufficient to numb it.

Huma struggled up and undid the reins. He had hoped to calm a few of the animals and possibly ride one to safety, but they were too far gone. He was half-dragged for a couple of yards before common sense got the better of him and he released his grip.

“Kaz!” Huma did not see the minotaur and then suddenly remembered how the latter had blocked the attack by the maddened warhorse. Huma turned and saw the motionless form. Kaz had deflected the blows with his own body. The knight remembered the minotaur’s oath and let out an uncharacteristic curse. He would not have the minotaur’s death on his hands.

“Kaz!” He kneeled next to his savior and turned him over. To his relief, the minotaur opened his eyes.

“You are uninjured?” the bull-headed creature asked.

“I should ask you that!” Huma almost laughed. If Kaz had the strength to be concerned about him, then the minotaur had the strength to live. He helped the huge creature to his feet.

“Can you run?”

The minotaur leaned forward. “Give me a moment. I fear the horse has pushed all the air from my lungs.”

While Kaz recovered, Huma looked around. The camp was nearly deserted. A few knights struggled with equipment off to the south, and Huma thought he saw riders to the east. The tent where the clerics of Mishakal had treated the wounded was no longer there. There were no bodies that Huma could see; the mages had bought them enough time to escape, at least. He could only hope that Gwyneth had escaped safely, as well.

Meanwhile, where were the dragons?

Huma had not seen them since the eruption of the storm. The vast wall of chilling darkness was nearly upon the camp now, bringing along the visibility of a moonless night. Huma did not want to know what lurked within that darkness, but he forced himself to look up at it. When he did, he finally noticed the dragons of light.

They were organized into what Huma recognized as one of their fighting formations, a sort of double “V.”

Against the coming fury, they looked pitifully tiny.

The wind was now joined by pouring rain. Kaz snorted angrily and commented on the smell of wet humans. He was now well enough to move, slowly but steadily. The torrent made movement tricky. Better slow and steady than risk having one or both of them lose their balance.

It might as well have been night. No trace of sunlight remained. Ahead of him, Huma could make out dim shapes. At their present rate, even those would disappear as the power of the Dragonqueen overwhelmed the light.

Overwhelmed the light …

Had the knights lost at last? Huma shuddered at the thought of a world with only darkness. A world that the Queen ruled.

Now, the only light was the bolts of fire that burst through the skies. They did not seem part of the storm and Huma glanced upward, wondering perhaps if it was the work of the dragons. Had they met the enemy at last? He wished – a mad wish, an afterthought – that he could help them in some way.

“Huma!” The hiss startled him until he realized it was Kaz. The minotaur’s voice was hoarse. He was weaker with injury than he had led the knight to believe. “Huma! A light ahead!”

It was true. Only a dim glow, like one of the insects of night, but a glow nonetheless. They had already started toward it when Huma recalled the dark sorcerer who had sought to ensnare him. Still, this light did not demand his obedience as that one had. Rather, it seemed to offer badly needed help. To be on the safe side, Huma drew his sword.

They stumbled through mud, nearly falling once. Slipping and sliding, they continued toward the light.

For a time, the glow seemed no closer than before. The distance gradually lessened, though, and Huma soon realized that the light was also coming toward them. He tightened his grip on the sword. At his side, Kaz was tensed.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

Before them, seeming to glow himself and quite untouched by the torrential winds and rain, stood Magius.

Chapter 8

Magius’s spell of light surrounded them like a tent. Beyond it loomed total darkness. They could hear the raging of the magical storm, although now they could not feel it; the spell that protected Magius protected Huma and Kaz as well. Only their footing was questionable, as the minotaur discovered. Huma helped him to his feet. The bottom half of the man-beast’s body was slick with mud.

Magius smiled amiably at the sight, raising Kaz’s anger. Matters were not helped any by the spellcaster’s commentary on the slow pace of his companions, or the way in which not one speck of mud had dared to mar the magnificence of the mage’s clothing. Another spell, Huma knew, because Kaz had already attempted to kick some of the muck toward the backside of their savior. The mud had halted just inches from the unsuspecting target, seemed to hesitate, and then fallen to earth.

Neither the knight nor the minotaur had any idea where Magius was leading them. They only knew that they were at last safe from the violent sorceries unleashed by the Dragongueen’s magic-users. That such power was at the evil ones’ beck and call had thrown Huma into a deep depression. Now more than ever, all seemed to be lost.

Magius abruptly raised his free hand. The glow from his person dwindled away. Only the light from his simple staff, the light which Huma and Kaz had first noticed, continued to keep them from total darkness.

They could see nothing ahead of them, but they could hear that the storm had ceased. They also could hear something else: the padding of many animal paws and the heavy breathing of large creatures. Huma’s hand whitened from strain as he tightened his grip on his sword. The creatures, night dwellers if they were able to travel with such ease, continued past. When they had been gone for several minutes and nothing followed, Magius lowered his hand.

He turned momentarily back to the others. “Outrunners. Things bred and misbred by Galan Dracos. Small wonder some began to call him the Queen’s mortal consort. His twisted imagination is truly worthy of her.”

Huma wondered who the “some” were whom Magius talked about. He longed to ask many questions about the mage’s last few years. Before going off for the Test, Magius had been a sarcastic, vain trickster who poked fun at his best friend and who constantly ridiculed the knighthood for its closed ways. Only Huma really understood that Magius was terribly insecure – one of the reasons he had sought to learn magic – and that the taunts thrown at Huma served another purpose. The very same knights who despised young Huma were his champions. The honor of the knighthood always came first.

This Magius, while he still had that streak of mischievousness, had gained a serious, brooding side that could overwhelm his personality.

“Huma,” the minotaur whispered. “Where are we going?”

Both of them had assumed that Magius was leading them to wherever the Solamnic forces were regrouping, or rather, where Huma hoped they were reforming. The young knight was becoming more and more certain that they were, in fact, heading in the opposite direction.

“Magius?”

“Hmmm?” The spellcaster did not even turn around.

Hesitantly, Huma asked, “Are we heading back deeper into Solamnia?”

“No.”

“Where are we going?”

Despite his carefree appearance, the magic-user’s voice carried uncertainty, perhaps even some fear. “We are going to my citadel, my domain.”

Huma finally made clear his true concern. “Ergoth?”

“Yes.” Magius continued walking, but the other two came to a halt. Small wonder the storm had abated so soon! They were walking through the enemy lines!

“He has betrayed us!” Kaz reached out with his bare hands. Magius’s neck would be a fragile thing in the grip of the minotaur’s powerful claws.

“No, Kaz!” Huma struggled briefly with the minotaur, but Kaz would not listen. The latter fully expected to be turned over to his less-than-forgiving brethren and executed.

The massive hands formed a circle around the mage’s neck – and could go no further. The same spell that protected Magius from the mud also protected him from personal harm by physical means. The former benefit was, no doubt, just a fortunate side-effect, although with the vanity of Magius, it was difficult to say.

Magius turned around, still in the near-grip of Kaz. Without warning, the minotaur swung one hand at the spellcaster’s head. If he had expected to succeed by sheer force, the minotaur was mistaken. Not only was the mage unmoved, but his attacker’s hand was flung back.

The magic-user was wearing the irritating smile that Huma had watched him cultivate over the years. Suddenly, even in the midst of the overwhelming darkness, it was the past once more.

“I have not betrayed you, either of you. True, we are moving into Ergoth, but much of that land is still essentially untouched by the ogres and their foul mistress. We are, in fact, more likely to be safe here than if we had followed the mad rush by the oh-so-stalwart knighthood.”

Huma grimaced at the description and felt embarrassment, though he knew the knighthood had done all it could. Magius failed to mention that the magic-users had fled, also.

The minotaur refused to be convinced. “By Sargas and my ancestors for twenty generations —”

Magius held the light of the staff in front of Kaz, who backed away for fear a spell was being unleashed. “If anyone draws attention to us, it will be you, minotaur! Call on your dusty kin if you must, but do not call upon that dark god unless you desire his personal attention now!”

Sargas. It was several seconds before Huma identified the name. Sargas – Sargonnas, consort of Takhisis, the Dragonqueen. A power unto himself. The minotaurs worshipped him. A reflex action on the part of Kaz, to be sure, but one that could carry a deadly price at a time when gods and goddesses watched and listened with much interest.

Sargas would not be pleased with a minotaur who had fled to the safety of Paladine’s appointed mortal guardians. Sargas was the god of vengeance and plots of great evil. Kaz had no choice but to be calm himself and to bow to the human’s common sense – at least, in this respect.

“Now,” Magius said, straightening his cloak, “may we continue? I will tire eventually, and I have no desire to be within the range of the Queen’s sentinels.”

For what seemed like days, they followed the mage through the darkness. Huma began to wonder if all of Ergoth lay under shadow and whether that shadow was now extending over Solamnia as well. He felt a twinge of guilt that he was not assisting in the regrouping of the forces, but he consoled himself with the fact that he might do some good here, where the warlord would least suspect his presence.

At last, the trio began to notice a failing in the darkness, as if it were either weakening or they had at last reached its boundaries.

“The power level used to create and maintain this monstrosity must be monumental,” said Magius. “The renegades of Galan Dracos are talented, but even they have their limits. Yet it appears to have served its purpose. The stalemate is broken.” Magius did not seem visibly concerned.

Dark, spectral shapes formed, reaching for them. The demonic shapes coalesced into towering trees and thick bushes.

“Magius, what happened in the east?”

The spellcaster slowed, though his eyes were still on the path ahead. “Something happened in the east?”

“The dragons came.” What, Huma wondered, had become of them? Had they all perished, including the silver one to whom Huma had become so strangely attached? “They said that the east had collapsed.”

Magius stopped, turned, and studied his friend’s face. “Indeed?” The mage wore a thoughtful expression.

Kaz crossed his massive arms. “You know a lot, magic-user. Much more than you are telling us.”

The cynical smile returned. “I will do my best to enlighten you when we have reached our destination.”

“And how long will that be? I could swear we have been walking for days.”

The resplendent figure shook his golden hair. “Patience! This may be the most dangerous part of the journey.”

As Magius turned forward, Kaz muttered, “More damned riddles!”

The dim forest soon lightened into near-dawn and then, quite suddenly, it was day. Overcast, as seemed perpetual on Ansalon with the Queen’s coming, but day, at least. The trio paused to drink it in. Even Magius seemed pleased.

“We should be fairly safe now. I chose the shortest, safest route possible under the circumstances, but we still have a day’s journey ahead of us. I will not have Dracos or even the Black Robes know the whereabouts of my grove.”

Kaz merely shook his head and looked at Huma, who could only shake his head in return. He, too, was unfamiliar with the grove Magius was speaking of.

An unexpected inconvenience popped up.

“I am starved,” said the minotaur.

No sooner had he spoken than Huma felt the ache in his stomach as well.

Magius sighed. He tapped his staff, and a pouch materialized. It was plain leather, nearly as big as a knight’s saddlebag, and tied shut. “It is not much, but we will have to make do under the circumstances.”

Not much, as far as the mage was concerned, was more than enough for three healthy appetites, even when one belonged to a minotaur. Huma eyed the bag as Magius pulled out fruits, bread, and even a small flask of wine. The contents were more than double the volume of the pouch, and there still appeared to be more inside. What other tricks did his childhood friend have that the mage took for granted? How powerful was Magius, and to whom did he dedicate that power?

Biting into an apple, Huma studied the rich garments of the other. By rights, Magius should have been wearing either the White robes of Good or – and much more likely – the Red Robes of Neutrality. Instead, Magius wore a blue and gold ensemble that would have been more at home on a courtier in Ergoth. The gold, Huma suspected, was real gold laced into the cloth. The cape was white, but so soft and well-woven that it was either magically created or the work of a fine artisan. Magius also wore hip boots of fine, polished leather – and not any ordinary leather, either. The knight was at a loss to identify it, but he had seen similar boots before. The Grand Master had a pair much like these.

This was not the clothing of a mage. Not any mage that Huma had ever heard of.

Kaz spoke, breaking Huma’s train of thought.

“God of the Sea! I have never savored a wine such as this!”

The look on the minotaur’s face appeared to amuse Magius. “My compliments on your taste. It is a rare treat given to me by the Qualinesti elves. I find it has become my personal favorite.”

“You’ve been among the Qualinesti?” Huma had heard of the elves – and of their cousins, the Silvanesti – but he had never seen any but half-elves, as Gwyneth seemed to be.

The thought of Gwyneth opened up memories and dreams that Huma did not wish to dwell on. He forced the past into a dark recess of his mind.

“I’ve been among them,” Magius was saying. “I went to feel them out. They remain as stubborn as their kin. Each thinks that they can save the world single-handedly. Their pride is at the expense of mankind.”

The mood grew rather somber after that. Huma found himself gazing in the direction from which they had come. Not one sign of the oppressive darkness remained.

Night came and, at Magius’s suggestion, they camped until morning. When Huma suggested setting up a watch, Magius only scoffed. He assured them that his powers would be sufficient to the task. Despite that, both Huma and the minotaur were adamant. The mage, disgruntled, finally agreed, providing that he was given the last watch.

Knights who sleep deeply do not live long. This rule was one of the first squires learned. There were far too many foes who moved in silence. Thus knights quickly developed a sense that warned them when someone, or something, was near.

Thus it was that Huma knew.

It was the last watch, the one Magius had requested. Huma, lying on his side, carefully opened his eyes a crack. His narrow view gave him a glimpse of the minotaur’s feet and the still form of Magius himself – most definitely asleep.

Whoever it was, it was standing behind him, he knew that now. Slowly and cautiously, he turned, as if still sleeping, until he was lying on his back. His hand drifted to the hilt of his sword, and he had confidence enough in his ability to think he might yet have a chance.

He opened his eyes just enough to let the day in.

It was with great difficulty that he held back from shouting. Through pure reflex he rolled away and came up on one knee, sword drawn. Behind him, Kaz rose with a mad snort, more than ready for combat.

It loomed higher than even the minotaur – a tall, massive overhang of rock and vegetation. Had it been there the night before, Huma might not have noticed anything unusual about it. He might not have noticed the massive appendages of stone that could loosely be called arms. He might not have noticed the way the outer shell of dirt and vegetation was constantly changing. Huma might even have missed, somehow, the two blue-gray crystals that seemed to stare down at him from what could only be some sort of face.

He took in all of this in a few brief seconds. The living mound shifted slightly forward, pulling up earth, insect, and plant life with it. It seemed not to have one true body, but to borrow from wherever it stood. Huma readied himself. Kaz had the huge battle ax poised. Then laughter filled the woods. Laughter from Magius.

“Cease your posturing, brave warriors. The elemental has no intention of doing battle with you. He is mine – a gatekeeper, you might say.”

Kaz whirled on the mage, and the ax tore deeply into the tree where Magius had been sitting. The ax missed his head by inches. Magius turned as pale as Rennard, and his mouth hung open in mid-laugh.

The angry warrior was not allowed to savor his revenge, for his footing suddenly became nonexistent. A very selective tremor shook the hapless minotaur. Huma lanced down at his own footing, which was as solid as ever, and then back at Kaz. With a roar, the minotaur lost his grip on the ax and fell backward.

Meanwhile, Magius had recovered from his own shock. He was careful, though, to keep his laughter quiet and less mocking. He shook his head as Kaz tried unsuccessfully to rise.

“You will never stand on two legs unless I say so, my hotheaded friend. Have I your word that you will cease your attempts to do away with me?”

As the minotaur’s chin bounced against hard-packed earth, he grunted agreement. Magius looked at the elemental. It seemed as if the two crystals turned to meet that gaze, though Huma knew he might be imagining it. Without warning, the ground beneath Kaz returned to its normal consistency. Kaz hesitated, expecting another trick.

“Oh, do get up!” the spellcaster muttered. “You’re perfectly safe.”

Huma relaxed, but he did not return his sword to its sheath. The earthen creature disturbed him.

Rising, Magius stepped between Huma and the creature. Like a man training a hound, Magius raised one hand and said, “Speak to me.”

The voice was deep and echoing, but also like listening to a pile of rocks and pebbles being shaken violently in a bucket. The first words were practically unintelligible. It repeated itself.

“All well. No one enters grove. Citadel welcomes mage’s return.” The mound fell silent.

Magius nodded his satisfaction. To the others he said, “Beyond that dense clump of trees, perhaps three to four hours’ journey, is our destination.”

Kaz clenched his fists, then thought better of it. He had already seen a little of what the magic-user’s servant could do. “That close and you made us sleep here?”

“I believe you heard the earth elemental mention the grove, did you not?” The mage’s face was quite sober.

“What of it?”

“Only I would dare enter the grove during darkness, and that is because I have spent time mastering it. To have led you two through it would have surely have meant your doom.”

Huma looked off in the direction his friend had pointed. “What is the danger? Can a blade or ax put an end to it?”

The laughter of the mage held little humor. “There are far more deadlier threats than mere physical ones. Let us say, it would take a strong mind to come out of there in one piece. A strong mind or a simple one, take your pick.”

Riddles, as Kaz would have said – so Huma thought then. He did not trust challenges that could not be met face-to-face. In many ways, it was another sign of the changes Magius had gone through since their last meeting before the Test.

“The elemental will guide us and do what it can to protect any of us who might fall off the path. May the gods have mercy on he who does, because the grove will not.”

It took them only half an hour to reach the edge of the grove. In all his days, Huma could not recall seeing such a thick growth of foliage. Trees, grass, bushes, and even vines grew within and around one another, creating a veritable wall of defense around the domain of Magius. Try as he might, Huma could not fathom the depths.

Open paths dotted the grove at various points, but tended to twist aside soon after, making it impossible to guess which was the best to take. The earth elemental passed several of these, including a couple which seemed far more inviting than the one the creature finally chose. Kaz eyed the chosen path critically and shook his massive hand.

“Look at this.” He pointed a clawed hand at the sharp, thorny vines at the entranceway. “Why, the path we just passed was clear and well worn! Surely, this is the wrong path!”

Magius looked at him with open contempt. “The most attractive lure catches the most flies, my friend. You are welcome to try the other path, if you like. Here, we face a little prick from a plant. There … it could be anything.”

Shifting uncertainly, Kaz looked from one path to the other. In desperation, he looked to Huma for support.

Huma, in turn, looked at Magius. The mage was noncommital. Huma stared at the vine-covered path.

“I believe him, Kaz.”

“Then I will go where you go.”

“I’m glad that’s settled.” Magius shook his head in amazement. He lifted his staff and tapped the backside – it looked like a backside, anyway – of the elemental. The living mound shifted forward, the earth before it becoming its form as it moved into the grove. Magius followed without any hesitation. The minotaur glanced at Huma, then followed the mage.

Huma, alone, took a deep breath, kept his sword ready – for what, he could not say – and stepped onto the path.

Chapter 9

The path twisted and turned with amazing regularity. Had not Magius reassured them more than once, Huma would have thought that they were wandering in a circle.

He did not like the grove, which, even by day, was gloomy and full of shadow. Without the light from the staff, they surely would have strayed from the path.

Huma ducked away from a thorny vine crisscrossing the trail. After the first sharp sting from one of the countless barbs, he had closed his visor. Still, each thorn scraped at the metal on his body, and in irritation, Huma slashed stalk after stalk. Yet whenever he chanced to turn back, there would be no trace of his handiwork.

Ahead of him, Kaz cursed and brought his battle ax down upon a prickly bush. The injured minotaur chopped at the plant until only shreds remained. Almost immediately he walked face first into a hanging vine. The sharp blades of the ax came out and cut that vine to ribbons, too.

The abrupt drop at the next turn caught all of them by surprise. The shifting of the soil as the elemental made its way fooled Magius. His staff came down and the mage, expecting some sort of resistance, toppled forward. Kaz, next, stumbled forward onto the spellcaster. Huma twisted to avoid adding to the ungainly pile, lost his footing in a different place, and fell off the path.

Huma came to an abrupt halt, thanks to the huge shell of a once-mighty tree. He rubbed the back of his head, which had absorbed part of the shock, and looked up – at nothing.

There was no path. The trees of the grove dotted the area, Bushes, tall and many years old, filled most of the spaces between the trees. Shadows filled the rest. Deep, dark shadows.

Huma closed his eyes and opened them again, this time assuring that his gaze was not directed at the shadows. A chill ran through him. What he had seen – he froze. What had he seen? It defied any description he could have given it. He only knew that it was somewhere out there, waiting for him to carelessly turn toward it.

“Magius! Kaz!” The names echoed back to him. A quiet, mocking laugh seemed to come from everywhere.

“Huuuumaaa.”

At the sound of the voice, Huma reached for his broadsword – only to find his weapon gone. He remembered then that he had been carrying the sword in his hand. Yet he could see no sign of the blade when he searched the ground in the dim light.

Something tall and misshapen broke away from the other shadows and briefly passed through his vision. His nerves tightened as the mocker laughed once more. Huma pulled out a dagger, hoping that iron would make an impression.

His view vanished as something literally popped into existence right before him. He thrust hard with the dagger and encountered – mud and dirt. His hand sank into the mire, and he lost his grip on the small blade.

With wide eyes, he stared up into the ice-blue, crystalline eyes of the elemental.

Huma fought off a desire to hug the strange creature. The elemental stared down at him and spoke in the same gravel-filled voice it had used when responding to Magius.

“Follow.” A single, wonderful word to the knight, at that moment. Suddenly, blessedly, his sword was back in his hand.

The two crystals were sinking swiftly into the depths of the mound. At first, the living mound did not move and the knight thought the creature must be frozen in place. Huma sheathed his sword and leaned against the backside of the elemental’s earthen shell. He decided to dig the elemental out of its quandary. As his hands touched the mound, though, the earth beneath his fingers began to heat up incredibly and Huma quickly pulled them away. Two gleaming objects emerged from the mound.

Its crystalline eyes in place, the elemental repeated its previous message. “Follow.”

Huma jumped out of the way as the thing churned forward. Rather than turn as a man might, the elemental merely shifted its face to whichever direction it wished to travel. It was disconcerting, to say the least, and Huma, still staring in wonder, completely ignored the earthen servant’s command again. The mound did not repeat itself. It abruptly shambled up a small rise and promptly vanished.

Huma’s first instinct was to unsheath his sword. Then, he gritted his teeth and, with four long strides, he found himself standing before a loudly cursing minotaur and an anxious mage.

“Huma!” Kaz fairly crushed him in a bear – or rather, a bull – hug.

Magius smiled with relief. “When you fell off the path, your bovine companion was all for rushing after you. It was all I could do to explain to him that having two of you lost out there would be quite foolish.”

The minotaur dropped Huma and spun on the mage. “You wouldn’t go after him! Someone had to!”

“Someone did.” Magius pushed back his aristocratic locks. “While I can make my way through the grove, I would much prefer to send the elemental, who has nothing to fear, than risk myself purely for the sake of appearances.”

“You are a coward!”

“I’m practical.” Magius turned to his old friend. “If the elemental had not been here or had failed to find you, I would have followed you, that I promise.”

Huma’s acceptance of the mage’s explanation was met with a derisive snort by Kaz. Magius ignored the latter and, after a quick tap of the staff on the elemental’s present backside, the group was off again.

Though they did not encounter any more difficulties, Huma kept his eyes warily on the path at all times. Finally, they emerged into light. Brilliant light. It was as if the eternal cloudcover had finally given way to the golden rays of the sun. Even Kaz broke into a big, genuine smile. When Magius turned to speak to them, he, too, was grinning from ear to ear. He raised his staff high.

“Welcome to my home.”

They stared out into a wild, golden field. It would have been quite easy to believe that somewhere within the field elves danced and played. Butterflies and small birds flew hither and yonder while the bright, ripe wheat waved lazily after them. Small, furred creatures hopped among the occasional trees that dotted the forest perimeter. If there were truly a paradise on all of Krynn, this seemed to be it.

In the center of this wondrous field stood the citadel of Magius, a tower that, like the field surrounding it, might have been made of gold. A single gigantic wooden gate acted as a door. Windows dotted the top half of the tower, and there was even a small walking area up at the top. The tip gave the citadel the appearance of a spearhead, well-crafted and needle-sharp. The sides gleamed metallically, and Huma’s one regret was that it briefly reminded him of the sinister bronze tower perched precariously on the edge of the infernal Abyss.

Magius bowed and indicated they should go before him. The elemental had vanished, perhaps to patrol the outer limits of the grove once more.

“You are safe here, my friends. As safe as anywhere on all of Ansalon.”

The knight and the minotaur stepped out into the field like two children. Gone was anxiety concerning the war. Gone were the hatred, the fear. There was only the breathtaking beauty of the open land before them.

The mage watched them pass, the smile briefly vanishing from his face.

As they walked, a strange thing seemed to happen. The citadel grew. With each step it grew taller and taller. By the time they reached its gate, Huma and Kaz were forced to stare up into what seemed the ceiling of the sky itself.

“How can the dragons not see something of such scale?” There was no suspicion in the words of Kaz this time, only wonder.

“Like this field,” Magius replied. “Things are not always what they appear to be – or are seen to be. Someone created this place long before men ever set foot on Krynn. I have spent much time trying to discover their secrets, but the fragments hint at the handiwork of ogres. I cannot believe that ogres could ever build a place of such beauty. Perhaps, this was made as a garden paradise for the gods themselves. I think that would be more appropriate.”

Huma chose to spoil the serenity of the scene by coughing just then.

The mage grimaced. “Forgive me. You must be tired and thirsty. We shall go inside and be refreshed. After that, we shall speak.”

Magius raised his staff again and muttered a long string of seemingly nonsensical words. The staff, whose earlier glow had diminished, suddenly blazed with a new life. Both Huma and Kaz were forced to momentarily shield their eyes.

The gate opened, perhaps moved by some great, invisible hand. Magius was continually amazing Huma, although it might very well be that the castle, too, was a product of these ancients.

They passed through the gate and into a hallway which, while smaller than that of any noble’s estate home, outshone most by pure extravagance. Sculptures of elves, animals, tall manlike beings, humans, and what could only be the gods themselves lined the walls. Like an oversized serpent, a single stairway curled its way up to the floors above. A gold and red tapestry displaying the constellations draped one side while another one depicted a mountain that virtually towered over the landscape. It was so real that it drew Huma’s attention. At the back of his mind nagged the feeling that he knew this place from somewhere, although, in fact, Huma knew he had never seen the mountain before. He continued to stare at it until Magius’s voice broke the tapestry’s spell.

“Not all of it is original, but one cannot have everything. Be careful!”

The last was aimed at Kaz, who was busily inspecting an ageless sculpture of an odd-looking dragon. It was long and narrow, almost like a snake with legs and wings. What little remained of the coloring indicated it had once been green and blue, intermingled, an odd hodgepodge of colors for any dragon.

“This sculpture was made by one of my people.”

“Impossible. It must be elven. Look at it.”

Kaz snorted. “Do you think we have no artisans? I recognize the telltale patterns in the clay, even if your ‘well-versed’ mind cannot make anything out of them.”

“Why would anyone want to mold a dragon like that? I’ve never seen one so long and narrow. Did such exist?” Huma asked, turning to Magius.

The mage shrugged. “I have never uncovered evidence of such a beast. It is my belief that this is purely an artistic representation, the product of someone’s imagination. Another reason why it cannot be the work of minotaurs, not to mention the fact that it is far too old.”

“We were the first civilized race.”

“Civilized or domesticated?”

Kaz moved swiftly, but the statuette froze in midair some three feet before Magius’s face. The mage’s look of contempt was matched only by the intense disappointment draped across Kaz’s visage. “Make your next throw a good one, cow, because it will be your last. And next time use something a little less valuable.”

With a wave of his free hand, Magius returned the dragon sculpture to its resting place. Kaz snorted continuously, and his eyes were crimson. Suddenly Huma stepped between them, brandishing his sword.

“Stop it!”

The outburst was so savage that both mage and minotaur stared at him as if he had lost his mind. Huma looked from one to another with what he hoped was a ferocious expression.

“Ansalon, perhaps all of Krynn, may be lying helpless beneath the Dragonqueen, and you two are acting like schoolchildren!”

Kaz was the only one of the two to look ashamed. Magius took the reprimand as he did all else. He merely shrugged and pretended as if the incident had never happened.

“There’s much more to see, but I imagine you two might wish to get some rest. Am I correct?”

“On that point, at least,” Kaz muttered.

Huma sheathed his sword, but his temper was still aroused. “What happens after that? Can you contact your order? We cannot stay here forever. You came looking for us. Don’t you have a plan?”

“Of course.” The answer came quickly, but there was something in the spellcaster’s eyes that Huma thought belied his response. Here, again, was a Magius with whom he was unfamiliar. Here was a Magius who held back secrets from the one person he should have been able to trust. How he had changed.

Or is it I who am changing? thought Huma. In the old days, he would have never truly questioned Magius or probed at his friend’s answers. The knighthood had opened his eyes to the veiled half-truths that played so large a part in most people’s lives.

Deliberately, Huma said, “I should like to hear your plan.”

“In good time. There are far too many matters here that I must attend to immediately. While I do so, you two may relax and perhaps enjoy some food.”

Magius tapped his staff on the ground. Huma felt a shiver cut through him. Then he saw the mist.

It fluttered about Magius as a pet bird might around its master. Huma could not feel any sort of breeze, nor was there any seeming source of the mist. It moved as if with a life of its own.

“Guests. Guide.” Magius spoke the words, not to Huma or Kaz, but to the cloud – and it responded:

“Guesssstssss. Guiiiiiiidde.” The mist’s voice sounded like steam escaping from a doused campfire.

“Rooms for the night.”

“Rooommmmss.”

Magius grimaced. “Air elementals are so slow.” He waved his hand at the floating mist. “Now, if you please.” To Huma, the spellcaster said, “When you are fed and rested, things will be clearer.”

Kaz let out a deep “hmmmph,” which Magius ignored. The air elemental, given the command to begin its duties, floated impatiently around the two “guests.”

“Commme. Rooommmmmss. Guesssstsss.”

Their host watched as they followed the mist creature up the spiral stairs. When they were out of earshot, Kaz leaned toward Huma, who had taken the lead, and whispered, “This mage is your friend?”

“Yes.” Huma found it difficult to answer with assurance.

“Pray that he still considers you in the same way. I think that this tower and its secrets would make for a very secure, very permanent prison.”

The knight did not argue the statement, having already considered that possibility.

If this were indeed a prison, it was one to which many a villain would have begged entry and incarceration. After becoming at least partially used to the misty servants, Kaz and Huma had no difficulty enjoying the meats and fruits, not to mention the wines, which would have been fit bill of fare at any royal court.

The rooms, too, were resplendent, albeit much too large for a normal-size person like Huma. Kaz, on the other hand, found the furnishings perfect for his bulk and pointed this out as more clues that the tower was some remnant of his own race. Huma knew that no one had ever recorded minotaurs this far west until the wars had begun, but he kept his doubts to himself.

They had been given separate rooms, something which Kaz had at first protested as an obvious ploy to divide and conquer.

“Had he desired to, Magius could have struck us both down any one of a hundred times,” Huma countered. “You saw the way he handled you in the corridor.”

“Luck. Let me take him on, one to one.”

“And he will leave nothing but ashes. Magic is as much a part of him as breathing is to us.”

The minotaur smashed one massive fist into the wall. To his satisfaction, it yielded quite nicely. “In my homeland —”

Huma stopped him before he could go any further, “This is Ergoth. These are human lands. Human ways.”

“Are they? Have you forgotten the battle already?”

“I have not. I only think that you should trust me. I know Magius far better than you.”

Kaz quieted, but not before replying, “I hope you do. For both our sakes.”

It was those words that Huma contemplated as he sat against the bedboard. Despite the drain of energy from their walk through the grove, he had found himself unable to sleep. Kaz, on the other hand, might have been dead, save for the fact that his snores resounded through the walls and into Huma’s room.

The candles, lit before he had entered, had melted to the point where many were of little or no use at all. The flickering made odd shadows around the room, and Huma eventually found his eyes returning to one particularly high and deep shadow in the far corner. It was so dark, he almost believed that, if he chose to, he could have walked right into it and through the wall.

“Huma.”

A hand, open, thrust out from the shadow. It was followed by another. The knight edged away from that side of the bed and toward his sword, which hung next to the bed.

“Huma, I must speak to you.”

“Magius?”

“Who else?” Arms followed the hands, and then the rest of the mage appeared as well. “Forgive me the dramatic entrance,” Magius whispered, “but I wish to avoid speaking with the minotaur, who might be displeased with some of what I am about to say.”

“And I won’t be?” Huma was feeling irritable. The mage’s tricks were beginning to wear even on his boyhood friend.

Their eyes met, and Magius quickly turned away. “You might be. But at least you also see reason. My powers need only slip once for that two-legged bull to do me in.”

“I could not entirely fault him, Magius.”

“I know.” The spellcaster put his face in his hands. “How dearly I know.”

Huma stood up, walked over to his childhood friend, and rested a gentle hand on the other’s shoulder. “Tell me, and I will promise to listen with an open mind.”

Magius looked up, and they were briefly back in their early days, when neither had cared about anything more lofty than fun. The look vanished almost as soon as it appeared. The elegant Magius held out one hand. Instantly, the staff was there, awaiting his commands.

“You see before you a magic-user of great power – and even greater potential. I was not the first to say that. Fat, cheerful Belgardin said that the day he sponsored me.”

Belgardin. Huma remembered the old mage. He had been the first to see the power welling within the young Magius. Power such as he had never seen before. Belgardin was a high adept of the Red Robes, and this enabled him to realize the help the boy needed while still calculating the prestige that accompanied the training of a possible Master of the Order – any order.

“He was right. You remember. I excelled at all things. I was the brightest candidate they had ever seen. I mastered spells even some established adepts had difficulty with. I was a prodigy.” The hint of conceit in the voice of Magius was quite reasonable; everything he had said was true.

The mage’s face fell serious. “You ordinary people hear of the Test and all the rumors about what goes on.” Magius made a cutting motion with his free hand. “The rumors pale in comparison to the truth.”

The Test was the final proof of a mage’s ability to cope with the power. It did not matter which of the orders he or she belonged to. All magic-users took the Test.

Magius dropped the tip of his staff to the floor and leaned heavily upon it. “I cannot say what others have gone through, just that some did not survive. I went into the Test with every possible scenario plotted out in my mind. I thought they would send dark elves after me, force me to kill an elderly or ill person. Perhaps, I believed, they would have me stand at the edge of the Abyss and face the Queen herself. I knew some of it would be illusion, but much of it would be very real. Real enough to kill me.”

Huma nodded understanding. Word naturally leaked out. Some of the rumors, it seemed, carried elements of truth.

The handsome face broke into a smile, one that seemed mad under the circumstances. Magius laughed lightly, although Huma could not guess what he found so funny. “They fooled me completely. Or perhaps even they do not truly know all that goes on during the Test. I suspect that sometimes the power itself takes a hand. Whatever the case, I was confronted with the one thing I found I could not accept.

“My death. My death in the future.”

There was nothing Huma could say to that. He might deny that it was real, try to convince Magius that it had to be all illusion, but what could he say that he himself believed?

“Somehow, I succeeded in surviving. I think that madness was what waited for me if I failed. I fooled them by entering into another type of madness then. A madness created by the realization that what I saw would indeed come to pass. I left the tower, left the Test, knowing my fate and determined to do something about it.

“And I found I could not. Not by the strict bylaws of the Orders. Despite their supposed freedom from restrictions, neither the Red nor the Black Robes offered anything that could assist me. They were still too limited, and I certainly was not cut out to wear the robes of white, as you well know.”

Magius chuckled at the last, then sighed. The candles had burned down to nearly nothing.

“With a realization of the restrictions placed upon me by the Three Orders, I decided that I would be forced to step beyond the lines they had drawn in order to – if you’ll pardon me for saying so – change the future.”

Huma stepped back involuntarily. The wild spells, the outlandish clothing, so different from the austere robes of other mages. He shook his head, not believing that it were possible to do what Magius had done.

“Then and there,” Magius was saying, his attention focused inward, “I turned from the formalized, stifling training of the Conclave and became a renegade.”

Chapter 10

“Does it shock you so, Huma? I was young, unbridled. I probably would have left for other reasons. Disgust for the Test, perhaps, which I still find a barbaric way of trimming the dead leaves.”

Huma slumped back on the bed. To one brought up under the strict beliefs of the knighthood, all magic-users were untrustworthy. A renegade was considered blacker than even the Black Robes, for he would meddle with spells even they would balk at using.

Magius read the look and smiled ruefully. “A renegade is only what he makes of himself, Huma. There are very few, since it is hard to escape the notice of the Conclave, but some of those few are very good people. Not powerful enough, sometimes. Had they taken the Test, most of them would have perished. While they live, they do what little they can to help others. Of course, there is always the other side.”

“Galan Dracos.”

“Yes.” Magius had gone pale. “Even the Queen’s dark clerics fear him. She needs him, though.”

The knight stiffened. “You know a lot.”

“I – I heard much of him as I traveled. I thought he might be the one to aid me, to give me protection. He has no fear of the Three Orders.”

There was motion in the next room. Magius stepped back into the shadows. “I do not think we can continue our discussion for now. Try to understand that everything I’ve done is for good reasons. We’ll talk later.”

Magius melted into the darkness. Leaping up, the knight put a hand into the shadowy corner. Only walls, as he suspected. Whatever portal Magius had opened had just been closed.

With a snarl, Kaz burst into the room. “I heard him! Where is he?”

Startled by the ferocity of the minotaur, Huma stepped back. “What is it, Kaz?”

“This is a trap, as I suspected! My ax is gone! My daggers are missing!”

“What are you talking about?” Huma reached for his own sword, which hung near the bed. Only —

The sheath hung as before, but it was empty now. Hurriedly, Huma went through his belongings. Like Kaz, he was missing all his weapons. They had disappeared even while the two old friends had talked.

Huma put a hand to his head. The room was becoming terribly hot. He felt flushed. Kaz was suddenly by his side, supporting him.

“What has he done to you? Are you ill?”

“I’m fine.” He waved his sympathetic companion away. “It’s nothing.”

Huma had been a fool. He had believed that the past still counted, when now it was all too obvious that the mage had been lying. The inconsistencies, the overlengthy explanations, left more questions than they answered.

Huma reached for his armor. “We’re leaving – somehow.”

Kaz helped him suit up.

The hallway was apparently unguarded, although the knight was sure that unseen servants watched their every move. He wondered how far Magius would allow them to go.

“I don’t like this,” Kaz muttered. He, far more than the human, distrusted the workings of any magic-user.

They reached the long, spiral staircase without incident – which only served to make them that much more cautious. Huma reached out and touched the bannister with one finger. When he felt nothing, he dared to grip it. He took a step downward. Another. A third. Kaz followed as closely behind as his huge bulk permitted. Their pace quickened unconsciously.

On the sixth step down, Huma blinked. He was no longer on the step, but back at the top of the staircase. Five steps below, Kaz whirled about, searching for him. Before Huma could warn him, the burly easterner set one foot down on the sixth step. Huma had only a quick glimpse of Kaz before the latter vanished, to reappear beside him a moment later.

“More tricks,” muttered Kaz.

They tried again, achieving the same result. Each time, the one who put a foot down on the step never noticed the shift. It was magic of the most complex and subtle nature.

They were trapped in some loop. Huma quit first, realizing the folly. Kaz continued for some time after, hoping there might be a way out. In the end, though, the minotaur joined Huma in the corridor.

“What now?”

Huma dropped the pack he had been carrying and undid the empty sheath. “Nothing. We won’t be going anywhere, it seems.”

“We cannot stay here!” The red glare was returning to the giant’s eyes.

“Have you any ideas? There are no windows, and the walls are solid. At least for us.”

“We could climb down to the corridor.”

Huma picked up the empty sheath and walked over to the stairway. He lifted the object over the rail and dropped it.

The sheath disappeared.

While Kaz looked on, Huma turned and pointed to the floor. The empty sheath lay behind them.

“We wait. We have no choice.”

The minotaur’s shoulders slumped in defeat.

There came a time when sleep forced itself upon them, despite their attempts to stay alert. Thus it was that Huma dreamed. Dreamed of Gwyneth and a mountain. Dreamed of a silver dragon in flight. Dreamed of evil spellcasters and gods battling. They all mixed together so randomly that he was never really sure what the dream was about or how it even began.

It ended abruptly, he knew, for it ended when the voice broke through his sleep.

“Wwaaaakkee.”

It took Huma several moments to realize that the sibilant whisper was not part of his dreams. Rather, it was a misty servant with a summons.

“Maaassteerr. Wiiissshhheess. Sssspeeaakk.”

Huma rose and Kaz, hearing the elemental, did likewise.

“Hhuuumaaaa. Ooonnnly.”

“I will go with him whether your master likes it or not! Now lead on, or I’ll inhale you!”

Whether or not the air elemental actually understood the minotaur’s words, it drifted toward the stairway. Huma followed, with Kaz close behind. The elemental led them downward. There was some hesitation on Huma’s part when they neared the level that had repulsed them earlier. He took a single step. This time, much to his surprise, he found his progress unimpeded. The aerial servant hovered near him, as if impatient to move on. Huma continued down, slowly at first, then more quickly as it became obvious that Magius had set no traps.

A loud shout of anger caused him to quickly look up at the level above. While Huma’s back had been turned, Kaz had attempted to follow the knight. Much to the minotaur’s annoyance, the spell still held him in thrall.

Wordlessly, Huma turned and followed the servant down the twisting stairway and through corridors unseen the day before. These halls were much more like the grove, darker than it seemed possible, in some places. Now and then, things flitted in the flickering light of the few torches. Only when they passed these torches could Huma be sure that he was still following the servant.

“Maaassteerr.”

Huma did not understand at first, for the room he entered was as dark and gloomy as all the corridors had been, and he could see no evidence that it was inhabited. Then he noted the sound of something moving.

A single word was uttered, and the room was lit by the staff of Magius. The sounds Huma had heard were those of the mage rising from a chair. As the other turned around, Huma’s mouth opened in complete shock. To his eyes, Magius seemed nearly twice as old as he had appeared earlier. One would have never believed that the two men were of the same age.

“Huma.” The magic-user’s tone almost begged for friendship. All the anger that Huma had contained within him began to melt away as he studied the sudden deprivation of vitality.

“Magius, what —?”

“I know. I leave you with more questions and fears each time we meet. I’m afraid I can’t change that even now, although I will attempt to clear up a few difficulties. First, I want you to see this.”

The mage led him into an adjoining room, where Huma found himself facing the earth elemental that had led them through the grove. Something lay before the living mound, something unnervingly familiar.

Huma recognized it. “A dreadwolf.”

It was bent at awkward angles, and Huma realized that one limb was torn away. Odder still, it was petrified. Reaching down, he verified the thought. It was like touching a rock.

The sightless eyes still seemed to watch him. Huma turned to Magius for explanation.

“There were three more, but they perished in the grove. Somehow, battered and torn as it was, this one made it to the field, where he,” Magius indicated the earth elemental, “finished it. The damage is done. Galan Dracos knows where I am and probably knows that you are here as well. I have no choice.”

Huma listened, unsure what Magius was leading to.

“Come with me.” They returned to the other room, and Magius walked over to a wall on which hung a high, gold-trimmed mirror. It was oval, decorated in elaborate scrollwork. Magius tapped the staff on the floor and said, “Show me.”

“There. The peak in the center.” A huge mountain loomed in the foreground. Recognition came swiftly. It was the same mountain so prominently displayed on one of the two great tapestries. “When I was tested in the tower, I saw that – the mountain. I remembered it well, for it was the final site conjured. I did not know it was real until I found this place, and the tapestry in the hall. When I saw it hanging on the wall, I knew there was more truth to the scenes in my Test than even my instructors knew. This mountain means something to the war. It conceals something. It is the one puzzle I cannot fathom. I don’t even know its exact location, but it is west of here – southwest possibly.”

He turned to Huma and held out the knight’s weapons, though his hand had been empty moments before. “The minotaur also has his weapons back. The elemental will lead you to the underground passages and to horses that I have kept for emergencies.”

The tower suddenly shook.

Magius whirled around and stared at the mirror. “Show me!”

The mountain scene vanished, to be replaced by a visual of the citadel, surrounded. A huge, black dragon with a rider. Other dragons, red, nearby.

“Moons of Krynn!” Magius smiled bitterly. “Am I worthy of the attention of Crynus himself?”

“Crynus!”

The mage looked at Huma and the bitter smile deepened. “Oh, yes, you two have met. Had I the time, I would tell you much of importance concerning him and the Black Guardsmen. As it is …” The tower shook again and the ceiling began to crumble.

“Arion!” In summons to the spellcaster’s urgent call, the misty servant formed before them. “Take them to the stables! Hurry!”

“Maaasssteerr.”

“Magius, let me help.”

“Help me?” The mage smiled. “I once stood at the side of Galan Dracos. I was second only to him among his gathering of mages. It will take more than dragons to stop me.”

A powerful gust of wind thrust Huma through the doorway even as he pondered how truthful Magius was being. Not just about his abilities, but his reasons. Would Huma ever know for sure?

“Huma!”

“Kaz!”

The minotaur came bursting down the dark corridor, heedless of any threats. True to his word, Magius had returned the minotaur’s weapons, including the huge battle ax.

The massive warrior’s first words were quite predictable. “What madness has he brought upon us now?”

“Only the warlord, six dragons, and Paladine knows what else.”

More masonry crashed down.

Kaz raised the ax high over his head. “By my ancestors for thirty generations, I will not die crushed under rock!”

“Fooollss! Fooolooowww!”

“That thing —”

“— is our guide out of here! No more words!”

They hurried after the air elemental, which now seemed to possess startling speed. It was glowing slightly silver now, so there was no chance of losing it in the dark corridors.

The stable proved to be more like a cave with ventilation. There were half a dozen horses, ranging in all sizes, but all well-muscled and sleek. While the two chose their mounts, the air elemental vanished.

“Where are we?” asked Kaz.

Huma leaped on his chosen horse, a tall, silver mare, and glanced toward the cave entrance. “West of the grove, I think. The hall tunneled underneath it.”

“Good. One small difficulty out of the way.” The minotaur climbed aboard his own animal, a beast at least as tall as himself.

Another jolt shook the cave. Huma freed the other animals; he would not leave the horses to die if the cave collapsed.

“Yaaah!” The horses were swift, and for ten minutes Huma and Kaz rode without looking back.

Behind them, the two could hear the cries of the dragons as they tore at the defenses of the citadel and its master.

What use was there in fighting a battle that could not be won? Still, Huma knew that the next battle would be his.

They broke through a clearing, and Huma dared to look back then. “Riders!”

There were at least eight of them, ebony-armored figures on coal-black steeds like creations of the Abyss. Black Guard. Huma’s hand strayed to his sword to assure himself that it was still there.

Something else broke through after the riders. Pale, canine things with sightless red eyes. Six or seven, perhaps. Dreadwolves.

Suddenly, the earth before the dark riders burst up with tremendous fury. One rider succeeded in keeping his balance and two managed to evade the explosion, but the rest vanished momentarily behind the huge mound, which Huma recognized as the earth elemental. A point in the favor of Magius, thought Huma. The mage had sent one of his most trusted servants to assist his old friend.

The dreadwolves had enough warning to dodge the milling confusion, though one fell victim to a horse that lost its balance. The others continued the chase.

A tree limb struck Huma in the arm, and he turned around just in time to avoid a low branch. Kaz rode a few yards to his right, his larger form causing him some grief. The horns on his head snagged branches with worrisome regularity. Kaz hung on grimly, though.

Huma glanced back whenever terrain permitted him, but the same sight always greeted him. The dreadwolves, at least, moved with a constant pace and did not seem to tire. Only six of the ebony riders had regrouped and managed to keep pace.

“We can’t …” A branch struck Kaz in the face as he tried to speak. “We can’t keep on like this. The horses will perish.”

Huma agreed. They were pushing the animals at a killing pace. Huma came to a difficult decision.

“Split up! Ride to the north!” He had to point to get his idea across. Kaz frowned but accepted. Huma indicated he would ride to the south. Lacking a plan of his own, the minotaur obeyed.

When Huma gave the signal, Kaz pulled his horse sharply to the right, nearly taking off his own right arm as the animal was forced to twist around a tree. Huma watched him vanish and then pulled tight on the reins of his own mount.

The animal was near to collapse. It slowed as quickly as possible, stumbling several times in the brush. Huma did not wait for it to come to a stop before leaping from the saddle. He landed feetfirst and scurried for the shelter of the trees.

The dreadwolves were fast closing, and Huma barely had time to ready himself. Among the items in the stable-cave, he had found a small, wooden shield, and this he had strapped to his free arm. The broadsword was out in one smooth, silent motion. He prayed that the dreadwolves would run after the horse first. It was the only way he would have a chance.

He was determined to stall them long enough for Kaz to flee. Huma knew it likely would cost him his life, but he could foresee no escape for either of them unless one remained behind. He could not ask that of even Kaz.

The first of the dreadwolves came running past. Single-minded to the point of obsession, the ghoulish creature followed after the abandoned horse, which had now realized its plight and was racing off again. It would not get far, and Huma was disgusted that he had to sacrifice any animal for this.

Two more dreadwolves raced by. Another followed. There were at least two more. Huma steadied himself and tried to maintain his patience.

Another. Another. When no more appeared, Huma risked a peek around the tree trunk. It proved to be a mistake, for the first of the riders appeared at that point and he spotted Huma all too easily.

Huma had chosen this particular tree because of the massive root system that partially extended above-ground. It was a fortunate choice, for the rider, intent on being the first to claim the prize, forced his horse just too close. The left forehoof of the dark steed caught on one of the roots. With a sharp cry, the animal fell forward and the rider was thrown far into the air, finally landing in a contorted heap. Huma assured himself that the rider was dead, and he turned to face the others.

The rest of the riders materialized in a group. The gaps between the trees were so small that the riders were forced to slow down and navigate through the forest one at a time, breaking their loose formation. Huma gave a cry of challenge and charged.

He caught the first of the Black Guard as the rider attempted to bring up an ax for a strike, only to find it had snagged in the branches of the tree. Huma made his attack count, and the man toppled off his mount.

Inspiration came then, and the knight leaped onto the abandoned horse. The animal fought him. Struck by a skull-crushing hoof, one opponent went down as Huma mastered the steed. Fending off the other attacker, Huma urged the animal forward, this time heading south. As he had hoped, the four riders followed.

Something lunged at him. A white blur. Only luck enabled him to catch it on his sword, although the dreadwolf did succeed in tearing apart some of the chain mail on his leg. The knight found himself riding with a still-squirming dreadwolf impaled on his sword. The creature’s weight forced him to virtually drag it along in order to keep his sword. Huma’s arm felt as if it were about to be wrenched off.

The horrific jaws snapped at him, and the sightless eyes rolled in the skull until the dreadwolf finally slid off the sword and tumbled behind Huma. Huma glanced back and saw with horror that the creature was rising as if unharmed. The dreadwolf turned its head just in time to see the front hooves of the first horse of the pursuers come down on it. The ghoulish creature was trampled without notice and destroyed.

Both his own animal and those of his remaining pursuers were near their limits. Froth spewed from the horse’s mouth. The steed began to stumble as it ran. The knight heard a crash behind him and dared a quick glance. One of the other horses had collapsed, causing another to spill.

Huma brought his mount to a halt, then turned it. The two guardsmen still riding charged him from two sides, their intent to cross him up. The rider to Huma’s right swung a mean blow with his sword, and the rider to the left followed with another an eyeblink later. Huma’s timing was perfect. He blocked the first with his shield and deflected the second with such accuracy that he provided himself with an opening. The tip of his blade caught the rider on the left between the breastplate and helmet. The rider collapsed backward and was dragged on by his unknowing horse.

Unwilling to fight one-to-one, the remaining rider turned back toward his two other comrades, who were extricating themselves from their injured horses. Huma struck wildly and missed a killing blow, but the Guardsman fell off his horse and did not rise from the ground.

By now, the other dreadwolves had returned. Huma’s horse wobbled and fell to its knees; the knight jumped off and away before the beast collapsed on him. He then stood, shield and sword in hand, and faced the five creatures and the two riders who had regrouped. A stark realization that he would die clouded his mind. When the first of the dreadwolves lunged for his throat, he met it with the overwhelming thrust of one whose sole remaining goal is to take as many of the enemy with him as possible. Thus, he cut, chopped, and thrust almost blindly, seeing little clearly any more. Even the shield became a weapon as he brought it down on at least one white form, hard enough to crush a skull.

Yellowed fangs dripping ichor flashed by his face. Steel threatened to divide his throat in two. Huma met each attack and then counterattacked.

He eventually realized that he was striking at air. The knowledge brought his senses back. He blinked the film from his eyes and stared at the tableau before him.

The last two guardsmen were dead, their weapons scattered far away. Blood oozed on the ground. The five dreadwolves lay strewn in pieces around the area.

Exhaustion took him suddenly. He went to his knees and, for a long time afterward, simply stared at what he had done.

Chapter 11

How long it was before he felt the pain, Huma could only guess. He had eventually wandered away from the terrible scene, as much to ease his growing distaste with himself as to escape from any other pursuers. Vaguely, he knew that there would be others, for, if nothing else, both Dracos and the warlord Crynus were determined to the point of fanaticism. And Huma calculated that Crynus, at least, would be interested in his whereabouts.

The pain increased. Huma numbly stared down at the multiple wounds he had received from his opponents. His armor was battered and torn; the mail was almost useless. A part of his mind wondered when this damage had been done. He could remember nothing of the fight save the thrusting of his sword at whatever moved.

Huma found a stream and washed his wounds as best he could. The cool water soothed not only his body but his mind.

After finishing at the stream, he decided to follow its path. It ran southwest, more or less, and he recalled that Magius had recommended that route. That thought brought Kaz to mind, and the knight felt guilty that he had abandoned his one true friend. Was the minotaur safe somewhere?

A huge shape sent tree limbs swaying as it raised a tremendous wind. Huma instinctively flattened against a tree and stared upward. He caught a glimpse of a wide, leathery wing, but it was gone almost immediately and he could not even be sure of its color. Whatever type of dragon it was, it did not return.

The day passed before Huma even realized it. Hunger demanded his attention, and he burrowed through the saddle bag he had taken from one of the horses. The Black Guard, it seemed, had little in the way of personal effects. At the bottom, he found what he had been looking for – three days’ worth of rations.

A moment later, he was spitting them out, despite his hunger. Another lesson about his adversaries – their taste in food, even the generally bland iron rations, was abysmal. Huma knew he would cause himself more damage than good by eating these things; in its present condition, his stomach would never be able to hold them.

Eventually, he was able to secure food in the form of birds’ eggs and berries. It was not very filling, but it eased the hunger. His search for food told him something else as well; most of the bushes had been stripped of edible berries. Recently, too. It was too thorough to have been the work of animals. Besides, Huma had spotted no forest life other than birds. If he stayed too long in this area, he could starve. The stream, too, seemed depleted.

For three days, he wandered along the stream. The face he saw staring back at him from the water on that third day made him smile in self-mockery. The reflected knight was unkempt, his mustache spreading in a hundred different directions, his armor dented or torn and covered with blood and dirt. Self-consciously, he tried to wipe some of the grime from the symbol of the Order of the Crown. He saw his own face vanish and one like Bennett’s appear. Trake’s son was, of course, immaculate. The breastplate ever gleamed. His proud mustache was thick and neatly trimmed. He was a true knight.

Another face joined Bennett’s. This one was no Knight of Solamnia, but a foreign-armored, heavily bearded bear of a face. It was sneering.

Had he not seen it there and then, the bearlike man would never have believed that a man could move so swiftly. Somehow, the battleworn figure leaning over the stream produced a broadsword seemingly out of nowhere, and the hapless stranger barely managed to avoid the swing – and that because of the other’s awkward angle more than anything else.

Huma could not immediately identify the man who had attempted to sneak up on him. He was wearing a motley collection of armor, some of it ogre make, some of it bits and pieces of Solamnic armor. Huma would have let the man go, but now he wondered whether he faced a brigand, a man who might even steal from the dead.

His erstwhile opponent suddenly yelped, turned, and ran off at an astounding pace for one with such an ungainly form. Huma gave pursuit.

His exhaustion slowed him. As it was, Huma was just closing on the man when the other scurried around a small hill. Huma followed suit …

… and immediately backtracked as more than a dozen horsemen and many, many more footsoldiers turned to stare in surprise at the two newcomers.

A tall man with silver-black hair and a neatly clipped black beard barked out an order. Huma did not hear the exact words, but he knew they had to do with him.

His luck ran out at this point, for the woods here were thinner and the riders quite familiar with the terrain, judging by their confident maneuvers. When he realized he could not escape them, the knight turned and steadied himself. These were not the human forces of the Dragonqueen, that much he knew, but whether they were allies or enemies was uncertain.

The first men rode at him. They were good horsemen, but he was able to ward them off at a distance with his sword. He was hard-pressed when a third man rode in and more footsoldiers after that, so that Huma found himself trapped in a rapidly shrinking circle. Still, none of the soldiers attacked. None had the desire to face that flashing blade.

“Stay your weapons! That is an order!”

The other riders arrived. The man who shouted the command urged his mount up to the circle, where the soldiers made way for him. He rode up to Huma and studied him. The commander was a man of strong features, though his face was lined from the responsibilities of leadership. Like many of the Knights of Solamnia, he had the rather hawkish features that spoke of old Ergothian blood – royal blood. His visage, though, was not as severe as those of the Grand Master or Bennett. The slight smile that played across his face would have been out of place on either of the two great knights.

“A Knight of Solamnia? A little far from Vingaard Keep, are you not, Knight of the Crown?”

Huma flushed at what the man must have thought of him. He did not offer a very competent picture of the knighthood. Huma tried to summon up some dignity, and replied, “I have been on my own for days. I have fought off monsters and warriors. My path has not been entirely by choice.”

He did not yet trust them enough to speak of the other things.

“I see.” The commander shifted in his saddle. “I am Lord Guy Avondale out of Durendi, a bit too far to the south for my tastes at present. Who are you, and what are you doing in the middle of Ergoth? Have the Solamnics broken through at last?”

“I am Huma, Knight of Solamnia, defender of the Order of the Crown. I was forced this direction by the Black Guard when the Dragonqueen’s dark minions crushed our lines.” He might have lied, built up their hopes, but he chose not to.

Avondale’s face turned white. The soldiers with him began muttering nervously to themselves.

“Do I understand you correctly? The knighthood has been crushed?”

“No, Lord Avondale. Our lines were crushed, but we were to regroup farther back. I, unfortunately, was pressed in the wrong direction. Vingaard Keep still stands as it always has and always will.”

The other gave him a sarcastic smile. “We in Ergoth are only too familiar with the strength of the knighthood, although it seems to have availed little. Glad I am to hear that the knights have not been totally vanquished, though.”

One of the other riders moved closer, and Huma whirled, his blade daring the man to try something. Avondale held up a hand to calm both of them.

“There is much I wish to ask of you, but you appear to be all in. You,” the commander pointed at the horseman who had moved closer, “give him your horse for now.”

“Yes, milord.”

Huma looked from the proffered horse to Guy Avondale and back to the horse. The noble frowned when he realized the young knight’s thoughts.

“This is no trap, Huma. We are as much the foes of the Dragonqueen as you are. Let past differences remain where they are – in the past.”

“I wish only the same, Lord Avondale.” Huma grunted and climbed thankfully onto the steed.

“Fine. When we get back to camp, I’ll see that you are fed. Then you can either rest or come straight to me.”

A thought came to Huma. “Milord, have there been any rumors of a lone minotaur wandering this region?”

“A minotaur?” Avondale looked at his seconds in puzzlement. They shook their heads. “It seems not. If there is one, we shall deal with it, never fear.”

Huma’s voice grew urgent. “Milord, that is what I do not want! The minotaur – I realize this will be difficult to accept – is an ally and must not be harmed. His name is Kaz.”

“Indeed.” Avondale studied Huma once again. Longer, this time. “I have never heard of such a thing and most definitely never thought I would hear it from a Knight of Solamnia. But I will do as you request. Is that sufficient?”

“Yes, milord.”

“Fine.” Avondale turned to his aide. “Return this column to some semblance of order. Have that one locked up when we return.” The noble found himself looking into the eyes of the young knight. “The man you were chasing was a deserter. You have my gratitude. I look forward to our talk.”

The horsemen and footsoldiers realigned themselves and, on Lord Avondale’s order, began to move south. Although Huma would have preferred to continue on toward the southwest, he trusted Lord Avondale.

Suddenly, a wave of nausea struck Huma, and he nearly slid off the side of the saddle.

“Gods!” The commander’s jaws worked, but, at first, he did not know what to say. “Derek, help keep him up! We do not want him to fall beneath the hooves of his horse.” Avondale took a closer look at Huma. “Gods!” he repeated. “He’s covered with wounds!”

There were no healers of Mishakal with the army. A new wave of plague had struck near Caergoth, and the clerics there had been among its first victims. Avondale muttered something about the plague being very particular, for it most often struck where it hurt the most. Caergoth had been previously untouched and was to have been the main source of supplies for Avondale’s forces. Huma slept for a full day, which worried the noble, for overwhelming fatigue was one of the first signs of the plague. Only when Huma woke, full of energy and gratitude, did Lord Guy relax. When he was satisfied that the young knight was completely well again, Avondale requested his presence for a private conversation.

The commander was a decent man, despite all Huma had heard about Ergoth from the higher-ranking members of the knighthood. Avondale was a brilliant strategist as well, although he would have much preferred utilizing his abilities to better his lands. The Emperor of Ergoth, a faceless entity known as Bestell III, had decreed that Lord Avondale should command the armies in his name. The noble, while a very loyal servant to his country, wished that his lord and master could have at least spared some of his highly trained and highly experienced royal guard to replace part of the already vastly depleted forces. Like his predecessors, though, Bestell III was concerned with his own well-being. There was always some reason that prevented him from deploying his personal guard anywhere farther than the capital’s gates.

The news of the knighthood’s disaster only added to Lord Avondale’s growing list of woes. “I still find it hard to reconcile, but I know you tell me the truth, Huma. As of now, I do not see how I can return you to your comrades. We are riding to Daltigoth, on orders of the emperor, and then will most likely turn back up north. I feel like a puppet whose master pulls the strings up and down.”

Huma sat alone with him in the commander’s tent, the first time the knight had been permitted to leave his tent. The young knight had been provided with sturdy Ergothian armor that Avondale admitted had been intended for his son before the latter’s death in his first battle. The strong mail went well with the surviving pieces of Huma’s armor. The damage to the helmet and breastplate had proved repairable after all. Huma was thankful for that. As much as he admired the craftsmanship of the Ergothian armor, much of it was too showy even for the most aristocratic of the Knights of Solamnia. Avondale had confided that he wore his ceremonial armor only if he was presenting himself to the emperor. For lesser dignitaries, his battle armor would have to do, even if it disturbed their sensitivities.

Huma had told him everything, except the ill-fated quest he was on. “Is there any way I might be granted free travel in your country?”

“We are in the midst of war, Huma. How could I permit you to travel freely?”

Huma took a sip of the wine that Avondale had offered him. It struck him as amusing that a noble would treat a minor Solamnic knight with such respect. But the Ergothian was no fool; he knew that few other men could have survived Huma’s experience. Thus, he was treating Huma accordingly.

“If I may speak candidly …” Huma glanced at the guards outside.

The knight sighed and continued. “It has been rumored that somewhere to the southwest there is a key to ending this eternal war. Somewhere in a range of mountains.”

Avondale pondered this. “There is a range of mountains in that general direction. Few ever travel there. It is said to be a haven for the dragons of darkness and, perhaps, other things as well. There may indeed be something of importance in that vicinity.”

For a moment, Huma’s spirits soared. “Can you accompany me?”

The commander laughed. “I’m afraid the emperor would have my head for that. Besides, it is unfit terrain for troops on horseback. Patrols have gone to those mountains and vanished. Mages refuse to go there, and clerics warn everyone away. Does that give you any idea of what you are asking?”

“Yes, milord.” Huma slumped down on the stool and held his head. The tent was suddenly very warm.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. A moment, please.” Huma wiped sweat form his forehead. The fever subsided.

Lord Avondale looked worried. “Perhaps we had better continue our talk tomorrow.”

“That would be better, milord.”

“So I see.” The noble rubbed his chin. “Come with me to Caergoth, and I will see to it that you are able to go on to the mountains on your own, if you still desire to.”

“Caergoth?” The heat had left Huma blurry-eyed. He found it difficult to focus on the commander.

“Yes, Caergoth. The clerics will steer us from the plague areas. What do you say?”

“Thank you.” Huma rose swiftly, and his head began to swim. He desired nothing more than to lie down. He still had not regained much of his vigor. “If you would excuse me?”

“By all means.” Guy Avondale watched the Solamnic knight hurry off. His brow wrinkled in worry. He took a sip of wine and then stared into the glass.

Before being pressed into the service of their emperor, most of Lord Avondale’s soldiers had been simple tradesmen and farmers. Thus it was that they knew of the Knights of Solamnia as little more than legend. Now, they had one such legend traveling in their midst, and the tales of his adventures, real and imagined, were already making the rounds through the camp. Huma was almost as awestruck as the Ergothians, for he did not consider himself a legend, and the open stares he received embarrassed him greatly.

Most of the stories revolved loosely about the chase and his berserker’s stand against the ebony-armored servants of the warlord. He had slain a legion of them, it appeared, including a massive pack of the demonic dreadwolves, much feared by men who knew their families lived virtually unprotected while they were away at war. Huma found it puzzling that men of Ergoth, the land from which his own knighthood had forcibly sprung, could look up to him as a champion.

Avondale seemed amused. When Huma protested that the stories were getting out of hand, he only smiled and replied that such was the true trial of every great legend, living up to his own reputation. “They need their heroes. It gives them hope – hope that somehow the darkness that is Takhisis will be defeated and they will be able to return to their loved ones.”

Occasionally, dragons would sweep in with some word of the war. Northern Ergoth and Hylo had been overrun. Huma grew anxious. He wondered if Kaz had continued north or if he had turned south to seek Huma. Even if the latter were the case, a minotaur would not be welcome in any town in this land. It was not just Kaz that Huma worried about; the battle-scarred easterner would do his utmost to assure he did not die alone.

Huma asked for news of Solamnia, but the dragons who arrived knew nothing of what had occurred there. There were rumors that the knights had been pushed back nearly half the distance to Vingaard Keep. Of the east, nothing could be ascertained.

They made camp near the ruins of a once-prosperous town, two days from Caergoth. The town had perished from plague in the early days of the war, and some people believed the newest wave had originated in its ruins. Avondale was of another mind.

“You will recall,” he said to Huma that same evening, “that I mentioned how particular I believed the plague was.”

“I remember.”

The noble tapped his fingers on the table in his tent. “I believe it is so particular because it is purposefully being directed by human agents.”

Huma did not want to believe that anyone would deliberately spread disease, but he knew something of the cult of Morgion. They were rumored to have agents in all societies, all organization, all countries, waiting for the command to unleash the deadly gifts of their god.

“Could you not be mistaken?” Huma would have preferred it that way.

“Perhaps.”

Huma was no longer confined to the camp itself. Avondale had applied that restriction on the first day, but had relaxed it once he was assured that Huma would not do something foolish, such as ride off without assistance. Thus it was that Huma wandered from the campsite, eventually picking his way toward the nearest ruins. The ruins disturbed him, as did anything associated with plague, but Huma knew that there would be no traces of disease after all this time.

Huma had had no intention of entering the remains of the ill-fated town – until he caught a glimpse of the four-legged shadow that quickly melted into the maze of decrepit buildings. It might have been merely a wolf, or perhaps a wild dog.

Drawing his sword, he stalked after the shadow-thing. He did not notice how deep into the ruins he had gone until he heard the scurrying of something among the desolate buildings. It was not the sound he would have expected of a four-legged creature. Training and experience told him that this new intruder walked on two legs.

Huma tried to make out shapes in the darkness. He saw the faint glow of two crimson eyes before they vanished into one of the buildings. The knight took a step toward the site.

He heard something skitter within the house to his left. Turning in that direction, Huma could make out nothing but more darkness.

A tall, formless mass bumped him as it moved swiftly past his backside. He whirled and was rewarded with a yelp of pain from the figure before it literally melted into the night. Huma rushed after it, sword before him.

There was no place the figure could have gone but through the battered doorway before the knight. Huma kicked away the remainder of the door and dove in.

The room was empty. He checked the other rooms of the small house. They, too, were inhabited only by the usual vermin. His quarry had vanished. He took a few angry steps toward the back of the building, kicking up dust as he moved. Behind the back of the building, he saw nothing but more rubble. Unless something were lying flat on the ground beneath those particular ruins, he suspected it must be elsewhere. There just was nowhere to hide out there.

The floating dust caused Huma to cough badly. He suddenly felt weak and nauseated, and it was a strain just to walk, much less hold his sword. In irritation, he threw the blade to the floor, raising even more aggravating dust. His armor was caked with the stuff, but he did not care. He was staggering now. The dust seemed everywhere, filling his eyes, nose, ears, and throat. He made it to the doorway and, with a sigh, slumped down and sat staring at the lifeless street. This, too, became much too tiring, and he decided that a nap would do much, much more good. The knight closed his eyes, and snores quickly followed.

Dark figures clad in long, enveloping cloaks and hoods seemed to form shadows around him. Their faces could not be seen beneath the deep hoods, and only one of them revealed hands. That one removed a small vial from his belt and uncorked it. With gentle care, he poured the contents on the floor. The contents, a reddish powder, reacted immediately with that which Huma had believed to be the dust of ages. The two hissed and steamed, canceling one another until nothing remained save the natural layer of gray powder that had accumulated through the years. The hooded figure resealed the bottle and turned toward the fallen knight. He snapped his fingers, and four of his companions scurried over to take hold of Huma.

Within a minute, the room was empty. Had anyone looked inside, they would have seen no indication of recent entry. There was no sign of the knight and no sign of his shadowy captors.

A mocking howl cut through the bleak air of the ghost town.

Chapter 12

Voices hissed incomprehensibly, seemingly in some sort of debate. It took the groggy knight several seconds before he came to realize that it was he the voices were arguing over. He wished his eyes would work so that he could see who was so concerned with his welfare.

Another voice, somehow familiar, cut in, full of anger. “Why do you delay?”

“He is marked.”

“Of what concern is that, Skularis?”

The one called Skularis hissed at some offense in the question. “There is something amiss when a Knight of Solamnia bears such a mark.”

A second voice, more like the croak of some great bullfrog, snapped, “He would not understand, Nightmaster!

This one on the ground is more one of us than him.”

The first speaker, the Nightmaster, tried again to explain. “We have agents among them. Powerful ones, indeed.” The other speaker croaked his agreement. Huma stirred a little. They seemed to think he bore some kind of important mark. All he had right now was a burning forehead.

“I am aware of what the mark means,” the familiar voice – where had he heard it? – said. “I am also aware that it is not going to kill him as I had originally thought. Excellent. He bears information I need. His very existence is important to me.”

“What would you have us do, then? We cannot do him harm, not if one of ours has marked him for protection.”

The evident outsider snarled, and Huma’s senses came alive as he recognized the sound. Only the dreadwolves made a sound like that.

Someone must have noticed the shifting of his body, for a gloved hand reached down and turned Huma’s head from left to right. The glove was quite rotten; it stank so badly that Huma instinctively pulled away from it. The one identified as Nightmaster chuckled obscenely.

“He is not one of us, but one of us has sought to protect him. This grows more and more interesting.”

“What shall we do?” the croaker asked.

“You must hide him, you wretched cadavers!” the outsider snarled. “Hide him until my servants can contact you! Has the plague taken your minds as well as your bodies?”

Huma’s eyes seemed willing to open at that point, just a crack.

Two figures resembling high mounds of moldy, stinking cloth stood conversing with – a dreadwolf. No one else. It took Huma’s fog-enshrouded mind several moments to realize that Galan Dracos – from his citadel far away somewhere – was using his unliving servant as his eyes, ears, and mouth in Ergoth.

That they were still somewhere in the ruins was only a guess. What little he could make out lent credence to that guess, for the room was filled with rubble and part of the ceiling was gone. Huma did not know how long he had been unconscious or how far they had dragged him.

Then the more menacing of the two ragged assailants lifted an arm, revealing a bony, scarred hand with the index finger pointed at the renegade’s messenger. “Have a care, mage. You have her blessing for now, but she is a fickle queen to those who fail her. You would do well to speak more civilly with those you need.”

The pale form of the dreadwolf bristled with barely contained fury as Dracos allowed his emotions to be transmitted through his servant. The smaller of the two hooded figures shuffled back, two blotchy hands held up in obvious fear.

The other, the Nightmaster, must have smiled, for his tone was full of mockery. “Your powers are fearsome to the fear-filled, but not to one who enjoys the protection of Morgion.”

Morgion! Huma was barely able to stifle the shock that leaped through his taut body. He was a prisoner of the cultists of Morgion, god of disease and decay!

“This is a foolish waste of time,” Dracos finally muttered.

“Agreed. Very well, mage. My brethren will keep this one for your lackeys, but only because it serves the Master’s goals to do so. Not because I fear your power.”

“Of course not.”

“But the mark —” said the croaker.

“There are times, brother, when we all must make sacrifices for the greater glory of Morgion.”

“And the Queen, of course,” added Dracos purposefully.

“And the Queen. Pity. I am still curious as to the reason for the mark.” Skularis put a hand to Huma’s forehead.

Huma reeled from the shock, feeling as if his very soul were being invaded. He cringed, but he had no room to maneuver away from the clawlike hand.

Quite suddenly, he was no longer in the ruins. A kaleidoscope of sights and sounds enveloped him. Huma felt no fright. A part of him knew this state was only in his mind, though he could not explain how this should calm him. Huma thought he could hear the sounds of horses riding into battle, the clank of armor, the cries of battle, and steel against steel. He saw a vision of three knights. Each wore a symbol of the knighthood: the crown, the sword, and the rose. They all wore visors, but Huma knew somehow the two in back could only be the twin gods Habbakuk and Kiri-Jolith. Two of the Solamnic Triumvirate – which meant that he who stood before them …

With a horrible abruptness, Huma was wrenched from that vision and returned to the real world once more. Had he not been gagged, he would have screamed, for the bony, disease-ridden hand pulled sharply away from him, seeming to take strips of his flesh as it did. Through blurred eyes, Huma could see the two cloth-enveloped figures staring down at him.

“I could not penetrate his mind. He is shielded through sheer willpower alone. Fascinating.”

“And the mark?” croaked the second.

“No longer there. It was too weak. He is too much a pawn of the prolonger of pain, that which fools call Life. He is not one of us – could never be one of us.”

From behind them, the voice of Dracos issued forth once more from the maw of the dreadwolf. “Then there can be no more hesitation.”

“None. He is yours when your servants come.” The cleric snapped his fingers. Huma’s eyes chose that moment to clear. Hooded figures emerged from the darkness, disease-wracked ghouls like the dead of a battlefield come back to some semblance of life.

“Take him to the catacombs. Bind him to the altar.”

“No sacrifices!”

Even Huma could not miss the curling of the cleric’s lip. “Have no fear, cur. He will be alive and well. It shall be interesting to see if you have better luck than I did.”

Dracos had no reply for that, or at least the dreadwolf repeated no message. Huma struggled, but his bonds, held together. Four of the cloaked figures grabbed him roughly and lifted. Their combined odor was nearly overwhelming.

He had hoped to get some idea where they were and where they were going, but his view was obscured by the moth-eaten sleeve of one of his bearers. He suspected that they still were quite close to the building where he had foolishly fallen victim to one of the cult’s traps. Huma knew something of the followers of Morgion. They were expert at keeping their plots and membership secret. That they were taking him to the catacombs meant that they lived beneath Caergoth itself, a frightening revelation. Small wonder no trace of the origins of the plague could be found. It was not from something within or near the city, but beneath it.

A breeze wafted some of the stench from his nostrils. Huma assumed that they must have stepped from one of the ruined buildings back into the night. He sought desperately for some plan of escape, suspecting that the catacombs would be virtually impossible to traverse. But he was tightly bound and gagged, and his situation seemed hopeless now.

The group had traveled a short distance from the building when Huma heard what appeared to be the hoot of a night bird. The ragged figures came to an abrupt halt as they belatedly realized what Huma had recognized instantly.

There was a hiss as something hurtled through the air and then one of Huma’s bearers went down, an arrow in his chest. The knight had time to brace himself as the others lost their grip on him and he fell to the ground face up.

Then it was pandemonium as brilliant light left the hooded figures with nowhere to hide. Well-placed arrows took down two more before the cultists could get their bearings. The one called Skularis ran past Huma’s field of vision. He was foregoing the honors of command for the safety of fleeing. It was a short-lived flight, however; not one, but three arrows caught him in the back. The Nightmaster wobbled like a mad puppet and collapsed in a heap.

Armored figures were now rushing out even as the light dimmed. Of the cloaked villains – there had been more than a dozen, Huma was shocked to realize – only four were still standing. They lacked any substantial weapons, and the first soldiers to wade into the combat made the mistake of believing themselves safe from harm. That mistake was made evident when one of the dark clerics pulled forth a small pouch and threw it at the nearest armored figure. Huma could hear the man’s scream and the shocked cries of other soldiers as all the ravages of the plague seemed to occur within the space of seconds.

A familiar figure stepped before him and leaned down to test the bonds. “What a fool I was! I should have known …”

The archers were taking over. By the time Avondale had finished cutting Huma’s bonds, the last of the cloaked menaces lay dead.

“The dreadwolf? Did you get it?”

“Dreadwolf?” Avondale scanned the area worriedly. “I have not seen it!”

“My sword!” Huma’s weapon lay half-buried under one of the cultists. He tugged at it mindlessly, his only concern that the four-legged horror must be stopped. Somehow, impossibly, the creature had evaded the fighting and was escaping. Huma did not want the dreadwolf tracking him down again and transmitting to its master the knight’s location and activities.

He heard Lord Avondale call after him, but he ignored him. He had to see the thing destroyed.

A scrabbling of running feet alerted him. He followed the sound at full speed, only barely missing numerous holes and mounds that threatened to send him flying if he made a misstep. He did not think of the dangers.

Huma leaped over the remains of a stone wall. The plague had not directly caused all the damage around him; the crazed riots and torching of plagued homes had done that.

He landed on rubble. Suddenly, his foot slipped from beneath him and he was falling backward. By the strongest of efforts, he succeeded in keeping his grip on the sword. The errant foot twisted beneath him, and he gritted his teeth in pain.

As he lay there, stunned, the fearsome visage thrust itself into his face. The long, yellowed fangs hovered near his throat, and the blood-red tongue flickered in and out of the massive jaws. The sightless eyes revealed only death to the trapped knight. The dreadwolf’s front claws pressed sharply into Huma’s chest.

“Rather would I deprive the mage of his puppet friend!” The jaws closed in on the knight’s throat.

Huma swung the blade hard against the dreadwolf. It was an awkward angle, and the cut he inflicted was negligible. But it did throw the beast off his chest.

The dreadwolf rolled over once and landed on its feet. The crimson eyes glowed fiercely, and the thing’s lips curled back in hatred. Huma raised his sword high.

Suddenly, the creature burst into flames. One second it had stood there, preparing to strike, the next it was a fireball. Huma looked on in amazement, and then noticed a new figure stepping out from behind the ruins of what had once been a fairly large inn.

“Magius!”

The mage quickly raised a finger to his lips and indicated the need for silence. He was thinner, and much of the vanity was gone from his manner. The once-brilliant gold sheen of his hair was now a miserable brown, and it was cut much shorter. Had it been burned away? Magius was also wearing something else Huma had not seen him dressed in since the early days of training – a crimson robe.

“Come! I have laid a confusion spell on Lord Avondale’s men, but it will not be long before they realize which way you really ran!”

“But —” Huma knew it was madness to follow his old friend again, but the bonds forged strong yesterday were just as powerful today.

“Come!” Magius repeated urgently.

Huma followed.

They moved with astonishing speed through the town, eventually coming to the far southern end. Two horses awaited them there. Magius indicated that the more massive of the beasts was for the knight. Only when they were well on their way did Magius speak.

“We must ride hard for some time. There is a Solamnic outpost to bypass.”

“Outpost?” Somewhat unfamiliar with regions south of Solamnia, the news came as a great shock to Huma. Knights of Solamnia! In Ergoth!

“Was that you who unleashed the light?”

“Yes,” Magius replied. “I’ll explain in the morning, after I am sure we have lost whatever pursuit: the Ergothian no doubt has organized already!”

Huma slowed the horse. “Why are we running from Lord Avondale?”

The mage’s eyes flashed. “Are you blind? Do you think the Ergothian was aiding you out of the goodness of his soul?”

Huma refrained from snapping back that, yes, he had come to trust the noble. Where was the crime in that?

“You told him that there was something in the mountains, didn’t you? You told him about the path!”

“You’re babbling, Magius. I don’t even know about any path.”

Magius grimaced, and Huma realized that the mage had let something slip. The spellcaster recovered quickly, though, and said, “You told him there is something in the mountains to the southwest that could bring victory against Takhisis. He is first and foremost an Ergothian noble, Huma. Ergothian nobles are noted for their willingness to do whatever they must in order to increase their own prestige and power. Think what you have told him. What a great prize it would be for him to deliver to his emperor. Think about how the emperor would reward the man who succeeded in bringing peace to Ansalon at long last. An Ergothian noble would kill for something as valuable as what we seek.”

The words – or perhaps it was the tone – almost seemed hypnotic. Huma kept telling himself that Lord Avondale was a good man. Yet would his loyalty not be first to his emperor rather than to a wandering knight? He had offered Huma safe passage, but only if the knight first traveled with him. Huma shook the madness from his head. He was not sure anymore what was right or wrong, except that he wanted to find that mountain. He was now headed that direction, and it seemed pointless to turn back now.

He did not notice the bitter smile that crept onto the worn face of the mage as the latter turned forward once more.

With Magius guiding them, they rode a twisted path through the plains and wooded lands southwest of Caergoth.

It was near dawn before the two finally came to a halt. Magius revealed a small, nearly hidden lake. They tied the horses near good grazing. The mage went to sleep shortly after – again without explaining things. Huma propped himself against a tree and sat staring out at the calm lake. He pondered the renegade mage who now wanted Huma as badly as he wanted Magius. Dracos.

The dreadwolf had been reduced to ash, leaving Galan Dracos without his spy and blind to the doings of Huma and Magius, at least for the time being. With the war taking so much of his personal effort, the renegade magic-user had been forced to rely on his spies for too much. Huma suspected that Dracos knew at least as much as Huma did about what Magius sought, and perhaps more. Somewhere, sometime, there would be more spies – and Huma had no doubt that sooner or later Galan Dracos would temporarily turn from his many other tasks and personally endeavor to put an end to both his enemies and their quest.

He picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the center of the lake – only to watch it come flying back out at him. Huma tried to stand, but his legs buckled. What had he walked into this time? he wondered angrily.

Abruptly, a woman’s head popped up from the edge of the lake. Though slightly green, it was very lovely. The eyes were narrow slits, as if the woman had just awakened. She had a tiny, pert nose and long, full lips. When she rose from the water, Huma saw that she was slim and long-legged, although she would not stand even as high as his shoulders. Her sole garment, a thin gown, was soaked and clung to every curve. A nymph. He had heard stories of them. They were said to be of the Age of Dreams, when there was no recorded history. Whether they were a race was debatable. They were very rarely seen.

“Hello, manling.” Her voice was melodious, like a small forest bird’s. She smiled, and Huma’s face reddened. Still, attractive though she was, another female form, Gwyneth’s, superimposed itself on his imagination. He managed to get to his feet.

“Hello.” It took him some time to build up the nerve to reply. The nymph disturbed him even as she attracted him. Such creatures, legend said, were not only playful, but deadly. More than one man had been lured to his demise, if there was any truth in the ancient tales. Huma’s hand stroked the pommel of his sword. Her kind was magical, and, despite his friendship with Magius, Huma still shared some of the knighthood’s distrust of sorcery.

Huma looked down by his side and was surprised to find that Magius still slept. Huma suspected the sleep was no longer natural, and he shuddered.

The nymph gave a surprised laugh. “I thought you were someone else,” she said. “I like you, too, though.”

“Oh?” He tried his best to be casual, though his heart and mind were racing. “Why did you think I was someone else?” If others visited the lake, Huma did not wish to remain here long. Should they be anything like the nymph, Huma suspected he would stand no chance if it came to conflict. His hand involuntarily gripped the handle of his weapon.

“You look like Buoron. All that silly metal. He comes to visit me. Would you like to see my home?”

Huma stepped back anxiously. Her home, according to what little he knew, was probably at the bottom of the lake. If she decided to compel him … “No, thank you,” he hurriedly answered. “I would not wish to impose.”

She pouted. “You even sound like Buoron.”

“Were you expecting him?” Huma glanced quickly around the edge of the lake, half-expecting to see a heavily armored figure come crashing through the trees at any moment.

The nymph walked onto the shore. Huma turned to Magius, but the mage still slept.

“He won’t wake until I let him. I don’t like him.”

The knight’s brow wrinkled. “You know him, too?”

She waved off the spellcaster as inconsequential. “Not him. His image.”

“Where?” Huma did not know what to make of this creature. She seemed fragile, but her power was strong enough to have trapped Magius with ease. Perhaps that would not have been possible if Magius had not been so exhausted, but it still bespoke great ability.

“I see it in my mirror. It shows me what others are dreaming. It gets so boring out here. I miss the cavern builders.”

“Cavern builders?”

“The ones that dig in the ground, silly. You know, short funny men.”

Dwarves. It was maddening to try to make sense of some of the things the nymph said.

She was standing close to him now, innocently leaning just close enough to unnerve him. “Are you sure you would not like to come see my home? I won’t let you drown as long as you do not get boring.”

There was the real trap. How many males had succumbed to that beauty and followed her down, only to find themselves trapped in a sea cave? Instinctively, he uttered a prayer to Paladine.

The nymph stepped away. “I wish you would not do that!”

Although not technically evil, she was not a creature of Paladine, nor Gilean, either. Therefore, true prayers to either, could annoy her or even drive her away.

Huma was about to apologize when he heard the sound of a heavy horse coming through the brush not far away. He tried to rise and grip his sword.

“Why, here comes Buoron. I hope you two will fight. I have not watched a good fight in centuries.”

The horse and rider broke through the foliage and onto the narrow strip of plain surrounding the tiny lake. The man wore a cloak over most of his body, but Huma could see the glint of armor underneath. The newcomer did not notice them at first. When he did, he merely gaped at Huma. The cloak slid open, and Huma was given his first good view of the armor beneath. Huma looked from armor to face, and back to armor again. He recalled Magius’s hurried mention of an outpost somewhere in southern Ergoth. A Solamnic outpost.

The nymph smiled sweetly. “See why I mistook you for Buoron? You even wear the same armor.”

It was true. Buoron was a Knight of the Crown.

Chapter 13

Buoron turned to gaze at the nymph. He was a rough-featured man, neither handsome nor ugly, but weathered. A deep sadness was in his eyes. Oddly, he was also minus the impressive mustache that most knights sported. Instead, he wore a black beard clipped in the same style as Lord Avondale. Huma wondered how long the other Solamnic knight had lived in this region.

“Leave us now,” Buoron said to the nymph.

“Will you not fight?”

Buoron seemed disgusted by the question. “He is one of my comrades. I will not fight him.”

“Oh.” She frowned, then brightened. “Will you fight the mage?”

“Mage?” The other knight brushed an errant lock of hair from his face and looked at the slumbering bundle. “He must be sorely tired to sleep through all this.”

“She’s put him under,” Huma explained.

A sigh. The knight seemed to expect this. “Why?”

The nymph pouted. “I do not like him. He is one of the dreamers I showed you.”

“Is he now?” Buoron straightened, his interest keenly awakened. “Which one?”

“The one who keeps dying.”

Huma’s eyes narrowed. At one point in their travels, Magius had revealed that his death scene now repeated itself constantly in his dreams. The nymph could not have known that. Or could she? Did she really see others’ dreams?

“Release him,” the rider ordered.

“Do you not want to sit with me?” She shifted all too purposefully. Buoron’s face reddened again.

“No. Leave us. This is important.”

The water creature put two delicate hands on her hips and gave an angry look. “I do not like you anymore. I no longer want you to come visit me.”

She ran off into the water and, when it proved deep enough, dove beneath the surface. There was nothing to indicate that she was anything but human, save for the slight greenish cast to her skin and the amazing fluidity of her movements. Huma wondered how she breathed.

Buoron muttered, “She does not mean what she said. She’s been angry with me more than a dozen times before, and each time she forgets before I’ve drawn another breath. I believe it’s the nature of her kind, though I’ve never seen another.”

Huma looked down at the still-slumbering Magius. “Will she remember to release her victim?”

“Give her a few moments. She can hold onto the spell for only a brief time longer. You know my name, brother of the Order. What might yours be?”

Huma straightened. “I am Huma, Knight of the Crown, out of Vingaard Keep.”

“Vingaard!” The name was spoken as if the name of Paladine himself. “Have they broken through at last? Is the war finally coming to a close?”

Huma shook his head and then stared at the ground. Quickly, he described what had happened. Buoron was not pleased.

“One of her games,” Buoron said with a gesture toward the water, “is to take the dreamer’s mirror, an ancient artifact, shake it, and see whose dreams she gets.” The bearded knight shivered. “The dreams of the Dragonqueen’s servants are darker than you could ever imagine.”

“Has she always lived here?”

Buoron shrugged. He did not like speaking about the nymph. His relationship, no matter what it was, was something the knighthood would not condone. “She was here when I joined the outpost. Her treasures are incredibly ancient.” He paused. “I came upon her by accident. The other knights never come this far. I was chasing a stag, and I had no desire to lose it. It is not often we eat such splendid fare at the outpost. For one reason or another, the stag rushed through here. I fell when my steed came to an abrupt halt, and when I finally had cleared the pain from my head, I found myself looking into her eyes.”

Huma could read the embarrassment in the other knight’s features. “You need have no fear, brother of the Order. I will tell no one of this lake.”

Buoron shrugged. “They know, more or less. I have made no secret of my comings and goings, and I have done little more than sit with her. A nymph is not real. I would want something more.” Magius began to stir. The other knight pointed at him. “Your sorcerous friend wakes. I doubt he will take kindly to having been kept under a glamour spell all this time.”

Huma glanced down. Magius was not yet truly awake, but any decision on Huma’s part would have to be swift. “He need not know.”

The bearded knight said nothing, but gratitude flared in his eyes. It was obvious to Huma that he cared more about the water nymph than he had indicated.

Magius leaped up as some sense told him that he and Huma were no longer alone. He turned to stare at the newcomer.

“Greetings, Red Robe.” Buoron’s salutation was crisp and functional. Magius received only the respect due one who traveled with a fellow knight.

The mage had recovered. He bowed low in the manner so typical of him and returned the greeting. “My greetings to you, Knight of Solamnia. I had no idea another of the noble knighthood was so far south.”

Huma’s expression did not change, but he was disturbed by yet another lie from his friend. When they had fled from the ruins, Magius had commented on his desire to bypass the outpost.

“We have an outpost down here,” Buoron replied. “A small one and often forgotten. I do not doubt it will be abandoned as the years pass.”

“Yes.” The magic-user was visibly uninterested. Instead, he was staring down at the spot where he had been sleeping and then at the lake. “My apologies for not rising sooner. It is unlike me. I did not mean to be impolite.”

Buoron fidgeted and his horse, a cream-colored charger, stepped nervously about as it felt the shifting of its rider. “Not at all. It happens often here. I, myself, have fallen into the very same sort of sleep.”

“It is still no excuse.”

“How far is it to the outpost?” Huma finally asked, causing Magius to glare at him.

“Not far. An hour’s ride. You must come, of course. Despite the terrible news you bring, your presence would be appreciated.”

Magius chuckled enigmatically.

The other knight was taking a distinct dislike to the spellcaster. Pretending not to have heard the mage’s laugh, Buoron indicated the duo’s mounts.

“These beasts appear to have been ridden all night. They need some proper care if you plan to move on.” He was careful not to ask the purpose of their journey, assuming that Huma would inform him if and when it was proper.

The mage gave in. “Very well. It shall have to be a short stop, though. We have far to travel.”

“Um.” That was all that Buoron would say in reply, but he watched both men with interest, Huma noted, as they untied their animals and mounted them. When they were ready, he pointed to the west. “That way. Ride on ahead. I’ll be only a moment.”

Huma and Magius urged their steeds through the trees and brush. The former glanced back and saw Buoron dismount and remove a small wooden carving from one of his saddlebags. The water nearby began to bubble, and the head of the nymph broke the surface. Then Huma’s view was cut off by the trees. When his companion turned to him, the knight reacted as if his thoughts had been on the trail ahead.

It was not more than a minute or two before Buoron came riding up behind them. He nodded to Huma and immediately took the lead.

As they rode, Huma plied him with questions about the outpost. “Are there many outposts here?”

“We are one of only two. The other lies on the western side of that stretch of mountains.” Buoron pointed to a chain of peaks that became visible only when the trio of riders emerged onto the top of a hill. “Essentially, we oversee the eastern half and they the west. There is little down here to interest the Dragonqueen, though. We have been reduced to chasing would-be brigands when we should be charging into the lines of the foul ogres.”

“Are you a large outpost? I’d not known there was anyone here.”

Buoron laughed, bitterly, it seemed. “Neither did I, until I was ordered down here some five years ago. No, we’re not a large outpost. Eighty knights trying to keep watch on a countryside rivaling the size of Solamnia. We had more once.”

Huma did not need elaboration. Now, with the war going so badly, they truly were cut off from all others save their counterparts on the western side of the mountains. They could not abandon the outposts and go riding north to join the struggle. They had been ordered down here, and they would stay until that order was changed. Duty was something ingrained into every knight. Rennard had expressed the importance of that, time and time again.

“Have you ever been to the mountains?” Magius asked abruptly.

“No.” Buoron had no desire to converse with the spellcaster.

“Has anyone?”

“Only to the outer peaks. We stay away from the inner range.”

Magius appeared quite interested. “Why is that?”

“The paths are unsafe. That’s all.”

Huma watched his companion’s face fall. Magius was probing for something more out of the ordinary.

This deep into southern Ergoth, it was difficult to believe a war raged in the land. To be sure, the skies were as overcast as they had been in the north, but there was more of a peace in the woods and fields. It was a false peace, Huma realized, for it would vanish the instant the Dragonqueen’s hordes were finished with Solamnia. With Solamnia gone, the Queen of Darkness would sweep over the rest of the continent in less than a year.

“We are almost there.”

Huma took his first look at the Solamnic outpost. It was not a towering edifice like Vingaard Keep. The entire structure was made of wood, treated so that flames could not turn it into a deathtrap. The walls surrounding the complex appeared to be more than four times Huma’s height. The top edge was consistently punctuated by gaps set aside for archers. Only one building was visible over the wall, a watchtower upon which even now a sentry was standing, his attention fixed on the approaching trio. The man raised a shout and pointed toward them. Buoron did not call out, but he gave the sentry a weary wave.

Huma glanced at Magius; the mage was staring longingly at the distant mountains.

There were renewed cries when the sentry noticed that one of the two strangers was a fellow knight. The wooden gates swung open as the three neared them, and it appeared that nearly all of the outpost’s inhabitants were coming out to welcome the newcomers.

“Buoron! Back so soon? What have you brought with you?”

The tall, elderly speaker must have been a knight even when Lord Oswal was a child. He was deeply wrinkled and his voice shook slightly, but his moves were graceful and Huma suspected he could still handle a sword. Unlike the majority of the knights, who seemed to favor Ergothian beards, the aged knight still sported a traditional, if somewhat silver, mustache. He was a Knight of the Rose, the only one Huma could see upon first inspection.

“Hail, Lord Taggin. Two travelers in need of rest, one of them a brother to our ranks. He has news of the utmost importance.”

Taggin nodded grimly. “I’d thought as much.” To the rest of the assembled knights, he said, “Return to your duties! Remember that you are Knights of Solamnia, not a gaggle of hungry geese!”

Some disappointment showed in the faces of the knights, many of whom, Buoron explained, had been assigned to the outpost for nearly ten years. Taggin had been there twice as long. In fact, he had manned the outpost by himself for many years.

Huma could not help smiling. Somehow, he felt that he was among a different breed of knights than those back at Vingaard Keep. They were less strict with the rules, more willing to bend to circumstances.

As it turned out, the outpost included only three buildings. One was the tower, which also served as armory and stable. The second was a type of longhouse, which Huma recognized as the living quarters of the company. The third and, surprisingly enough, the most insignificant-looking of the three was Taggin’s command center and quarters. All were made of wood. To Huma, raised in a village, it was more like home than the proud Keep had ever been.

The outpost’s builders had planned as well as they could. Huma noted that the structure was close enough to the woods to allow the knights easy access to hunting and to gathering fuel for fires, yet was far enough into the plains so that any attempted assault would force the enemy to rush across long stretches of flat, open field. Water was provided by a small stream and a deep well. Later, Huma would discover that the knights even grew their own crops in a fortified extension behind the rest of the outpost. Again, Huma could not help marvel at the differences between the knighthood here and back in Solamnia.

Taggin ordered Buoron to deliver the two over to him as soon as they were clean and fed. Magius quite bluntly stated that he would talk to no one until he was finally allowed some rest. The commander frowned at the mage’s arrogant manner but conceded the necessity.

Huma awoke to the sound of men preparing to ride out. He glanced briefly toward Magius, who stirred restlessly and then turned to the nearest window. The mage peered out. The sun was going down. A number of fully armored knights were riding out of the gate, more than one armed with weighted nets in addition to their normal weaponry. For a patrol, it contained a large number of horsemen.

He saw Buoron walking past the doorway and signaled to him. The knight waved to him and turned back. Huma began to dress. Buoron entered.

“Are you better now?” The other knight was talking low.

“Much. I’ve not slept this long in weeks.” Huma was silent until he was fully clad. Then he and Buoron stepped outside. By this time, the last of the riders had left and the gates were closed.

Huma indicated the gates. “Why the heavy patrol? Is there activity by the ogres?”

Buoron shook his head. “I am beginning to doubt if there will ever be. No, this problem is more local. We do a little trade with the Qualinesti elves, though they generally tend to stay to themselves, like most of their kind.”

“One of the few who meet with us regularly told us a beast has been lurking about this general region.” The bearded knight smiled. “We wanted to ask them what they were doing so far away from their own lands, but our relationship would not stand the strain. Instead, we thanked them and began to investigate.”

“Did you see this creature?”

“We simply call him the Beast. He’s crafty, perhaps an ogre scout, even. Three times he’s given us the slip. Tonight, though, they think they can hunt him down to his lair. With any luck, the patrol will take him alive.”

“For what purpose?”

“If he’s a spy, he might have information. If he’s some sort of animal, Taggin still wants to see him. The Qualinesti are concerned about his presence; the commander wants to see why.”

Lord Taggin was finishing up his daily routine when Buoron brought Huma to speak to him. The elderly knight greeted his visitor amicably – protocol was unimportant out here – but he seemed nervous.

“You have no idea how it stands at present?”

Huma shook his head. “None. The hope was to regroup. That is all I know.”

“I see.” Taggin stared at him with penetrating eyes. After several moments, the elder knight said, “Nothing we can do. It will be best to break the news to the men first thing in the morning, Buoron.”

Buoron, who had been standing quietly through the entire talk, did not hesitate. “I’ll do it, Lord Taggin.”

“Fine.” The commander cleared off everything from the table he used for his work. “You are excused, lad.”

Huma turned as Buoron did, but Taggin immediately stopped him. “Not you, Knight Huma. I still have a few things to ask you. Be seated, please.”

Nothing was said until Buoron had departed. Huma felt uncomfortable alone in the presence of Taggin but was disciplined enough not to show it. Taggin tapped his fingers on the table. After evidently gathering his thoughts, he spoke.

“What is the purpose of your travels?”

“Milord?”

The nervousness of the senior knight had vanished. His voice and stare were both steady. “Don’t hedge, Huma. This is not Vingaard. I will not hold you to anything you say. This is between us. I like to think that I’m a good enough judge of character, and I trust you despite the company you keep.”

“Thank you, milord.”

Taggin smiled ruefully at the politeness. “I’m already well aware of my status and especially of my age. Please, call me Taggin. Now then, what is your purpose for coming here? I can think of a hundred different routes that would have taken you back to Vingaard long before now. Why head south? Is it the mage? Despite his less-than-savory attitude, I gather the two of you are close.”

“We grew up together.” Huma was hesitant about expanding on his friendship with Magius any more than necessary.

“Did you? Unusual combination. Still, a man is more than symbols or robes, be they white, red, or even black.”

“He is not evil, Lo – Taggin.”

The outpost commander smiled slightly. “I did not say he was.”

Huma began to break down in the presence of understanding. “He fears for his life, but he also thinks to end this war.”

“Which was his first priority?”

“I —” Huma tensed. “I would have to say his life is more important to him.”

“Understandable. Providing, of course, it is not to the detriment of the world.”

Huma had no answer for that.

Lord Taggin stood up and paced around the room. “Why have you decided to join him on this – shall we say ‘quest’ for want of a better word? Is it merely out of friendship?”

“Yes. No. Both.”

The elder knight raised an eyebrow. “Both?”

To explain his answer, Huma first had to tell Taggin of the Test and how it had affected Magius. The Knight of the Rose listened patiently as Huma told him about Magius’s premonition of his own death. Taggin’s expression changed little.

“You’ve been quite honest with me,” the commander said when Huma had finished. “I’d like to digest it and then speak to you again come the morrow.”

Now that it was over, Huma was sweating. “Yes, milord. Thank you.”

Taggin sat down in his chair. “I’ve lived a long life, Huma. I’ve seen more than you think. I want you to consider that tonight. Dismissed.”

Huma saluted and left. Once outside, he exhaled sharply. He found Buoron waiting for him.

“You’ve not eaten for some time,” the bearded knight finally said. “Would you like some nourishment?”

Huma smiled thankfully. “I could use some food. Magius might as well.”

“He can fend for himself. He’s a magic-user.”

The comment cut deep. Huma glanced back at the knights’ quarters. At last, he replied, “He’s probably still asleep. When he’s hungry, he’ll awaken.”

“Fine.” Buoron led him away, and Huma did not resist.

Night grew, aged, and finally passed away. Magius remained asleep. Huma decided that the mage must be purposely building his strength. Magius might have been dead, judging by the way he appeared, all pale and nearly as stiff as a corpse. Huma had checked his pulse, though, and discovered nothing wrong.

As the first hour of day passed, the sentry gave a shout that the patrol was home at last. Men rushed to open the gates, speculation on the success of the hunt rampant. Huma found Buoron and joined the rest. Taggin stepped out of his quarters and merely watched.

The first man at the gate peered through a spyhole and turned back in excitement. “They’ve got something!”

Immediately, Taggin walked toward them. “Everyone on duty return to his post! By the Triumvirate, this is a military establishment, not a circus! You’ll see the thing soon enough, if it’s truly a beast!”

The gates were opened, and the weary but triumphant party rode in. A number of them appeared wounded, but Buoron whispered that all had returned.

The Beast was not visible, having been wrapped up in weighted nets. Some patches of brown fur were evident, but the nature of the Beast was hidden; the creature had been forced into a ball. It snorted and growled.

Taggin had the Beast dragged to a pen, which had been built days before just for this event. While Huma looked on, several knights took hold of the bound mass and pulled it into the pen. The Beast squirmed and some of its wrapping came loose. The knights hurried out of the pen while the creature continued to try to free itself.

The patrol leader came up to Lord Taggin and saluted. “Found it in the gully. Killed a stag recently and was eating it. Sensed us but by then we had surrounded it. First men tried to net it, and it pulled them in. Got more men wounded trying to rescue the others. For a moment, I thought we were going to have to kill it. Fortunately, we did not have to. It tripped in the tangle of nets, and we had it.”

The elder knight nodded. “Paladine watched over you, that is obvious. I’m glad no one was killed. The cage should hold it now.”

“Best not to call it a cage. A prison would be a more proper term, milord.”

“Prison?” Beside him, Huma and Buoron exchanged glances. “What have we got here?”

The Beast was still unrecognizable, having succeeded in freeing its limbs but not in uncovering itself. It was obvious now, though, that some of its growls were actually muffled words.

The patrol leader looked overly proud. “A spy from the Dragonqueen! One of her ugly creatures from the north. The war has finally come to us.”

There was a gleam in the knight’s eye that Huma, at least, found disturbing.

Taggin stepped closer to the prison cage. The Beast had finally begun to tear away the nets still covering it.

“Sargas be damned! I’ll tear all of you apart!”

Huma froze. Buoron looked at him, possibly wondering why the sight of the Beast so astonished Huma. Having recently come from the north, Huma should have been familiar with such creatures.

The Beast pulled the last net from its horned head. It turned on its captors, breathing heavily. With blood-chilling fury, it shook the bars of its new prison.

“Fools! Cowards! Let me fight one of you! Give me a fair chance! Where is your vaunted honor?”

From its present angle, the Beast could not see Huma. Huma, though, could see the Beast quite well. He stared wide-eyed at the furious man-beast and wondered just how he was going to save Kaz from execution.

Chapter 14

It was to Buoron he first confided his secret.

“You were fortunate that no one else noticed,” said the bearded knight. “Your mouth fairly hung open when he was brought in.”

Huma shook his head. “I was stunned. The last I had seen of Kaz, he was riding north and I was riding south. We had a great number of pursuers following us. I was apparently the main prize, for they followed me.”

“And paid the price,” Buoron remarked quietly. Huma had told him of that incident, without any embellishment. It had not failed to impress the other knight.

“I am amazed that Kaz is here, and has been for at least a couple of days more than I have. He must have turned south almost immediately and just missed me. After we separated, I was forced to let loose my horse in the hope I might lead my pursuers farther astray. I was on foot for some time after that. Still, he must have been riding hard to have gotten all the way here. He must have lost his horse soon after.”

“Did he know where you were heading?”

Huma thought long. It seemed ages ago. “In general. Enough, at least, to bear southwest.”

Buoron stared out a window in the direction of the cage. Kaz was slumped in sullen anger. “There are many paths that an expert warrior could use to travel safely. He must have discovered our existence down here as well and assumed that you would stop here. Perhaps he even assumed this was your destination.”

That made some sense to Huma. “I did mention wanting to return to the knighthood. He may have assumed that I would go here if I could not make it back to Solamnia.”

“Or —” Buoron hesitated. “Or he really is a spy, and this was his intention all along.”

“No.” Huma was unsure about much lately, but the minotaur’s loyalty was not an issue.

“You may have trouble convincing the others of that. A minotaur is a minotaur. They will question him and, whether or not he speaks, will probably execute him.”

“For what? He’s done nothing but defend himself.”

Buoron grimaced. “Haven’t you heard what I was saying? He’s a minotaur. They do not need any other reason.”

Huma paced. “I must speak with Taggin.”

“Do it soon, then. They will start the questioning today, likely after morning vigils.”

“Will I find Taggin in his quarters now?”

“I think not. Being a Knight of the Rose, he will be at his daily prayers by now. It was only because of the hunt that he delayed at all this morning. Speaking of which, have you eased your mind of late?”

Huma stopped his pacing and whitened. “No. I’ve not. It would serve me right if Paladine turned his eye from me forever.”

Buoron shook his head. “I think Paladine is a little more forgiving than that. Come.”

Taggin was unable to see Huma after prayers. The commanding knight was conferring with his seconds and with the patrol leader. Huma knew better than to demand entrance; it would only hurt his chances of convincing them to free Kaz.

With the leadership busy, Huma decided to face the minotaur. It was not right that he pretend not to know the massive easterner. Kaz had always treated him honestly.

The minotaur’s place of confinement was a cage like those used by traveling shows to contain their exotic animals: a metal cage with bars, a single gate, and grass and straw piled on the floor. Kaz did not pace to and fro. Instead, he was sitting, staring sullenly at the meat and grain mixture his jailers had left him. It was hardly an appetizing dish, and Huma wondered if it tasted as horrible as it looked.

Two knights guarded the cage, and they quickly blocked Huma’s way.

“May I question the prisoner?”

“That is for the Lord Commander to do. Any who wish to watch may do so.”

“May I at least speak to him?”

The two knights looked at one another. They were no doubt wondering why one of their number would wish to speak with a minotaur prisoner. At last, the one who had spoken the first time replied, “Not without the Lord Commander’s permission.”

By this time, Kaz had heard the voices. He was slow in reacting, possibly because he was not sure whose voice he was hearing. Then, he suddenly turned and leaped up against the bars.

“Huma!”

The two sentries started, and the one apparently in charge turned and banged a mailed fist against the bars – far enough away that the minotaur could not grab it. “Be silent, Beast! You’ll have your chance to talk when the inquisition meets.”

Kaz snorted angrily. “I had thought the knights an honorable band, but I see that honor is something very few of them possess!” He raised a long, muscular arm through the bars, his hand open as if in supplication. “Huma! Free me from this cage!”

The knights stared at Huma with narrowed eyes. “He seems to know you well. How is that?”

“We have met and traveled together. He is not the Dragonqueen’s slave. He is his own creature. He is a friend.”

“A friend?” The guards looked at Huma in amazement – and much disbelief. Other knights were beginning to gather, curious as to what the shouting was all about.

The other guard finally spoke. “Perhaps, Caleb, we should notify Taggin.”

“I will not interrupt him now.” Caleb, a tall, plump man with a carnivorous look, pointed at Huma. “If I did not know better, I might think you a spy for consorting with mages and minotaurs. As it is, I think you are just a fool. If you want to speak to this creature, ask Taggin. I would lock you up until the inquisition, if I had my way.”

There were murmurs of agreement, and Huma was startled. He had gone from favored visitor to seeming outcast in the space of a few seconds.

“What is going on here?”

Everyone, even Kaz, froze at the sound of that voice. It was Lord Taggin, clad in his formal dress armor. At least twenty years had slipped from his face. He was now the very image of authority.

“You men have become rabble of late. I can see that I am going to have to make some changes.” Taggin turned to Huma. “I’m told you have some knowledge of this minotaur.” Behind the commander, Buoron looked down. “We will begin the questioning in half an hour. I expect you to be present and to have your facts prepared. Understood?”

“Yes, milord.”

Taggin turned to the sentries. “As for you, there are tenets of the knighthood that you seem to be failing. I expect both of you to learn from this incident.”

The Knight of the Rose did not wait for them to answer. Instead, he walked past them and up to the cage. Kaz glared down at him. Taggin seemed unimpressed.

“Know this, minotaur. The basics of the knighthood stay the same. Your hearing will be impartial. You will be given every chance to prove yourself and to prove what this knight says of you. I will promise that.”

Kaz did not reply, save for the mere ghost of a nod. Taggin spun around and headed toward his quarters.

*

“You never cease to amaze me with your ability to become the center of attention, Huma.”

Huma and Buoron looked up as they entered the knights’ living quarters. Magius, in full splendor in his robes of red, stared at them from across the room. Again, Huma wondered at the change. Had Magius really returned to the Order of Lunitari, or was this merely another of his whims?

“The mage returns to the land of the living,” Buoron remarked dryly.

The mage stirred. “Really, Huma, the only thing more foolish than you parading around in sheets of metal is the company you tend to keep. Myself excluded, of course.”

“If you have nothing worthwhile to say, Magius, then don’t say anything.” Huma surprised himself by his comment.

Magius ignored the barb. “I see the minotaur has succeeded in getting into trouble. We really do not have time for this. Had I not required the rest, we could have been gone by last night.”

Buoron smiled nastily. “You go nowhere without Lord Taggin’s permission.”

“Won’t I?”

“Not with me, Magius. Not unless Kaz is freed.” Huma added.

The mage sighed. “Very well. I do hope it won’t take long. I know how long and boring inquisitions can be.”

“Huma, is this filth really your friend?” Buoron interjected.

“If you can believe it. I still hope to find the old Magius underneath there.”

For once, the magic-user had no retort. He merely looked at Huma and then studied something interesting on his staff.

“Are you coming with me, Magius?”

His childhood friend looked up. “To an inquisition? Hardly. They might decide to put me on trial. I shall await the outcome here.”

Huma let out a sigh, although whether it was from relief or worry he could not say.

Unlike the formal inquisitions of Vingaard Keep, the sessions at the outpost were quick, straightforward, and to the point. Kaz was questioned about his whereabouts for the last half-year. His crime against his former masters and his subsequent meeting with Huma were gone over in minute detail as Lord Taggin looked for some slip that might prove the minotaur untrustworthy.

In the course of the questioning, many facets of the minotaur’s past came out. He had been one in a long line of champions in his clan. He had even been given the name of one of his more remote ancestors, a powerful fighter who had been ruler of the race for twenty-three years before finally falling to defeat.

Kaz, though, had grown up in a time in which no true ruler commanded the minotaurs. As Huma had learned, those who controlled the race now were, in turn, puppets of the Dragonqueen’s commanders. Each minotaur, male or female, was conscripted into the swelling ranks of the Dark Queen’s armies upon reaching fighting age. There were never enough of the race in any one unit to create an atmosphere of rebellion. Kaz’s people were severely punished for even the smallest infractions.

The tall warrior admitted he had done his share of fighting. It was part of his nature. Yet he had slowly become sickened by the senseless slaughter around him. There was no honor in much of what he was forced to do. The ogres cared not whether they faced an army or village. All who stood in their path were to be destroyed.

Kaz then went into detail about that final incident, when he had come across the butchering ogre captain. For a brief time, the knights in attendance were solely on his side.

The news of the collapse of the Solamnic lines and the chaos that followed brought renewed anger from those knights. From there, Kaz described the attack on the citadel of Magius and the flight that had resulted in the separation of Huma and Kaz.

Perhaps the highlight of the questioning occurred when Kaz described Huma’s brief but bloody encounter with the warlord. The tide of feeling again flowed toward Huma. Those who had frowned on his odd friendship began to look at him with renewed respect.

After Kaz, Huma spoke. He did not plead with the knights, only spoke to them of the minotaur’s acts of bravery and justice. He also pointed out that honor was just as important to Kaz as it was to the knighthood.

Lord Taggin looked extremely tired when all was said and done. Standing and facing the minotaur, who was bound and under guard, Lord Taggin took a deep breath and said, “The minotaur Kaz has cooperated in all ways. He has given us a good look at the workings of the Dragonqueen’s forces, and his words are confirmed by Huma, Knight of the Crown. By rights, he has earned an honorable death.”

Kaz snorted angrily and began to struggle with his bonds. Huma started to rise, but Buoron pushed him back down. Taggin continued.

“There is, however, another possibility. Paladine is the god of justice and wisdom. To execute the minotaur would be as great a travesty as we could commit. Therefore, I am placing him in the capable custody of Knight Huma, whom I believe we can trust to keep him under control.”

A cheer arose. Opinions of Huma had swayed so much again that he was now nearly as great a hero to his fellows as he had been to the Ergothians.

“Remove the minotaur’s bonds.”

Knight Caleb reluctantly obeyed. Kaz gave him a toothy grin as the knight removed the last of the bonds; an instant later, the minotaur was bursting through the crowd. Kaz took hold of his former companion and lifted him high with a cry of pleasure.

“I thought never to see you again, friend Huma! You should know that out of respect to you I held my temper while I searched! Glad I am that I chose to turn south immediately. It did occur to me that you might have gone north in search of me.”

Huma flushed. “I could only hope you were safe. My path led me southward even when I did not wish it to. Magius —”

Kaz misunderstood. “Yes, I saw that dragon-spawned mage friend of yours peering at me. He seemed quite willing to sacrifice me for the sake of expediency. I was so enraged by his satisfied expression that I began contemplating a suicidal escape attempt.” The minotaur bellowed in laughter, although Huma could not see why.

Taggin cleared his throat. Huma quickly steered the minotaur over to him. “Lord Taggin, Knight of the Rose. I present to you Kaz, minotaur.”

“Of a lineage that has produced more than a dozen champions of my race.” Blood did not count as much in the land of the minotaurs as it did among the aristocratically minded Knights of Solamnia, but a lineage that produced champions was highly admired by other minotaurs. To the knights, it was as if Kaz called himself a noble of his people.

Taggin greeted the minotaur and then turned serious. “When the others are gone, we will speak. I’ve summoned the mage, too.”

It did not take long for the room to empty. One look from the commander sent Buoron out the doorway. Kaz looked puzzled, but Lord Taggin refused to talk until Magius had arrived.

With obvious reluctance, the mage entered. Kaz stiffened, and his eyes reddened in anger. Huma feared an attack, but Kaz stood his ground. Magius pretended the massive figure was not even there.

“I have decided to come as you requested, Lord Taggin.”

“How very decent of you.” The elder knight was no more willing to hide his animosity toward the mage than Buoron had been. “I’ve decided to allow you to continue your journey and will even provide an escort.”

Magius sniffed. “How very decent of you, Lord Taggin, but we do not need an escort. Huma and I can make it on our own.”

“But you won’t be alone, wolf-spawn,” Kaz hissed. “I will be going with you whether an escort does or not.”

Taggin held up a hand for silence. “You have no choice. I will send an escort, anyway. It is not a politeness; it is a requirement if you intend going on with this – quest.”

Magius glared openly at Huma. “Would that you had taken an oath of silence. Your tongue flaps well, it seems.”

Huma bristled but would not satisfy his companion with a childish retort.

The outpost commander stepped up to Magius until less than a hand’s span separated their faces. “You will be leaving tomorrow morning at dawn. No sooner, no later. If you think to sneak away, do not bother. We will find you, and then I will lock you up. We can hold a magic-user. Trust me on that.”

It was quite satisfying to Huma when Magius was the first to back down. “Very well. Since we apparently have no choice.”

“You do not.”

Turning to Huma, Magius pointed to the minotaur and asked, “That must go with us as well?”

“Absolutely.” Kaz added to Huma’s answer with a menacing snarl that revealed his teeth.

“The morning, then.” Magius turned back to Lord Taggin. “Is that all?”

“No. Do I understand that this is all based on a dream?”

The mage smiled, sadly it seemed. “The Test was no dream. A nightmare is appropriate. A nightmare I hope to change.”

Taggin stared into his eyes. “You have not told him everything, have you, Magius?”

Huma’s eyes widened, then grew wider still, as the magic-user continued to delay his response.

Magius glanced at the others, then abruptly turned toward the door. “No. When the time is right, I will.”

They watched him depart.

“Watch him, Huma,” Taggin finally whispered. “Not just for your sakes, but for his.”

The younger knight could only nod. Again, he wondered how he could ever still believe in Magius.

A knight stood waiting on the top of the tallest peak. His visor was down, so it was impossible to identify him. He wore the sign of the Knights of the Rose, and in his left hand he held a magnificent sword. He appeared to offer the weapon to Huma.

Huma crawled over crag and ravine. He lost his grip more than a dozen times, but each time he regained it before he had a chance to fall. Although Huma was near the top, the other knight did not help him. Instead, the strange figure continued to hold out the sword.

Huma stumbled over and accepted the proffered weapon. It was a beautiful sword – an antique. Huma sliced the air three times. The other knight looked on.

The young knight thanked him for the weapon and asked him his name. The visored knight did not speak. Suddenly growing angry, Huma reached forward and lifted the visor.

He was never sure what he saw, for something howled and Huma bolted upright in his cot, the dream shattered.

Taggin was there to see that nothing went awry. He paid particular attention to the activities of Magius, but the spellcaster was behaving himself this morning.

The escort arrived. Ten men had volunteered. Huma was relieved that Buoron was one of them.

When the entire troop was ready and mounted, Buoron signaled for the gates to be opened. As they rode out, each man, with the exception of Magius and Kaz, saluted the outpost commander. Lord Taggin had said nothing to Huma that morning, but he returned the salute with a slight wave of assurance.

Their route was to take them through open field for the entire journey, giving them an ever-expanding view of the chain of mountains. They were at least several days’ journey from their goal. Huma wondered which peak Magius was seeking and what he expected to find. The mage was being very quiet. As a matter of fact, his eyes had been fixed on the mountain peaks from the moment they had left the outpost. Magius stared at the great rocky leviathans as if his life depended on them – which it quite possibly did.

Had Huma looked back at that moment, he might have noticed the swift form that darted into and out of whatever shelter it could find. It did not care for the day, which was harmful to its kind – not that it really thought of itself as other than an extension of its master. Nevertheless, it had made the long journey to act as the eyes and ears of the one who held its existence in his hands. For him, it would suffer the burning pain of daylight, daylight that seared it even through the ever-present cloud cover.

Wherever the knight and the mage traveled, the dreadwolf would follow.

Chapter 15

The great giants loomed over them, oblivious to the tiny, uneasy creatures at the outermost edge. The mountains had been magnificent from a distance; they were overwhelming up close. Not even Magius spoke. As one, they could only stare.

The mountains here were old, much older than many of their counterparts to the east and even to the north. More than one peak vanished into the cloud cover, testimony to unbelievable heights. Time had weathered all the mountains, some so much that they resembled the shells of gigantic sea creatures. The wind, ever-present and ten times wilder than on the plains, filled the air with almost human shrieks as it danced through the chain.

“Sargas,” whispered Kaz. Nobody reprimanded him for the quiet exclamation.

It was, of course, Magius who broke their concentration. He shifted uneasily on his mount, his gaze fixed, for the most part, on the peaks within the heart of the chain. “We will accomplish nothing sitting here gaping. Are you prepared to go on, Huma?”

Huma blinked. “Yes. I guess we might as well. Kaz?”

The minotaur gazed up at the peaks – and finally smiled. “I am quite familiar with such landscape, my friend. I have no qualms.”

“We will wait here for you for three days, just as a precaution,” Buoron said.

Magius sniffed and looked disdainfully away. “It is not necessary.”

“Nevertheless, we will. What you say matters not.”

“Let us go, then,” Huma quickly put in. He had a great desire to get this over and done with – if that were possible.

“Agreed.” Magius urged his horse forward.

“Huma,” Buoron said somberly, and held out a hand. His face was much like the mountains before them – hard-featured, but still admirable in its own way. “May Paladine watch over you.”

“And you as well.”

The other knights nodded their farewells as Huma passed. Huma did not look back as he rode, afraid that the desire to turn back from what might well be a foolish quest would ensnare him. Yet he showed no sign of fear to Magius or Kaz. A knight such as Bennett would have ridden into the mountains prepared to face the Dragonqueen herself, if need be. Huma knew he could never do that, but he would do his best to ride with dignity.

All too soon they entered the mountain range. The peaks stood all around them, fantastic walls and barriers that seemed ready – waiting? – to close in and wipe out all trace of the tiny creatures who had dared to infest them.

“Mountains such as these have always made me realize how an insect must feel,” Kaz commented.

Ahead of them, Magius laughed scornfully. “These are mere lumps of rock. Impressive at first, but no more deserving of such reverence than the tiniest pebble on the beach.”

“You have never truly known the mountains, then. Be careful, lest they bury you beneath their insignificance.”

A cry rose from somewhere within the range of mountains. It was a harsh, predatory cry, and all three riders glanced around quickly.

As the seconds passed and nothing materialized, Kaz turned to Magius. “What was that? Are you familiar with the sound?”

The mage had regained his composure, as well as his arrogance. “A bird, perhaps. Possibly even a dragon. It would not surprise me to discover that the latter live here.”

“Here?” Huma had sudden visions of great red dragons swooping down on the hapless group. Magius might be able to hold them off temporarily, but neither Kaz nor Huma would have much of a chance. A broadsword was of little use against the armored hide of a dragon.

The trail was a twisting series of slopes, ledges, and precarious turns. Buoron had said that dwarves, long since departed from this region, had created the path, the only one that granted travelers some hope of emerging on the opposite side. The knights traveled the mountains as little as possible, not because they were afraid but because they knew that even the few brigands of the region steered clear of the chain.

The wind whipped Huma’s cloak wildly around, and he was forced at last to pin it around him. The chill wind created eerie sounds, like the calling of strange, unimaginable beasts.

Magius still had the lead, since he was the only one with any real idea where he was going. Huma was searching for a peak that matched the one on the tapestry, while Kaz was content merely to ride and let the others do the work. He cared little about what the magic-user was searching for. His own health, and Huma’s, was all that truly mattered. The Red Robe could perish for all Kaz cared.

They rode around yet another turn and – came to a dead stop. Magius sputtered curses. Kaz laughed, despite the sinister look in the spellcaster’s eyes.

The path lay buried beneath tons of rubble. Huma looked up and saw a new crevice in the side of one of the mountains. He tried to imagine the power required to create such a landslide.

“I’ll not be cheated!” Magius stood in the saddle, crying out at the mountains. He whirled on the other two and said, “There were two diverging paths a short distance behind us. See if either curls back toward this one. I’ll see if there is anything that can be done here.”

The minotaur did not care to take orders from Magius, but Huma quieted him. It would not do for Kaz to cross the mage now.

While the spellcaster investigated the avalanche, Huma and Kaz rode back. The paths that Magius had spoken about seemed fairly unused, and one had even been obscured by the fragile shrubbery prevalent in the mountain chain. Huma chose the overgrown trail.

Kaz broke off to investigate the other path. Huma watched him disappear, then he climbed off his horse. The footing on the path was too tricky, and he had no desire to endanger himself and his horse. Better to leave the animal behind. If the path proved steadier ahead, he would return for the horse and investigate further.

It required the use of his broadsword to clear the path of foliage. Although the individual plants were weak, they grew in such profusion that it was like cutting into thick bales of hay. Huma was forced to chop continuously for several minutes before he made progress.

First glance indicated that the path continued a rocky, upward climb that made riding impossible and walking a slow, dragging tedium.

Suddenly, he stepped onto a gentle downward slope partly hidden by the vegetation. Huma smiled in relief. This path seemed to circle around to meet up with the original path beyond the avalanche. After a lengthy inspection, he finally concluded that the path was not only passable but that it would lead them more directly to the peaks Magius sought. It was also, he was pleased to note, a much less windblown path. The knight turned back, increasing his pace. By this time, he was sure that Kaz had completed his own search. He doubted also that Magius would have found a way around the avalanche in the meantime. Huma’s path looked to be the best – and perhaps the only – choice.

He came to the meeting of the two slopes and stumbled back onto the rocky part of the trail. Huma turned a corner – and stopped dead before a great wall of rock. “What —?” he muttered, his brow raised in wonder. He looked up the length of the formation and laid a hand on its surface. It was all too real. He had to have taken a wrong turn, he realized.

Huma backtracked, and stood in puzzlement. Every indication was that he had followed the correct path the first time. Yet the rock formation looked as though it had been in place for years. Moss dotted its surface. The formation was quite weathered, almost round on top.

Finally, Huma gave up and returned to the other intersection he had discovered. Despite the feeling that this was the wrong route, he began to follow it. As he progressed, his confidence rose, for the trail seemed to lead back to where he wished to be. Then it abruptly curved toward the opposite direction. Soon, Huma was following a trail of twists and turns that kept his head spinning. The knight came to a halt. This path was leading him farther away. He grumbled to himself and then turned around to retrace his trail.

The path he had traveled, which he knew should have twisted to the right, now twisted to the left.

This was all wrong. Huma knew he could have made a mistake before, but not this time; he’d been especially cautious, painstakingly noting the way. Buoron and others had said many travelers never left these mountains; now he could see why. It was as if the mountains themselves moved against the unwary, although Huma knew it must really be the work of a mortal entity. His thoughts turned to Galan Dracos, but this did not seem to fit the renegade’s style. He was being herded, he realized; Dracos would have captured him by now. No, this was magic with another purpose.

His sword unsheathed, Huma began following the only available path.

There was nothing out of the ordinary, just rocks, scraggly bushes, and a high-flying bird now and then.

The path suddenly split off into two directions. Huma paused, suspecting that he really had only one choice. But which?

He pondered for some time before he noticed the tap-tap beat coming from behind him. Huma whirled, his blade up and ready. He had been expecting an ogre or perhaps one of the Black Guard; instead, he found himself facing a hooded figure sitting on a large, flat rock.

The tap-tap came from a staff much like Magius’s, and it was held by a gray, gloved hand partially covered by the sleeve of a cloak. The gray cloak, in turn, covered most of the form of a – Huma stepped closer to be sure – a gray-faced man.

The gray man stroked his long, gray beard and smiled almost imperceptively at the knight.

Huma lowered the blade – but not all the way. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Who are you?” the gray man rejoined.

The knight frowned but decided to play the game for now. “I am Huma, Knight of the Order of the Crown.”

“A Knight of Solamnia.” The dull-colored figure spoke as if he had known it all along. The staff went tap-tap.

“I’ve answered your question; now answer mine.”

“I?” The gray man smiled, revealing gray teeth. “I am merely a fellow traveler.”

Huma indicated the area around them. “This is not your doing?”

“The mountains? Oh, no. They’ve been here for a long time, I understand.”

“I meant the paths that vanish.” The other’s eccentric attitude irritated Huma.

“I do not move mountains. It is quite possible that you are just not seeing well enough with your eyes.” The figure on the rock blended perfectly into the background. Huma found that to look away even for a moment meant he had to look carefully to find the man again. No doubt, the gray man had been sitting on the rock when Huma came through moments earlier. The knight had never seen him.

“Are you a magic-user?” Huma queried.

The tap-tap of the staff ceased for the moment. “Now that is an interesting question.”

The tapping resumed.

“Well?” Huma was fighting for control.

The gray man seemed to think for a moment. Then he pointed the staff toward the two paths behind Huma and asked, “Were you not choosing a path? You should get on with it, you know. You might be going somewhere important.”

“Very well. Which one would you choose?” Huma held his breath, wondering if he was going to receive an answer that made some sense.

After further consultation with himself, the slate-colored man pointed the staff at the path to the left. “That one has been proved to be quite popular.”

“Thank you.” Huma stalked off toward the chosen path. He wanted nothing more to do with gray men and paths that came and went. The sooner he was away —

“Of course,” the odd figure added, “Others have found the right path to be the right path.”

Huma stopped. He turned and stared coldly at the gray man. “Which would you choose?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The knight studied the two paths. From where he stood, they looked identical. He could not make a choice based on appearances. He would have to go with his instincts.

Purposefully, Huma stepped over to the trail on the right and began walking. He did not look back, even when the familiar tap-tap picked up again.

The parting comment, though, did cause him to pause momentarily.

“An interesting choice.”

The tapping ceased. Huma, despite himself, turned around.

The path – and the gray man – had disappeared. In their place stood a tall, angling peak.

Huma trudged along the winding trail for hours. He noted that the sun was already low in the sky, which meant that he had been separated from the others a good part of the day. Calling out had proved futile.

The wind had picked up. Huma drew his cloak around him, daring to sheath his sword so he could pull the garment tighter. He wondered how cold it got in these mountains and then decided it would be best not to think about it.

Where were Magius and Kaz? He hoped the minotaur and the magic-user would not kill one another now that Huma was not there to keep both under rein.

His stomach stirred in hunger again, prompting a vague twinge of guilt. Fasting was a rite of purification for the knighthood. A few hours should not have affected him.

A few berries dotted the bushes he passed, but previous experiments had proved them to be inedible and possibly even poisonous. He had seen no sign of animal life and had heard none, save the occasional cry of whatever creature waited out there. A great bird, perhaps. What did it eat, then? Unwary and foolish travelers?

Evening finally fell, and Huma waited for a sign from Magius. Neither light nor sound came through the darkness, however. Huma was still on his own when night had grown to maturity.

The night was bright, for a change. Somehow, the stars always seemed to shine through the cloud cover where the sun could not. Perhaps most encouraging, Solinari was at last ascendant. The god of the White Robes now watched over the world, and although Magius wore the robes of crimson Huma hoped that Solinari would watch over his friend as well.

Huma finally paused for the night, tired and confused, determined to go on once morning came. He crawled under an overhang in a fairly level spot and wrapped his cloak around him; a fire was out of the question. Huma had survived worse, but hunger pangs continued to irritate him, even as he drifted away into sleep.

Huma stirred. A sound, like the flapping of mighty wings, had pulled him from his slumber. Peering from his shelter, he saw nothing but the night and decided it was only a rockfall or the wind. He was soon back to sleep.

From behind a far outcropping, two gleaming, blood-red eyes peered sightlessly at the unsuspecting figure. The dreadwolf was set to watch only, not to kill – not this time. Yet the slumbering human made a satisfactory target, and the abomination began to slink forward, yellowed teeth bared. It readied itself to leap – and a monstrous claw slashed out and crushed it beyond the undead thing’s ability to regenerate. Not a sound broke the night stillness.

Huma stirred again but did not awaken.

The dawn brought with it the feeling that he was not alone.

Huma scanned the surrounding area. All remained as it had been the day before, save that the weather had grown a little warmer. Hunger still touched him, but he was beginning to gain control over it – or perhaps he had passed that point when it mattered.

He dared call out to his companions. The wind was weaker, and Huma thought that this time he might be heard. If that meant facing the creature that cried out yesterday, so be it.

There was no response to his shouts, either from the mage and minotaur or from the nameless creature. Huma gave up shouting and renewed his walk down the odd path. He no longer cared whether he could even retrace his steps.

To his surprise and pleasure, the trail became smoother and simpler to follow. And food was available – berries from a new type of bush. When they proved to be palatable, he began devouring all he could find. Of course, any poison might be slow in acting, but Huma recognized these plants. He decided that whatever had created the path wanted him alive for the time being.

At last, when he began to believe the path would go on forever, the trail stopped before a shining pool of water surrounded by fruit-bearing trees and a garden. Thirsty, he hurried to the edge of the pool. The water could not be poisonous if such life surrounded it, and Huma leaned down and scooped up a handful. The moisture trickled down his chin as he drank. Not satisfied with that, he knelt and bent forward to sip from the pool itself.

A dragon’s face stared up from the water.

He jumped away from the water’s edge and realized that the dragon’s face had been a reflection. He looked up with rapidly widening eyes. Huma had reached his destination.

A great stone dragon, six times his size, flanked the pool, and Huma saw that it had once had a counterpart on the opposite end. Only the pedestal and part of the head remained of the second dragon. Both appeared to have been carved out of marble or some similar stone.

The one still standing appeared to be a silver dragon, while the fragmented one had been a gold dragon.

Huma drank his fill. When he had finished, he looked straight ahead and noticed a doorway hidden by the tangle of plant life and literally cut into the mountain itself. He moved closer and studied the doorway. Tiny figures had been carved in relief around the opening, most of them weathered away. Some, protected by the heavy covering of plant growth, perhaps, were still quite recognizable – at least as definite shapes. Huma wished desperately to know what the symbols might mean.

Pushing aside thick vines, he peered inside. It should have been dark inside, yet he could see a faint glow within. Almost as if someone had lit torches to guide his way, he thought uneasily.

Sighing in resignation, he stepped into the entrance of the mountain, expecting the cavelike entryway to be damp and moldy. Instead, it was as if he had stepped into the council chamber of Vingaard Keep. The entrance was warm and dry, and the walls and ceiling were smooth.

It took him some time to travel the length of the stark hallway, his attention concentrated on the flickering light ahead. He completed the final stretch of the corridor. Belatedly, he remembered his sword and removed the weapon from its sheath. The corridor opened into a great hall, once the court of some great king or emperor, Huma decided. It stretched high; it was a natural cavern carved to perfection. The light was indeed from torches, and Huma wondered who had lit them.

Metallic statues of armored knights lined each wall. They were lifeless – and very lifelike. They could almost be sentries commanded to sleep until needed – or the undead ordered to slay any who intruded.

Huma stepped into the center of the room and stared at the floor. Now he could see the pattern etched into the stone. It, above all else, gave him heart, for it was a huge representation of Paladine himself, the Platinum Dragon. The dragon curled from one end of the room to the other and, if the knight was any judge, the pattern was indeed made of platinum. Huma marveled over the intricate work.

His gaze roved to the single piece of furniture in this cavern – a high throne, carved from wood such as Huma had never seen, wood that seemed to glow with life. The edges of the throne were encrusted with jewels, and these, too, gleamed from the light of the torches.

Childlike wonder swept over him as he walked around the chamber. The armor, he noted, included many of the various types worn by the knighthood over the ages. He opened more than one visor and peered inside, finding nothing but dust.

At last, he simply stood and gave thanks to Paladine for allowing him to proceed this far. He also prayed that the Triumvirate would watch over his two companions, despite their differences. Then he knelt in reverence before the throne.

His vigil, though, was interrupted almost before it began. A pounding sound, as of metal upon metal, resounded from one of the darkened corridors. Huma came to his feet and peered around, trying to discern from which of the corridors the sound originated.

The pounding died even as he stood, and Huma was unable to fathom its direction.

Huma remembered where he had heard a sound like that before – back at Vingaard Keep.

It was the sound a heavy hammer made when beating hot metal into shape at a forge.

Chapter 16

A forge. Huma wondered what that might mean. He had expected any of a number of things here, but not an active smithy. For that matter, who held that hammer? Ghosts of ages past? Perhaps the dwarves had not left this place after all.

His eyes turned back toward the throne, and he discovered that he was no longer alone. Huma’s first thought was that the gray man had returned, for the robe and hood, which covered all identity, were indeed dun-colored. But this new visitor was much more slight.

“You have come.” Her voice was low and the cloak almost muffled it, but it was indeed a female voice. Small, feminine hands emerged from the billowing sleeves of the cloak, and the woman reached up to take hold of the hood. Slowly, she pulled it back, revealing long, thick, flowing hair and a face that both thrilled and shocked the knight, for he had known it and longed for it.

“Gwyneth.”

She smiled. “I had thought perhaps you had forgotten me.”

“Never.”

The smile widened, then vanished abruptly. “I knew it would be you. When I first laid eyes on you in the – lying there, battling a mind-killing wound. Yes, your wound was far worse than you know. No bones had been broken, but your mind … Had not healers taken care of you as quickly as they did, you would have lost all senses permanently.”

“Paladine,” he breathed. To be struck deaf, dumb, and blind – or worse. “Gwyneth. What is this place?”

“Call it a gift of love. It was built by those with great love for Paladine and his house. They wanted nothing in return. It was magnificent in its day.” She had a disconcerting way of talking as if she had actually been here in the past, Huma thought.

“Is this what Magius sought?”

“In a sense. Your friend is still a good man, Huma, despite his obsession. It may still consume him. Whether he believes it or not, the future he faced during his Test was nothing more than an intricate fabrication. The Tests are designed to highlight one’s greatest weaknesses, and I fear that he did not pass as easily as the Conclave hoped.”

“Then all of this has nothing to do with what he said.”

Gwyneth looked surprised. “Oh, but it does! The idea of this place has been passed to man for centuries, ever since the first war with the Dragonqueen. It has not changed much. The Conclave knew the ego of their student, Magius. The greatest fault of your childhood companion is that, like the elves, he sees himself as the power to save the world. What better way of testing him than to make him fail at the greatest of all tasks.”

Huma was silent as his mind digested this. Finally, he asked, “What of me? Magius seemed to think I am important to changing his future.”

“You are important, but not in the way he thinks. What has been sought so long is a single man or woman who embodies all that Paladine has attempted to teach this world. Some have come close, but all failed in the end.” As his eyes widened, she nodded sadly. “You are not the first to come here, Huma. I pray – oh Paladine, I pray – that you are the one sought. Were it not Krynn itself that would suffer, I would tell you to turn from here now, before it is too late.”

The knight stiffened. “Even if you told me to, I would not. I cannot. Not – and remain what I am.”

“Is the knighthood so much to you?”

“Not the knighthood. What it teaches.” He had never thought of it in those terms before.

Gwyneth looked pleased, but merely said, “If only there were others like you, even in the knighthood.”

“Gwyneth, where are Kaz and Magius?”

“They will be watched. Have no fear, Huma.” She paused. “It is time to start, I think.”

“Start?” Huma looked around, half-expecting the room to fill with clerics and mages ready to perform some ceremony. Instead, Gwyneth stepped down from the throne and moved toward him. Although dressed simply and without expression on her face, she looked more beautiful than he had ever thought possible. Buoron’s nymph paled in comparison.

She wavered only momentarily under his gaze. Huma tried fruitlessly to understand what was revealed in that lapse. When Gwyneth was no more than an arm’s length from him, she pointed at the darkened corridors.

“You may choose whichever one you wish.”

“What happens then?”

“You walk it. What happens next is up to you. I can only tell you that you must face three challenges. It is said that each member of the Triumvirate created part of the challenges, although no challenge represents one god, just as a man is the sum of his parts, not separate qualities that exist independent of one another.”

Huma studied each of the corridors for a long time. If he was to proceed, he would have to trust in Paladine and hope to make the right choice.

He took a step toward his choice, but Gwyneth caught his arm. “Wait.”

She kissed him lightly. “May Paladine watch over you. I do not want you to fail.”

He could think of nothing adequate to say, so Huma quickly turned away and moved toward the corridor he had chosen. He knew that if he looked back and she was still there, he might be tempted to stay. He also knew that if he stayed, he would never be able to live with himself.

The corridor he picked was like a natural cave. In spots, the passage constricted, forcing him to duck or move sideways. It was also very, very long, and nearly plunged in blackness.

Soon the passage began to glow with a light of its own, a light that came from the very walls. Huma paused to study this phenomenon. He had heard tales of this sort of light.

The walls’ glow gave Huma an idea. He knocked a piece of rock loose with the hilt of his sword and put it, still glowing, in his belt pouch.

An ear-splitting, earth-shaking cry tossed him to the ground. Rock fragments covered him.

It was the same cry Huma had heard in the pass. He now knew its source – straight ahead. And straight ahead was the only way left to Huma, for, as the trail had done, the corridor behind him revealed nothing but a stone wall.

Sword and shield ready, he crept down the tunnel toward the sound.

He stepped from that corridor – into yet another. This one broke off into three directions, any of which the thing might occupy. Huma straightened in nervous annoyance. The cry was echoing through the cavern system; the creature might be anywhere. It might be hours away in some deeper chamber. It might even be right behind him.

That thought on his mind, he shifted his feet – and did not meet solid ground. With a metal-rattling clang, Huma went down.

Huma cleared his head with a shake and looked at the thin pool of dark liquid that had made him slip. He put a finger in it and brought the sample close in order to study it better. For such a small puddle, it stank terribly. To his horror, Huma noticed the substance was eating into his metal glove. He wiped the foul stuff on the rock, which seemed much more resistant to the liquid.

“Heeeehhh.”

It seemed like laughter, evil laughter, at first. Huma clambered to his feet, but he still could not tell from which of the three tunnels the noise had come. And as it repeated, he knew the sound was not laughter.

It was breathing.

Something incredibly large, unless the chambers amplified sound, lurked nearby.

While it might prove safer to remain anchored in this one location, Huma had no desire to do so. He chose the center corridor and hurried down it.

Physically, it was identical to the last one. Huma wondered how such an obviously large creature could make its way through some of these narrow confines. Even Huma had his difficulties.

This tunnel led him to another tunnel, which looked exactly like the two before it. The caverns made up a maze, with Huma as both contestant and prize in some subterranean game of peril.

As he walked, he noticed the dark liquid that flowed under his feet and the heat that emanated from several corridors. There was a sulfurous smell to the heat, which, Huma believed, pointed to a conduit to the mountain’s fiery heart. Huma had heard of mountains such as this and prayed that this one would not erupt while he was within it.

“Hhhhheeeeehhhh.”

Huma flattened himself around a corner. Echo or not, he knew now that he and the other were mere minutes apart. The other also apparently knew, for he chuckled madly – most definitely madly. When the laughter died, the other spoke in slow, deep tones.

“Manling. I smell you, manling. I smell the warmth of your body, the bitter chill of your metal armor. I smell your fears.”

Huma said nothing, but he fell back silently to the corridor from which he had entered. He did not want to face something as large as this tunnel-dweller unless he could find a place, where he could maneuver.

“Come to Wyrmfather, manling. Let me show you my strength.”

Wyrmfather’s hearing was obviously quite extraordinary, for the beast hissed loudly whenever Huma moved and the knight could hear the scraping of a large form against the sides of a tunnel.

Huma moved down an open corridor, circling Wyrmfather – he hoped. The hissing seemed to come from all around him. The corridors appeared endless.

The hissing abruptly halted, and Huma froze. There was silence for several minutes, save for the maddening beat of the knight’s heart. Then the scraping sound echoed again as Wyrmfather seemed to move away from Huma.

He realized that the relative smoothness of the tunnel walls was the result of continual wearing away by the body of his pursuer.

The coarse, scraping sound died away while Huma pondered. Quietly, he made his way farther along the tunnel. If he could only find his way out of this maze —

Wild laughter – and the passageway exploded into flame!

Huma had no choice now but to run. Wyrmfather knew where he was. Huma abandoned stealth and simply fled in the direction of the nearest corridor.

Another burst of fire sent him scurrying out of that passage. How could Wyrmfather move so swiftly? What was Wyrmfather?

He would not count how many passageways he ran through or how many times the laughter of the tunnel dweller warned him just before more searing flame licked at his mustache.

Running frantically, Huma did not at first notice the wide opening to his left. It was not until he had passed it that the knight realized he had come across something other than a corridor. Huma came to an immediate halt and froze.

The malevolent hiss of Wyrmfather was far away for the moment, although Huma knew that could easily change at any second. Cautiously, the knight edged back to the side passage and then leaned forward enough so that he could peer into it.

It was a very short corridor, ending in what appeared to be more of a cavern. Huma stepped around into the new passageway and walked slowly down it.

The cavern loomed large. It appeared to have been honed the same way as the corridors – by the constant wear of some huge form against the rock itself.

But where was the leviathan itself? Where was Wyrmfather? Huma glanced around the cavern. Tunnel entrances dotted it on various levels. The knight’s sharp gaze followed the contours of the floor. It was smooth enough to walk on, although the slopes became steep in a few places, especially where it suddenly rose —

Huma mentally cursed his predicament and stepped back into the corridor.

What he had seen, what he wished desperately to deny, was a massive serpentlike form that rose through the bottom of the cavern, like some cursed tree, and turned abruptly to the side, continuing on through one of the farther tunnels.

Here at last he beheld a portion of Wyrmfather.

The malevolent creature pulsated with life as it stretched from that gaping chasm in the center. All that was visible was a trunk whose reptilian diameter was twice Huma’s height. Its otherwise dull-gray body was covered with splotches of green and blue, as if it were infected.

The trunk suddenly descended into the chasm. The terrible head of Wyrmfather emerged from the other passage, shocking Huma with a startling revelation.

Wyrmfather was a dragon.

The leviathan dwarfed all dragons that Huma had ever seen or heard of. Wyrmfather’s maw could easily have snapped up a team of horses in two bites, a single man in much less. The long, wide teeth stretched nearly as high as Huma and the sinewy, forked tongue that flickered in and out of Wyrmfather’s jaws could easily envelope him.

The smell of sulfur was everywhere, and Huma realized that the mountain peak did not have an active heart. The dragon caused the smell.

Huma froze as the ponderous head of the dragon turned his way. There was something odd about the head. It seemed larger in proportion to the thickness of the neck, which in turn was far too long for any dragon that Huma could recall.

Recognition made the knight gasp. Wyrmfather was the dragon after which the statuette in Magius’s citadel had been patterned. Yet the statuette had to have been ancient even by elven standards. Could any dragon live that long?

Wyrmfather hissed. Its head was turned so that it could not possibly have missed the knight, yet the deadly beast continued to scan the cavern. It was only when Huma looked at the eyes that he knew why; a whitish film covered each. Wyrmfather was blind.

The creature was not deaf, though, and most certainly had a keen sense of smell. It had passed up the knight once; Huma doubted it would do so again. Even now, the lengthy snout seemed to be investigating some of the areas it had already passed. Unless Wyrmfather poked its head back into one of the corridors, the dragon would find Huma momentarily.

As if thinking the same thoughts, Wyrmfather spoke. The creature’s words made the immense chamber tremble. “A tricky one. I am pleased. It has been so long since I had even the slightest challenge. The others were so easy.”

The head swung near Huma. Gaping nostrils flared as the mighty dragon sniffed for the scent of the knight.

“I smell the taint of Paladine on you. Of Habbakuk. Of the most cursed of all the gods of light, my jailer, the damned Kiri-Jolith!”

Huma did not move, did not breath during this outburst. The leviathan had spoken of an encounter with at least one of the gods responsible for the creation of the knighthood. An encounter that had left the dragon quite the worse off, it seemed.

“Are you here for my treasure? It is the greatest horde that any dragon could ever gather. Even trapped as I am, I have ways of gathering it. Ah!” The massive jaws bent into a macabre, reptilian grin. “Perhaps it is the mirror you seek! Yes, the mirror would be worth all else I have!”

All the while it spoke, Wyrmfather sniffed around the cavernous chamber, seeking out Huma.

A sound of metal striking metal rang through the chamber. Huma reacted instinctively, covering his ears as the noise pounded at his mind. It was the forge again. The hammer at the forge.

If the hammering disturbed Huma, it enraged Wyrmfather to madness. The dragon added to the noise with shrieks of its own. Curses, crying, threats. All matter of words rushed from its mouth. Froth dripped from its maw.

“My queen! Why do you let them torment me? Have I not endured countless millenia gone to dust? Must I suffer yet more of the ceaseless hammering and hammering of that cursed smith! Have you forsaken me, great Takhisis?”

Across the chamber, a corridor glowed brighter than the others. Wyrmfather had spoken of its horde and how even here it had been able to seek out treasure. Might there not be something of use in such a horde? A weapon, perhaps, more deadly than Huma’s own seemingly insignificant sword? It was, to be sure, a desperate measure. Even as the beast renewed its shouts, Huma was running.

The clatter of his boots on the rocky floor alerted Wyrmfather, but the hammering prevented the dragon from pinpointing the tiny human figure. In anger, the dragon roared and unleashed random bursts of searing flame.

Huma dove into the corridor. The dragon had mentioned a mirror of some great importance. Huma remembered the mirror of the nymph, the one she had used to gaze at the dreams of others. Might they be related? Hers, though, had only been a way of capturing others’ dreams. This one had other properties, perhaps.

Still Wyrmfather ranted and raved at the sound of the hammer.

Huma made his way down the corridor, fearing that he had erred. All he might find were gold and jewels, useless at the moment. There might be nothing.

Huma fell, and his eyes caught a horrible, momentary glimpse of what he had tripped over. A battered skull grinned at him, while a disjointed arm pointed at him in mockery. The crumpled remains of armor wrapped much of the body’s frame. Huma succeeded in rolling with the fall, though the collision unsettled him.

Huma stood and stared sadly at the partial skeleton. It was very old, and the armor was nearly all rust. There were some visible markings, though, and Huma, in horrid fascination, wiped dust from the breastplate and beheld the insignia of a Knight of the Rose.

A prayer instinctively jumped to his lips. Here was a knight who had made it this far, only to perish.

To perish.

As Huma might.

Even as the thought came unbidden, he realized the new danger. The hammering had stopped as abruptly as it had started. Huma took a few steps forward, almost without realizing it, and nearly stumbled onto an immense pile of valuables.

There were coins aplenty, gold and silver, more than Huma had ever seen. They glittered, almost entrancing him. Mixed in with them was a variety of rare items, many bejeweled, all of them fascinating. Necklaces of large, perfect pearls. Small figurines of some crystalline design, perhaps formed from emeralds or jade. Armor that might have been forged only yesterday, some so elaborate that it must have been created for mighty emperors, who could afford the craftsmanship and extravagant decorations. There were even weapons, although most were useless, having been designed more for style and expense than for use.

He quickly surveyed the room, his heart racing. All this before him, when he would have gladly traded it for a single weapon capable of defeating the huge cavern dweller.

“Where have you run, manling?”

Huma stiffened. Wyrmfather was very close by. Any second, the corridor might become filled with flame.

“The smith has abandoned you, Knight of Solamnia! Yes, I know you now. I can smell the taint of the Three in you, stronger than ever before. You are a Knight of Solamnia, a true believer, unlike those before. They thought they believed, but they only pretended. You, though, are different. I wonder what you will taste like?”

Rusted battle axes. Jeweled swords fit only for ceremony. This could not be the vast horde the dragon had spoken about – unless, in its madness, Wyrmfather had dreamed up its treasures.

The mirror, too?

“I have you now!”

Huma could hear the slithering and scraping as the massive head wormed its way into the corridor. He whirled and realized that the relatively meager horde of gold and jewels was only overflow from another chamber. He reached into the uppermost part of the mound of valuables and began digging. Sure enough, within a few seconds, the digging revealed an opening. It was only a small opening, so far, and it grew slowly as he continued to labor, each second expecting to feel the blistering heat of Wyrmfather’s breath on his back. The effort was tiring. The continuous wedge of valuables made an effective blockade. Huma cursed silently as more coins and odd artifacts flowed to replace those he had removed. The knight took a deep breath. Digging was not good enough. As he cleared a tangle of jewels from the gap, he began crawling forward like a mole.

He had already burrowed deep into the pile when he felt the hot, fetid breath of the dragon. Wyrmfather could not use its flame here, lest it destroy its own treasure; thus the dragon was twisting its head and neck all the way to the entrance of the chamber of treasures.

The leviathan’s head came around the corner – just in time to hear the knight vanish into the other chamber. Wyrmfather paused. After a moment, the huge reptilian lips curled into a malevolent smile and the great dragon began the process of removing itself from the chamber.

All was dark at first, strange after so many corridors filled with their own light. Huma wondered why this one was different.

Unable to see, he crawled awkwardly through the immense collection of treasures. Here must certainly be the main horde, but how was he to find anything in the dark? Was there anything to find? Somehow, he felt there must be. If this was a test, there must be some way of defeating the dragon.

His hand brushed against what felt like a sword hilt – and the room was suddenly lit by a dull, greenish glow. Huma jerked his hand away in surprise. He had hoped; he had prayed. Now, at last, he had found the very thing. Only … only he feared to touch it, for some reason. As if something instinctively warned him not to.

Grasp me. Wield me. Use me. I will be your will come to life.

The words rang clear in his mind, clear, sweet, seductive words.

They came from within the sword itself.

Chapter 17

Huma’s hand hesitated mere inches from the sword. The glow persisted, but there was no repetition of the words.

The blade was impressive. The hilt was brilliantly bejeweled, including one massive green stone that seemed to be the source of the glow. A bell protected the user’s hand. The blade itself was as sharp as if newly made. Huma’s desire to touch it became almost undeniable. With the sword, he was sure that not even Wyrmfather could best him

Wyrmfather! The spell was broken as Huma remembered the dragon. With the sword – no! The knight recoiled from it. He could not say how he knew, but the sword was malevolent. It did not seek his companionship; it sought a slave to do its bidding.

As he turned away from the blade, the light reflected off a polished surface in one corner. Huma scampered over the jewels and coins to get a better look at the object.

It was as he hoped. An elaborate mirror, twice his size. The mirror of which Wyrmfather had spoken. Huma recalled the sightless eyes of the cavern dweller and wondered how a blind dragon used a mirror. It was evident that Wyrmfather had gathered his treasures over the centuries.

Mirrors. This was the third. One was owned by the nymph. Another hung in the citadel of Magius. All magical. Had they all been made by the same person? He doubted he would ever know.

“Manling, I would speak with you.”

Huma started as the voice of Wyrmfather filled the room. The chamber suddenly was filled with brilliant light, and Huma cursed himself for not realizing his mistake. There were no other entrances to this chamber because the entrance was the ceiling! Even now, the ancient dragon was tugging away the huge slab of rock that served as the lid on his house-size treasure chest. Huma scanned the endless mounds of booty, seeking something and finding that his eyes always returned to the sinister emerald blade.

“Manling.” Wyrmfather sniffed and a great smile lit its terrible face. “The smell of riches is intoxicating, is it not?”

Huma was positive he could cover the distance to the sword in ten seconds. Would he have that much time?

“It is futile to hide, manling. I can smell you out. I can lay waste to this chamber. Yet I do not have to kill you. There might be another way.”

Huma edged toward the sword. Wyrmfather’s massive head turned at the sound.

“A bargain, Knight of Solamnia? A task for me in exchange for one of my treasures? Surely, I have gathered a few things your brethren have lost over the years.”

Huma remembered the ancient remains wearing the battered crest of a Knight of the Rose. Had Wyrmfather made the same offer to him? Had he been choosing his prize when the dragon overtook him?

Loose coins slid under Huma’s foot, and the dragon’s head suddenly blocked his path. Huma readied his sword, eyeing with regret the other one so near to him. So close!

Wyrmfather sniffed. “A Solamnic Knight, indeed! The game of hide-and-seek is at an end, manling! Do you accept my offer —” The massive jaws worked into a smile again. “— or shall we see what other arrangement can be made?’

“What do you want?”

The leviathan’s ears perked up. “Ahhh! He does speak! It has been, by my estimate, nearly three hundred years since an intruder has dared to speak to me directly for reasons other than pleading! Even your voice pleases me after all this!”

“I’m glad,” Huma said. He could not think of anything else to say.

The ensuing chuckle forced him to cover his ears. “A brave one, manling! I like you. What do you say to my offer?”

“I am willing to hear it.”

“A truly brave one! Hear me, then, manling!” The great beast raised its head high. “I am Wyrmfather, first and greatest of my dread lady’s children, first to rise at her call! I championed her cause against the hideous gods of light and their creeping toadies, and ever emerged triumphant! So great and fearful was my power that at last Kiri-Jolith himself was forced to fight me – and did so with dread, I tell you!

“We fought for over a year. Mountains were born, brought flat, and reborn. The land quaked with our struggle, the seas whipped high. At last, I erred and Kiri-Jolith defeated me. Victory was not enough, though! From the shattered earth he drew this mountain about me, enclosing me from the joyous sky! I would, he said, remain a part of this mountain. Even the slightest breeze would not reach me. Only, he mocked, only one of his own brethren would be able to release me! Only one such as he could set me free!”

The blind eyes stared meaningfully at Huma, who was beginning to understand what the dragon was leading to.

“For a long time, I believed he meant one of his fellow gods, and I raged and roared. Then I came to understand the trickery in his words. A god was not what he meant. A warrior, straight and true in the path, could do what I could not, and are not the Knights of Solamnia the sons of Paladine? Does that not make them brethren in spirit to Kiri-Jolith?”

Huma stared at the gleaming sword buried deep in the mound of jewels and coins. In him there was a yearning so strong that he nearly ran to it. But suddenly the terrible visage of Wyrmfather was again before him. The hot, sulfurous breath stung the knight’s eyes.

“Free me, Knight of Solamnia, and anything here is yours! Even the mirror, which served me so well before the darkness came!”

The mirror. Huma looked at it. If he could learn its secrets … His own bluster amazed him. “How does it work? I might consider, then.”

“You must think of a place you wish to go and then ask – No! Release me first!”

The very mountain trembled as Wyrmfather went into another berserk rage.

The hammering began anew – louder, if at all possible.

Wyrmfather raised its massive head and shrieked, “I will not be cheated again!”

Huma ran for the sword. The maddened dragon lashed out in anger. The massive jaws opened wide, and the long, draping, forked tongue whipped out. Wyrmfather meant to make a morsel out of the tiny human.

Huma’s hand closed around the hilt of the sword. It burned in his grip, even through his gauntlets. Despite the pain, he pulled the sword free and held it high, moving through sheer reflex and skill.

Wyrmfather’s jaws closed down on Huma, swallowing countless treasures in the process. For a moment, Huma vanished into the maw of the titan.

With a rock-shattering cry of pain, the ancient leviathan spasmed. Gold, silver, statuary, jewels, and a badly battered Huma fell from his jaws. The knight hit one of the piles below, sending Shockwaves through his right arm.

Above, Wyrmfather shook its head back and forth, trying to dislodge the sword it had forced into its own head. It was a futile effort; the body was already reacting by reflex. The brain of the dragon was dead, the green blade having cut through all barriers protecting it. The dragon’s actions only served to drive the blade deeper.

Huma rose to his feet just as the massive head began its final descent. Even in death, Wyrmfather could spell the end of Huma. The knight scrambled.

The massive skull struck the ground precipitously close to Huma. The knight – along with nearly a king’s ransom in valuables – was flung forward, his last thoughts of Solamnia. His body struck the mirror —

— and landed in the muck and mire of a rain-soaked wasteland.

His first frantic thoughts were for the sword. It had remained jammed in the dying dragon’s jaws. Huma had to retrieve it.

How? He surveyed his surroundings – and reeled in shock. This was Solamnia! Very near Vingaard Keep. Huma sat up and put his face in his hands. He had discovered the secret of the mirror. Now he was transported far from the mountains – and his companions!

His right arm was numb and nearly useless, but he felt no broken bones. The temporary paralysis would go away after a few hours. Both he and his armor were mud-covered. He felt quickly at his waist, then gave a small sigh of relief; he still had his own sword, puny as it seemed compared to the wonderful surge of power he had felt when holding the green blade. If only …

A thought came to him.

It was difficult to tell direction, but by the few still-recognizable landmarks, he was certain he was south of Vingaard Keep. Had it been a brightly lit day, he knew he could have glimpsed the mighty citadel.

Ineffectually wiping the mud from his face, Huma started north.

The habitations he passed would have provided little protection for a wild animal, much less a human. The wood frames were crumbling with rot. The thatched roofs could only barely be called that; there were too many holes and too little material to patch them with. The mud used to pack the stonework together had become so damp that in many places the walls had fallen completely away.

The haunted looks he saw in the faces of the emaciated survivors who peopled this poor excuse for a village sent chills through his body. What, he wondered, was the Keep doing about this situation? These people barely existed. Their homes were little more than lean-tos, and some people did not even have that. Instead, they sat in the mire and ravaged earth, and stared at the devastation around them.

He knew that the knighthood could not care for them all, but it still agonized him. Huma prayed that somehow he would gain new transportation so that he could return to the mountain and, if it was allowed, face the challenges once again. He also worried about his two companions. Were they looking for him?

Staring at the ruined land, Huma thought that the knighthood might have helped the people rebuild their villages, patrol their forests, and possibly gather or grow their own food. Instead, nothing.

Huma stopped walking for a moment, thinking about his nearly blasphemous ideas. What would Rennard have said if he had heard him? Huma smiled slightly. Probably very little, he decided.

Several villagers stepped out to gaze at Huma with a variety of expressions – fear, respect, anger, and disgust. Five men blocked his path. Huma blinked and waited. The five did not step aside.

Their apparent leader was a tall, wide man with a foul black beard, a receding hairline, a squashed nose, and more than two hundred pounds of what had once been pure muscle. He wore the typical mud-stained pants and much-repaired tunic of a farmer. The clothing was quite insufficient for the harsh weather. The man’s beefy hand gripped a smith’s hammer.

“Throw down your sword, little man, and we’ll not hurt you. It’s your stuff we want, not you.”

A thin, pasty-faced lad giggled nervously, next to the big man. The boy was nearly bald, and he had all the signs of a plague survivor, including the touch of madness. The remaining three were rather nondescript remnants of men, faces and bodies that had wasted away long ago. None of the five were true bandits. Huma prayed silently that he would not be forced to raise a hand against them.

“Are you deaf?”

“I cannot surrender you my valuables or food, if that is what you desire. I have very little.”

“You have no choice.” The big man swung his hammer experimentally in Huma’s direction with great precision. “I thinks you’re missin’ the point. We take what we get.”

The hammer snapped up and into a striking position. Huma’s blade was out, yet he was loath to use it, even on them. The choice was taken from him, though, for the brigand leader’s hammer came screaming past Huma’s face, narrowly missing.

Five forms converged on the single knight – or tried to. Suddenly, Huma’s right foot caught an attacker in the stomach. His free hand stunned the giggling lad, who thought to slip under his guard with a rusty old shortsword. With the flat of his blade, Huma brought the lad to the ground, unconscious. With ease, he disarmed the watery-eyed old man. Weaponless, that one retreated quickly from the fight, leaving Huma free to take care of the two still standing, one of them the apparent leader.

Despair suffused Huma as he realized these last two were not about to yield. The one remaining swordsman fought from desperation, which added dangerous strength to his otherwise unremarkable form. The brigand leader smiled viciously as he advanced again and again.

With great sadness, Huma made his choice. Before the startled eyes of the other villagers, the Knight of the Crown broke through the swordsman’s guard and thrust deep into the chest. The man gurgled something and collapsed. Even as his one opponent fell, Huma was beating back the leader with one stinging blow after another. The burly thug began swinging wildly at the knight, and Huma waited. When the opening came, as he knew it would, a single chop put an end to the last of the desperate band.

Huma, his breath ragged, looked up at the spectators. They showed no emotion. He could not guess whether they were pleased or angered.

He looked around for the three survivors. Two were unconscious, and the third had run off. They would be no more trouble.

Disgusted, Huma wiped off his sword, sheathed it, and stalked north once more. He was not even out of the village before arguments flared as human vultures fought over the meager belongings of the dead thieves.

When he had first stood before Vingaard Keep, home of the knighthood since Vinas Solamnus had ordered its construction all those centuries ago, Huma had felt like a mote before the palace of the gods.

The feeling lessened only ever so slightly.

Vingaard Keep’s walls rose to a great height. Only a few adversaries dared scale such walls. The walls surrounded the citadel and were punctuated by slits for archers. The only gap in the walls was where the massive iron gates stood guard. They were as thick as Huma’s arm was long, and they could stand the full force of a dragon charge. Each of the gates was decorated with the three-part symbol of the knighthood – the majestic kingfisher, with wings half-extended, which grasped in its sharp claws a sword on which a rose was centered. Above its head was a crown.

After a long, wet wait, a sentry came in response to Huma’s hoarse shouts. He peered down at the bedraggled figure clad in a mixture of Solamnic and Ergothian armor, and shouted, “Who goes there? State your name and mission!”

Huma removed his helmet. “I am Huma, Knight of the Order of the Crown, returned from lands far beyond. I must speak to Lord Oswal, or even the Grand Master himself! It is urgent!”

“The Grand Master?” Huma could not see the man’s face well, but the surprise in his tone was obvious. “Wait!”

Huma wondered at the strange reaction.

At last, the gates began to swing slowly open.

The same sentry who had questioned him stood by the gate. At the guard’s signal, Huma followed him into the Keep. Those knights who had opened the gate wore expressions matching that of Huma’s guide. The mystery deepened.

The sentry, a young Knight of the Crown, pulled Huma over to a dark corner and out of the drizzle that had developed. “I know who you are, for Master Rennard speaks highly of you in training, so I have taken this chance to warn you before you make a slip.”

“Warn me? About what?”

“Only this morning —” The other knight looked around. “— the Grand Master, Lord Trake, passed away, victim of some foul, wasting disease.”

No! Huma nearly shouted. The Grand Master dead! Trake had never cared for Huma – in fact, despised him as did his son, Bennett – but Huma could not help feeling the grief, as would all his fellows at the death of the head of the knighthood.

“I did not know. The people in the village seemed uneasy, but they did not —”

“They do not know!” the other knight hissed. “Lord Oswal has decreed that no word shall pass from the Keep until a new Grand Master has been chosen! If word should leak out that we are in such disarray, our last defenses will crumble!”

Last defenses? “Tell me —”

“Garvin.”

“Tell me, Garvin, what happened when the darkness overcame our lines? Where do we stand now?” Huma clutched at the arms of the other knight.

“Didn’t you come through it?” Garvin eyed Huma curiously. “The front is no more than two days’ ride either east or west. The warlord’s Black Guard moves untouched through the south. Most of our outposts are cut off. We are cut off.”

“Is there no hope?”

Garvin stiffened. “We are Knights of Solamnia, Huma.”

Huma nodded, knowing they would fight to the end, regardless. His mind turned to the cavern, the challenges, and, mostly, to the sword. He yearned for it now. In his hand, it would cleave through the Queen’s evil forces. Solamnia would be victorious. Huma might even carve for himself some tiny kingdom —

He shook his head violently, and Garvin frowned in puzzlement. Huma forced the ungodly thoughts from his mind. The sword was not Paladine’s legacy to the knighthood. For all its majesty and power, something about it sickened Huma even as he yearned for it. Not that it mattered; he had lost everything when he had fallen through the mirror. It was hopeless.

No! He straightened and gave Garvin an apologetic smile for his odd actions. There was still time if he could make someone listen.

“Garvin, where might I find Lord Oswal?”

“Now?” The other knight stared at the darkened sky from the shelter. “It is past supper, I know that. He would be in his quarters. He is preparing for the Knightly Council tomorrow night.”

“They are going to wait until tomorrow night before choosing a new Grand Master? The Queen’s servants could be at our gates tonight! The dragons at the very least!”

Garvin nodded. “So Lord Oswal said, but the Council will be the Council.”

“I must speak with him now, then.”

Huma hurried out into the rain.

It had never really rained like this since the war’s beginning, Lord Oswal decided. In the past, it had always been nothing more than a mist. Now, it was almost as if the rain could wash it all away.

The High Warrior started from his daydreaming. He was becoming senile, he decided, to be thinking of rain when the fate of the knighthood and of the world might rest on getting the dunderheads of the Council to speed up their decision on who would be Grand Master. He had ruined his own chances by admitting to his indecision at the rout. It had been only a momentary lapse, shock at the sudden turn in events and the realization that they could not fight this attack. The losses had been costly.

Oswal’s nephew Bennett was maneuvering his own faction. He always remained within the bounds of the Oath and the Measure, but he was ambitious and would try to manipulate the decision. Logically, one of the three heads of the Orders should be the late Grand Master’s successor. But Bennett believed he should follow his father. Trake had always desired that. Only Oswal stood in his way, now.

“Lord Oswal?”

He looked up to see Rennard watching him intently. The pale knight stood next to the only other chair in Oswal’s room.

Rennard. Despite his cold exterior, the High Warrior had almost as much regard for Rennard as he did for Huma. Only – Huma had been lost in the debacle. Huma apparently had stood fast in the end.

“What is it, Rennard?”

“You’ve still not formulated your plans. I think it might be wise —”

There was a commotion outside as the two guards stationed at his chamber doors argued with someone. The newcomer was insistent, and there was something familiar about his voice.

“Rennard, what —?”

The pale knight had opened the door and – the elder knight could scarcely believe it – now gaped open-mouthed at a bedraggled knight struggling with the two guards. It took only seconds for Lord Oswal to recognize the newcomer, and then he, too, was staring in surprise and delight.

“Huma!”

The sentries immediately stopped struggling as they noted the tone of their superior. Rennard recovered also and, typically, simply said, “Let him by.”

Released, Huma burst into the room. “My Lord Oswal, Rennard —”

“At attention, Huma,” the gaunt knight interrupted.

Huma immediately stiffened. Rennard turned to the High Warrior, who nodded. To the guards, Rennard said, “Resume your posts; that is the High Warrior’s orders.”

Once the door was closed, Lord Oswal stared at the trembling knight. Huma had something to say and wanted to say it before it burst from his head, it seemed.

“At ease, Huma. Come and sit down. Tell us about the miracle that allows you to return from the dead.”

Huma knelt before the elder knight. Relieved at last, the story spilled from him in a torrent.

Lord Oswal and Rennard listened intently as each part of Huma’s tale unfolded. The quest of Magius – the chase of the Black Guard – the ever-present dreadwolves – the mountains, the cavern, the dragon, the sword … Had it not been Huma who spoke, neither of the knights would have believed a word. As it was, they truly believed.

The great clang of metal upon metal, so much like the sounds of the Keep’s own forge, interested Lord Oswal most. He asked Huma his opinion of the noise.

“A workplace of the gods. There is no other way to describe it. If it is not Reorx who shapes the metal somewhere within that mountain … I can add nothing more, save that I feel I must go back,” Huma said, adding, “If Paladine wills it.”

“Well.” It was all the High Warrior could say at first. Rennard simply nodded.

Lord Oswal thought for a moment. “This sword sounds fascinating. Could it —?”

Huma interjected immediately. “I fear it is lost to us. Wyrmfather acts as its tomb.”

His tone was cautious. He wanted them to forget the sword, not only because of his wariness of it, but because of the temptation Huma felt to grip the blade and wield it.

The High Warrior took his words at face value. “I’ll trust to your judgment.” He looked from Huma to Rennard and then back again. “It seems to me that we cannot let this matter sit for very long. Time is running out for all of us.”

Nervous enthusiasm in control, Huma quickly spoke. “I need only transportation. A horse – are the dragons about? One of them, maybe?”

The High Warrior frowned. “There is nothing I can do for you anyway, Huma. Not at present. If I send you off on some wild quest, I lose the chance of keeping the knighthood from the hands of those more interested in power and esteem than the Oath and the Measure. You will have to wait until a new Grand Master is chosen.”

Huma looked perplexed. “But, surely you —”

“I have been found wanting. It may be another.”

“But —” Huma could not believe his mission was to be delayed – possibly denied – for such a petty reason.

“I believe I can win my case, Huma. I’m sorry, but you will have to wait. Rennard, he is one of yours. See to it that he is cleaned up, fed, and allowed to sleep. I’ll want to see a clearer head on his shoulders come the morrow.”

“Yes, milord.” Rennard put a friendly but firm hand on Huma’s shoulders. The younger knight stood up reluctantly.

They parted silently. Huma’s depression deepened. Not only was his quest threatened, but so was the life of a man who had been the closest thing to a father he had ever had. No one but Lord Oswal could lead the knights in this time. Bennett, for all his prowess, lacked experience. Even Huma knew that. The Knights of Solamnia needed strong leadership, leadership that only Lord Oswal could provide, Huma believed. Without Oswal, the knighthood would splinter.

Without the High Warrior in command, Huma suddenly realized, he could never return to the mountain.

Chapter 18

The rain did not let up that night. Exhausted as he was, Huma could not sleep. Like Lord Oswal, he saw some significance in the sudden change from perpetual cloud cover to the incessant rain that so affected nerves as time passed.

He heard horses trotting past. Even in the dead of night, there was always activity. Some men slept, others worked. Vingaard Keep would never be caught off-guard.

A returning patrol, he decided. The sounds dwindled off in the direction of the stables. Huma wondered what news, if any, they would bring. Had the lines backed up even farther? Would the knights soon be able to view the front from the Keep itself? How long before the pincer finally closed upon the cradle of the knighthood?

Huma stood up slowly, so as not to disturb those around him in the common quarters shared by Knights of the Crown. The building was essentially one great room with row upon row of hard, flat beds and small storage areas for each occupant. As the knights slept in shifts, the room was never full. Also, many were away from the Keep for one reason or another. Only the higher-ranking knights had quarters of their own.

A breath of fresh air, he decided, would do him good. With careful steps, he maneuvered around his fellows and eventually made his way to the door.

The air was cool and the wind a little more brisk than he had imagined. He breathed in deeply, thankful for the moment when he could briefly relax from all the sorrows and confusion. Huma prayed that all would go well tomorrow.

He blinked. His eyes began to play tricks on him, and he was sure for a brief moment that a dark figure had moved near Lord Oswal’s chambers, just behind the two guards. He considered alerting someone, but neither guard seemed disturbed, and when he looked again there was no sign of the supposed intruder. Huma had no desire to bring ridicule upon himself. Not now. He stared out into the night and, after a few minutes, retired. Sleep came more swiftly this time.

The next day passed far too quickly. It had been Huma’s intention to steer clear of the other knights, at least until the question of leadership was resolved. Too much had happened to him, and he did not trust himself to remain neutral on the subject. What he said, he knew, would be a reflection on Lord Oswal, who had always stood by him. Even Rennard might be affected.

Yet Lord Oswal summoned Huma just two hours before the Knightly Council was to meet. The Knight of the Rose who brought the message eyed Huma with great curiosity, but, loyal as he was to the High Warrior, he asked no questions.

As Huma was crossing to Lord Oswal’s quarters, he was confronted by the very figure he had intended to avoid.

“They told me you were alive. I had my doubts, though, until I saw you just now.”

Bennett was clad in formal attire, including a purple cloak bearing the standard of both the knighthood and his family’s personal holdings. A black sash ran diagonally across his breastplate. Even now, with the rain still lightly falling and the true night almost upon them, he seemed to gleam. Regardless of all else, Bennett was his father’s son. The hawklike features were a copy of the elder knight.

“My apologies, Lord Bennett.” The family holdings had been ruled equally by Oswal and Trake until the latter’s rise to Grand Master. Now, as Trake’s heir, Bennett held that title with his uncle. As Oswal had no heirs of his own, the holdings would someday be under the rule of only one man. “I had meant to offer my sympathies sooner —”

“Do not play me for a fool, goatherder,” Bennett rejoined. “You have stayed away from me because we have ever been enemies. I still do not believe you belong among us, but my own good heart has made your ouster all but impossible now. Little did I know when I praised you – posthumously, I thought – that you would return.”

Huma’s entire body felt taut, but he would not allow himself to be provoked by Bennett. He was sure much of the anger in the son of the late Grand Master was due to his father’s untimely death.

“I have never been your enemy, milord. Rather, I have always admired you, despite your protest over my selection.” Bennett’s face actually evidenced mild surprise as Huma spoke. “Your bearing, your skill, your ability to command under the most adverse conditions – you are what I strive to be, what I may never be. I only ask for the opportunity to do my duty.”

Bennett’s mouth clamped shut. He stared at Huma briefly, then muttered, “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” Huma raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

The newest Lord of Baxtrey, though, had already turned away. All Huma could do was watch him vanish into the midst of the Keep.

Huma proceeded to meet with Lord Oswal.

Rennard was there. Huma interrupted them as they inspected a map. Lord Oswal was pointing to a spot near the north. They looked up as Huma was admitted, and the High Warrior smiled thinly. Rennard merely nodded.

Lord Oswal rolled up the map. “Were you away from the Crown’s general quarters?”

“No. I had the misfortune of confronting your nephew, milord.”

The elder knight shook his head. He was looking much more drained than he had the night before. “Yes. Pay him no mind, Huma. He is unsettled by the fact that you’ve seemingly come back from the dead.”

“He still hates what I am.”

“Then he is a fool,” Rennard suddenly interjected. “You have proved to be ten times the knight he is.”

“I thank you, though I do not believe that.”

“Then you are also a fool.”

Lord Oswal interrupted. “The last thing we need is to fight among ourselves.” The High Warrior put a hand to his forehead, nearly knocking over a lit candle in the process. Huma reached for him, but Oswal waved him away. “I’m fine. Didn’t seem to get enough sleep last night, though. A bad night for insomnia, I should think.”

“Will you be able to go through with the Council meeting?” asked Rennard.

“What choice have I? Perhaps it’s only my personal opinion, but if my nephew – who I must point out thinks he is doing what is best – has any control over the next Grand Master, we will be plunged into disaster.”

The intensity of the High Warrior’s opinion of his nephew surprised Huma. He had known they did not get along, but this … “Why so?”

“Bennett, like many of us, is too caught up in the legends of the knighthood. He is the kind of leader who will have every able knight in Vingaard Keep attacking in one massive, heroic charge that will end in the death of all.”

“Would he?” Huma’s tone was doubtful. Even against the darkness, Bennett appeared calculating and in full command of his senses.

“He would. You never see Bennett in a command meeting; he is the one for lighting strikes or waves of destruction, never solid, long-term strategies. Since Trake’s death, I think he is even more determined to do something momentous – to honor his father’s memory.”

“Huma may have trouble believing that, but I have known Bennett longer. I would concur,” added Rennard.

Lord Oswal looked up at Huma. “Another thing. He would never believe your story of enchanted swords, imprisoned dragons, and god-created challenges that hold the key to victory. I do. Call it faith in Paladine, but I do.”

The elder knight leaned forward suddenly, holding a hand against his head.

“Rest. I need some rest,” muttered Oswal.

“Help me with him, Huma.”

Together, the two knights led the High Warrior to his bed. As they helped him lie down, Lord Oswal took hold of Rennard. “You must see to it that I am awake in time for the Council. Is that understood?”

The pale face turned toward Huma and then back to the High Warrior. With the same lack of emotion he always displayed, Rennard said, “Of course. You know I will.”

“Good.” Lord Oswal was asleep almost immediately after that. The two knights stepped away quietly. When they were backed up by the door, Rennard turned to Huma.

“He wants you at the Council meeting.”

“What about him?” Huma feared for Oswal’s health.

“He’ll be there. I’ve promised to take care of him.” Rennard actually smiled slightly. “I have everything in hand. You’ll see.”

Huma made sure that he was one of the first to arrive.

Not all Knightly Councils were open to the population of the Keep. Most consisted only of the ruling knights and any persons involved with some portion of the agenda. There was also a set pattern to events, steps that were followed under normal circumstances. It was the feeling of the ruling body, though, that selecting a replacement for the Grand Master was something all should be involved with and, while not everyone could fit into the chamber, the knighthood as a whole would be well represented.

The masters of the Orders of the Crown and the Sword were already seated. Arak Hawkeye tugged at his tiny goatee and stared rather arrogantly at his counterpart of the Sword. Huma did not recognize the man next to Lord Hawkeye. It was not the same knight who had commanded the Order of the Sword these past four years. The former commander had died in the war to the east, and his replacement had been chosen on the battlefield out of necessity. The knight’s angular face reminded Huma of an idealized statue more than a man. His mustache was long and trimmed narrow, his eyes nearly invisible under a thick, shaggy brow. When Bennett entered, it was clear who was the true ruling power in the Order of the Sword, for the other stiffened.

Eventually, the chamber was filled and the waiting began. Only two people of consequence were missing, Rennard and Lord Oswal. The Knightly Council waited patiently, members constantly conferring with one another during that time. At last, Bennett stalked imperiously over to Lord Hawkeye and spoke sharply in an undertone. Hawkeye responded in kind, and the argument raged for several minutes. Regrettably, they were not speaking loud enough to be understood, and Huma could only guess at what might have passed between them.

Just then, Rennard rushed in, out of breath. There was intense strain on his face, and the image of the normally placid knight in such a high emotional state was enough to cause more than one person to rise in expectation of bad news.

Rennard whispered quickly to Lord Hawkeye. Bennett and the other Councilors listened in as best they could. Bennett’s face turned white, and he gripped the nearest chair tightly. Arak Hawkeye stood up to face the suddenly anxious crowd.

“This meeting is postponed until further notice. I regret to inform those assembled that Lord Oswal of Baxtrey, High Warrior and master of the Order of the Rose, has been stricken ill – by the same disease that claimed the Grand Master.”

“A quarantine has been imposed on the Keep. Lord Oswal is not expected to live through the night.”

Rennard was still shaking.

“I came to wake him as he requested and found him unconscious and shivering in his bed, despite being covered by two or three blankets. I administered what aid I knew and then fetched a cleric.”

Huma had never seen him in such a state. It was almost as if the pale knight was reliving his own brush with the plague.

“What did the cleric do?”

“Little. The disease baffles him. Another gift from the Queen, I suppose, damn her existence.”

“Is there nothing that can be done?” Huma suddenly felt weak. Lord Oswal was his mentor, his friend, the closest thing to his father. He must not die!

“We can only wait and pray.” Was there a hint of bitter mockery in Rennard’s voice? Huma could not really blame him. He himself felt so powerless. The Dragonqueen, Crynus, and the renegade mage Galan Dracos must be laughing at their fate, he supposed.

“Huma.” Rennard laid a hand on his shoulder. The pale face was still strained. How much Rennard had cared for Oswal! “Get some sleep.”

They were in the outer chamber of the Keep’s Temple of Paladine, where the High Warrior had been carried in the hopes that the gods might influence Lord Oswal’s recovery. At present, the clerics treating the elder knight were in a quandary. One moment they would believe they had beaten the disease, the next moment it would come back, stronger than before. Time was running out. Lord Oswal’s body could not stand many more severe swings in health.

Rennard smiled faintly. “I promise you, I will alert you should there be any change.”

Despite his good intentions, Huma suddenly felt sleepy, almost as if the mere mention of it had made him recognize that fact. He nodded to Rennard and stood up.

“You will wake me.”

“I promised Lord Oswal that,” Rennard replied bitterly.

As Huma departed, he could still hear Bennett’s voice coming from the side chamber where the clerics conferred. Bennett seemed to care for his uncle almost as much as he cared for his father. At news of the High Warrior’s sickness, it had been Bennett’s voice that had prevented the panic and organized the temporary quarantine and the shifting of the ailing noble to the temple. Now, the Knight of the Sword divided his time between praying for his uncle and arguing with clerics, whom he thought were reacting too slowly to the crisis.

What of the war? It was as if forgotten by those who cloistered themselves within the walls of the Keep. The thought nagged Huma all the way to his cot.

He woke abruptly, his mind startlingly clear. Lord Oswal was his first thought, and Huma immediately assumed the worst. Others slept on, far more used to the daily loss of precious life, it seemed to him.

Huma slipped out into the night and peered around. In the dim torchlight, he could make out sentries keeping vigilant watch on the walls while others patrolled the courtyard. Guards still stood before the doorway leading to the High Warrior’s abode. That was a good sign.

Unable to sleep, Huma decided to return to the temple. That Rennard had not come for him did not surprise him; the pale knight evidently meant to keep vigil through the entire crisis, if at all possible.

The rain had still not let up, and the courtyard was turning into a bowl of muck.

The temple of Paladine seemed oddly dark as he neared it. No one stood guard, which did not surprise him. But as he made his way up the steps and was about to knock upon the temple doors, he noticed that one was slightly ajar. Pushing it open, he discovered the main corridor also dark. That, he knew, was not as it should be. Here there should have been a sentry or at least a cleric.

Suddenly Huma found himself before one of the Knights of the Rose whose duty it was to act as honor guard and – for this crisis – guardian for the ill High Warrior. The knight stood at the doorway, looking quite stern, and Huma almost hailed him until he realized that the man would not be standing in darkness unless there was a very good reason. Stepping cautiously, Huma made his way across the marble floor and did not stop until he was face-to-face with the guard.

The Knight of the Rose stared back, but did not see.

Huma held a hand before the other’s face. He could feel and hear the man’s breathing, but it was the breathing of one deep in sleep. Huma dared slap the knight lightly on the cheek. The guard did not stir.

Leaning closer, Huma inspected the open eyes. They were glazed. He had seen men like this before, men who had been drugged for one reason or another. Huma suspected the Knight of the Rose would remember nothing about his lapse of duty. He also suspected something similar had happened to the rest of the temple’s inhabitants – including Rennard.

With a prayer to Paladine, Huma drew his sword. He followed the darkened halls until he came to the place where Rennard had sat, only to discover that the gaunt knight was gone. The doorway to the room where Lord Oswal lay resting also was partially open, and Huma discovered two more guards in the same comatose condition.

Huma feared the worst. Rennard and Lord Oswal had both been overwhelmed, he decided quickly.

With measured steps, Huma slowly opened the door to Lord Oswal’s chamber. The darkness disoriented him for only a second, then his trained senses located the even darker blur – Lord Oswal standing by the makeshift bed.

Standing? Huma blinked and allowed his eyes to adjust. No, it was not the High Warrior. Oswal was, indeed, lying on the bed. What then? A shadow?

Huma stepped forward and the darkness seemed to shift. He blinked. The figure – or what he had thought was a figure – was no longer there. With some trepidation, Huma moved forward until he was standing next to the still form of Lord Oswal. He was relieved to hear the regular breathing of the High Warrior.

Huma’s foot bumped against something. He peered down and found himself staring at the inert body of one of the clerics. The cleric slept as the guards had slept, his eyes glazed and wide. Huma shook him hard in an attempt to wake him, but the man did not even stir.

He felt, rather than heard, the darkness stir behind him. He hesitated and that hesitation might have nearly cost him his own life, for something metallic struck his breastplate and would have cut deep into his throat if he had moved any slower.

Cursing himself, Huma parried another vicious jab by a tiny, twisted blade. He had his first glance at his attacker, a figure in flowing darkness from which two red, glaring eyes peered. The figure threw the blade at his head, forcing Huma to duck. Even as Huma dodged the weapon, the specter brought forth a small pouch and raised it.

The knight scuttled back quickly. There was no denying what he faced now. The actions, the appearance – he was surprised he had not recognized the intruder immediately – were those of a cultist of Morgion, Lord of Disease and Decay. One of the vermin had made his way into Vingaard Keep – and had so far succeeded in killing one, and possibly two, of the most important figures in the knighthood.

The ragged figure hesitated before throwing the contents of the pouch.

Huma leaped forward, his broadsword up and before him. The flat of the blade slammed into the pouch, which burst, but not before the sword’s momentum pushed much of it back at the hooded intruder. Huma stumbled back, avoiding the deadly shower that rained on the other.

The assassin coughed and hacked as dust flew into his face. He stumbled back, but Huma dared not step forward. The cultist fell toward a pew and then, slowly, pulled himself back up again.

“If you think —” the voice was rough and strained, but familiar “— to kill me with my own tools, know that Morgion protects his own. Besides, I only wished to put you to sleep. Now you leave me no choice.”

It was all Huma could do to keep from dropping his sword as the hooded figure’s throat cleared itself of dust and his identity was revealed. Huma took a desperate step back, even as the cultist pulled out a broadsword hidden in his robe.

“The knife point would have nicked you, and again you would have slept. I fear, though, that this is all I have left now.” The blade came up, its point directed at Huma’s neck.

Huma could not bring himself to fight. It could not be happening like this. It could not be true. This was some terrible nightmare from which he would awaken!

The assassin laughed quietly. The sword lowered slightly. The laugh seemed to echo through Huma’s mind, mocking everything he had ever believed in.

“I had tried to protect you from this. I am sorry, Huma.”

And though Huma could not speak the words at first, they pounded in his head, cried in his heart.

Why, Rennard?

Chapter 19

“Have you nothing to say?” Rennard asked. “We have time. All sleep here. The walls are thick. They will not hear our swords. Yes. I think we have time.”

“In Paladine’s name, Rennard. Why?”

Huma could almost see the face, despite the hood and darkness. He could almost feel the bitterness as Rennard spoke.

“When I lay dying of plague all those years ago, I pleaded with Paladine, with Mishakal, with all the gods of that house for release. They did nothing. I lingered, wasting away. My visage shocks many now; it would have horrified them even more had they seen it then. I had contracted the Scarlet Plague, you see.”

The Scarlet Plague. Of all the forms unleashed over the years, the Scarlet Plague had been the worst. The knighthood had been forced to burn whole villages when the greatest healers could not keep the disease under control. The victims wasted away, but each day was agony and many killed themselves long before the disease had the chance. The name came from the redness of the skin as the victim eventually burned up from the sickness. It was a frightening thing, still talked of in whispers.

“Then when I was sure the agony would finally kill me, I was visited – not by the gods I had pleaded to, but by the one god willing to take away my pain, for a price.” The point of the blade rose again. “Morgion. Only he cared to answer my prayers, though I had never looked to him. He was willing to take my pain from me, make me whole if I would become his. It was no difficult decision, Huma. I accepted immediately and gladly.”

Huma prayed for something – Lord Oswal stirring, knights coming to investigate the darkness, something – but all remained quiet. How long had Rennard planned? How long had he waited for this moment?

Huma heard more than saw the blade coming at him. That other knight moved confidently in the dark. Yet Huma managed again and again to counter each strike, though he knew that Rennard’s skill in personal combat was considered second to none. Especially now, when he faced a Huma who also fought within himself.

Then, as suddenly as he had attacked, Rennard ceased. He chuckled quietly. “Very good. Much like your father.”

“My father?”

They had worked their way farther from the doors, toward where the clerics stood when they offered ceremonies. Rennard pulled back his hood, and even in the dark Huma could make out the pale, drawn skin. “Father. Oh yes. That was why I protected you, you know. The mark of Morgion, even on an unsuspecting person, is a sign that that one is not to be harmed by any who serve Morgion.”

Huma remembered the words of the cultists in the ruins. They had seen the mark and had argued about it. Skularis had not known the reason for its existence.

“What a sentimental fool I am,” Rennard continued, “for wanting to save my kin.”

Kin? Huma shook his head in growing horror.

“You are so very much like my brother was, Huma. Durac was his name – Durac, Lord of Eldor, a land overrun soon after he and I joined the knighthood. Nothing remains of Eldor today, save a few pitiful ruins. Just as well. Unlike the Baxtrey domains, where Oswal and Trake ruled jointly, I would have inherited nothing. As eldest son, your father inherited.”

“Stop it!” Huma swung violently at the man who had betrayed all he believed in. A man who had once been a friend.

Rennard defended himself easily. After several moments, they parted again.

“I belonged to Morgion long before our father sent us as squires to Vingaard Keep. From the first, I tried to protect Durac. He was family, after all. The others who followed Morgion might not understand that, so I planted within him the same invisible mark that protected you from them. It proved to be a futile gesture. Your father died in battle only a year after becoming a knight. He stayed back with a handful of others to block a passage through the eastern mountains in Hylo – the only passage that would allow the Queen’s forces to attack from the rear. The rest of us rode to warn the main army. There was nothing I could do. Ironic, is it not? I wanted to tell him the truth about me at that last moment, but of course I could not. Little did I know at that time that he had left a wife and son.”

Huma quivered, part of him yearning to hear the story, part of him repulsed.

“You must ask Lord Oswal about Durac sometime – when you meet him on the other side!” Rennard charged Huma, catching the anguished knight off guard. They struggled together, and Huma found himself staring into a face half-twisted by madness. Gone was the emotionless facade that he had always wondered about, the mask behind which Rennard had hidden his treachery. Huma succeeded in pushing the other knight away.

“What was her name, nephew? Karina? I saw her only once, years later, when I finally located the village he had frequented before his death. She was a beautiful woman – wheat-colored hair, elfin face, slim – a woman full of life. I thought of wooing her, but then I saw you – Durac all over again, though only a lad – and knew that she would shun the horror that I was. I was a fool to think of anything other than my promise to my true lord.” Rennard’s sword cleaved the air as it came down at Huma. The younger knight rolled to the side and into a squatting position.

“You killed her, didn’t you?” Huma’s voice was cold and lifeless as he finally relived the days of his mother’s fatal illness, which had seemed to come from nowhere.

“You should thank me. I thought of you. I wanted you to be the knight Durac should have been. I believed I could keep you unaware of the truth.” Rennard smiled obscenely.

“The dream. I had a dream about your foul god.”

“I thought I might draw you to my side, make you a comrade and spare us this.”

“What by the platinum dragon goes on here?”

Both combatants froze as light streamed into the room. Bennett stood in the doorway, flanked by two of his fellows from the Order of the Sword. A quick glance showed Rennard’s realization of his mistake; Bennett must have retired on his own or at least have departed, and Rennard had had no chance to treat him as he had treated all those unsuspecting others.

“Rennard? Huma?” Whatever his faults, the son of the late Grand Master was not slow. He took in the scene, saw the tattered cloak and hood that covered Rennard’s armor, and knew what the knight represented.

Bennett pulled out his sword and pointed at the traitor. “I want him!”

“How quickly the veneer of dignity vanishes in the face of petty emotions,” Rennard comment wryly. Without another word, he took a savage swing at Huma – who dodged – and then Rennard bolted over the pews.

“He has nowhere to go!” Bennett’s resemblance to a bird of prey was even more obvious now. His eyes were wide and burned intensely, yet they caught every movement, studied all angles. His movements were fluid, calculated. Bennett was a hawk about to dive upon its prey. He stalked Rennard now.

But Rennard stepped into the shadows of the wall – and slid through. Huma reached the walls before the others and felt the spot. He did not think that Rennard had used sorcery to get away, as Magius had done once. No, it might – yes! Huma’s fingers found a slight indentation, and the wall suddenly gaped open to swallow him. Behind him, he could hear Bennett shouting for the other two to follow, then the wall closed once more. Huma had no time to wait for them.

Where did Rennard hope to go?

The elder knight’s rapid footsteps were barely audible, moving upstairs. What did Rennard hope to find up there?

This was not an ancient, hidden stairway as Huma first suspected; he passed two windows on his way up to the next level.

The stairway ended at a trapdoor in the ceiling. Cautiously, he reached up and, with his blade ready in his other hand, pushed it open. Wind and rain rushed to meet him.

The attack he expected did not occur.

Footsteps behind him alerted him to the presence of Bennett and his two companions. Huma did not want them to be the ones to face Rennard. That was reserved for himself. Slowly, Huma stepped up and out, into the rain.

The roof was empty. There was no place to hide, no place to flee to. The knight walked to the nearest ledge and peered over. Knights were beginning to gather below; Bennett had sounded the alert.

The first of Bennett’s two companions lifted himself out onto the roof. “Where is he? Did you catch him?”

Huma shook his head. Where was Rennard? The newcomers also combed the roof, but they could not discover a trace. Rennard had simply vanished.

Bennett refused to believe this. Knights searched all the nearby buildings and, when that failed to turn up anything, searched the rest of the Keep as well. Rennard’s belongings were gathered and inspected, but they offered few clues.

The clerics had rushed to Lord Oswal’s side the moment they learned of the attack. To their amazement, he appeared to be recovering. As one cleric explained to Huma, Bennett, and the others who had assembled, Lord Oswal’s body was throwing off effects of the dose that Rennard had administered earlier – thus the assassin hoped to effect a second dose before the High Warrior had recovered.

As the knights dispersed, some to continue the search for the traitor, some to their various duties, Huma felt a hand on his shoulder. He started, his first thought that Rennard had come to finish him off. The figure behind him spoke.

“It’s Bennett.”

Huma turned slowly around, and the two faced one another. Oswal’s nephew seemed to be fighting several emotions all at once, for his face registered traces of embarrassment, anger, and confusion. At last, he reached out a hand.

“My gratitude for all you’ve done.”

Uncertain as to how to react, Huma simply took the hand in his own and shook it. “I failed to capture your father’s killer.”

Bennett forced his face into immobility. Huma knew that the other knight was very uncomfortable. “You unmasked him. You saved my uncle. Even – even fought that pale traitor to a standstill, something I never could have done.”

The hawk-faced knight saluted briefly and departed. Huma watched him disappear, a brief smile playing on his lips before he, too, turned and left, hoping to find some trace of Rennard.

It came as no surprise, two days later, that Lord Oswal became the new Grand Master. He had remained isolated before that decision, with only the Council members speaking with him. All possible opposition by Bennett had vanished; in fact, the new Grand Master’s nephew was petitioning to step up to the Order of the Rose. There was every likelihood that he would be recommended. It was also likely that he would be wearing the trappings of High Warrior himself before long.

Huma struggled to get through those two days. When he was at last granted an audience with Lord Oswal, Huma shook visibly. To him, the Grand Master was a figure almost as revered as Paladine, for he was, after all, the living symbol of the Triumvirate’s desires.

As Huma knelt in supplication, an odd sound reached his ears and he dared to look up. Flanked by an impressive honor guard consisting of veterans from all three Orders, the Grand Master was sitting on his throne and chuckling.

“Get up, Huma. You don’t have to stand on ceremony with me. Not now.”

Huma rose and came closer. “Grand Master —”

A sigh. “If you must be formal, make it Lord Oswal. I do not have the pretensions of my brother – not yet.”

“Lord Oswal, before I start, tell me of Durac of Eldor.”

“Durac? I’ve known two or three. Eldor … I’m not sure —”

“Please. You know which one. Rennard’s brother. My – father.”

The new Grand Master, stared open-mouthed. “Father? Durac? Then, Rennard —”

“My uncle.” Huma forced the unsavory word from his mouth.

“Paladine!” Lord Oswal’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Huma, I am sorry.”

“Sir. My father?”

The Grand Master wiped something from his eye. “I’m sorry, Huma. I wish I could tell you everything, but I honestly don’t remember much. Durac was a good knight, although a little overenthusiastic. He was a brilliant, almost natural fighter, picking up skills as easily as I might pick up a knife. I remember that he spent much of his time west, but I never knew it was because he had a family. I do remember, though,” Oswal said, rubbing his chin, “him shouting to us as we left him and the others to hold the pass. Now I realize what he meant. When he said ‘watch over them,’ I thought he meant the men. What a fool! He meant his family, and only Rennard really knew.”

There was little more the Grand Master could add, which disappointed Huma, though he did not show it. It was Oswal who broke the uneasy silence by saying, “You have my permission to start out for Ergoth and your mountains. How many knights will you need to accompany you?”

“None.”

“None?” The Grand Master leaned forward, his hands gripping the throne tightly. “As you yourself mentioned, this is a matter of the utmost importance. I want to ensure your success. Paladine has seen fit to give us this chance, but I will not let you take unnecessary risks.”

“What Paladine seeks must be from me alone,” Huma replied. “I feel that now. I cannot explain how I know. It simply feels right.”

Oswal sighed and leaned back. “You say that with great conviction. My head tells me that you are wrong, but my heart listens to you. I think, in this matter, I will go with my heart, for that is where belief begins.”

“Thank you, milord.”

Lord Oswal stood. Huma followed suit. The Grand Master clasped Huma on the shoulders. “Regardless of your birth and who your parents were, I shall always consider you my son.”

They held one another briefly, then Oswal broke away. “Go on. Get out before I become even more a sentimental fool than I am.”

Few knights were around the courtyard when Huma chose to leave. He had wanted it that way. It would make the departure easier, at least for him. A part of him felt as if he were running out, that he should remain in Vingaard Keep until Rennard was found and punished. Yet Huma no longer wanted any part in the other’s capture. He had known the gaunt knight far too long to simply forget all those past times, when the two had been friends.

One figure he did note. Bennett, standing on the parapet and scanning the Keep. The Grand Master’s nephew was still searching for his father’s murderer. The search through Rennard’s belongings had uncovered ancient plans for the Keep that had been thought lost forever. They included two passages within the temple that not even the clerics knew about.

The dour Bennett turned from gazing out at the lands surrounding Vingaard and noted Huma. He nodded slowly and then turned away. That was all.

Huma’s path took him through another half-dead village. He had been riding for an hour. Twice, Huma had met patrolling knights, and each time he had brought them up to date on the futile search going on in Vingaard Keep for the traitorous Rennard.

The inhabitants of this particular village eyed the lone knight differently than those Huma had passed in other places. There was a tension in their very movements, a great sense of fear, as if they expected to see the Dragonqueen herself swoop out of the sky at any moment. Slowly, they began to mill around Huma and his horse.

The warhorse slowed nervously, its nostrils flaring as it stared at possible enemies. Huma pulled tight on the reins, re-exerting mastery over the beast. He did not want to have the lives of innocent commonfolk on his hands.

It soon proved impossible for the horse to proceed, so concentrated had the small crowd become. The villagers enveloped animal and rider in a wave of human fear. Huma began picking up muttered questions, dealing with the events in the Keep.

A grimy, bony claw touched his right leg. A rasping voice asked, “Is it true? Has the Grand Master been murdered? Are we no longer safe?”

“I heard that the Council wants to surrender!” cried out a voice that the knight could not locate.

That last statement increased the anxiety of the villagers. They crowded even closer, oblivious to the danger they faced from the hooves of the trained steed. Huma tried to wave them back.

“Stand aside! Let me through! If you don’t, the horse might hurt you!”

“He’s fleeing!” cried the same voice. “The knights are lost!”

“We’re all lost!” shrilled an old woman. She fainted and was lost in the press of bodies.

“You can’t leave us!”

“You’re tryin’ to save your own skin!”

“Get back!” Faces filled with anger and confusion moved through Huma’s vision. Hands clawed at him. The horse, spooked, reared. Those closest to the animal’s front came to their senses and turned to escape. But those who had been behind them continued to move forward.

An elderly man fell. The knight succeeded in calming his mount and then sought to clear a path so that he could help the old man.

“He’s betrayed us all! He struck the elder down! Take him!”

Ragged, gaunt figures surged on Huma. He pulled out his sword and threatened them with it. The villagers backed away but were by no means ready to give up – not when they feared the Knights of Solamnia were abandoning them to the tenderness of the Dragonqueen.

This time, Huma spotted the instigator, a figure clad in the garments of a simple farmer, standing off to the side. The man made no move to run when he realized he had been seen. Instead, he drew a broadsword and revealed once more the face of evil.

Huma directed the horse through the crowd, forcing people back with his sword and thanking Paladine that no one had yet dared him to strike. He reined the steed to a stop less than six feet from the figure.

“Bennett still thinks you might be in the Keep.”

Rennard smiled briefly. “I was until Lord Oswal’s appointment became official. Then I came here to give them the news.”

Huma leaped off his mount, never taking his eyes from his uncle nor sheathing the sword. “To put fear in their hearts, you mean. To break down trust, make us fight among ourselves.”

“It is – my calling. But not just these. Villages all over this area. I’ve not slept since yesterday.”

“They finally found your secret passages.”

“I know. I left the maps on purpose. I had no more need of them.”

“This is insane, uncle.”

“Uncle. A word I never thought you would use. Yes, it is insane. The whole world is insane. I strive to make it less so.” Rennard pointed at the villagers, speaking quietly enough that they would not hear him. “The fear will spread. They will march on the Keep in their desperation, and the knighthood will be forced to drive them away, with at least some loss of life, I believe. The great Knights of Solamnia will suffer both the notoriety of their actions and a terrible blow to morale. I need not go on.”

“This has all been planned.”

“Of course. I could have killed the entire Council, but that only would have strengthened the knighthood’s resolve. That is why I have traveled the near lands, in disguise, stirring the pot.” Rennard straightened and the sword swung slowly back and forth. “My only remaining duty is you, Huma. I knew you would choose this route. I cannot allow you to return to this – cavern. It may be a madness on your part, but I think not. I cannot risk being wrong about something like that.”

His sword came up swinging. Huma immediately blocked the thrust. The villagers stepped away as the two knights fought, but the people’s horribly expectant looks showed Huma that they were waiting to see one of the knights die, so completely had they become Rennard’s pawns.

The gaunt knight swung and gave Huma an opening. Rennard’s skill allowed him to parry much of the blow, but Huma’s blade still slipped under and struck a glancing blow on the other’s right side. The blade clanged off a solid surface beneath Rennard’s tunic, however, and a cunning smile flashed briefly across the pale knight’s features. Beneath the cloth, he still wore his armor.

Their blades clashed time and time again as they struggled through the rain-soaked village. The human wall that surrounded them bent and twisted, but never revealed a gap. Huma wondered what would happen to him even if he defeated Rennard. The villagers might very well fall on him.

“Very good!” hissed Rennard. “I trained you well!”

“Well enough.” Huma said no more. He knew he needed to save every ounce of strength, for Rennard was living off his madness and fighting with daunting power and ferocity.

Huma slipped in the mud just as Rennard’s blade flashed past his throat. The traitor fell forward, and Huma caught him sharply in the leg. Rennard did not scream, though his leg was awash in blood almost immediately. He hobbled away from Huma.

They turned to face one another again. Huma was on the verge of exhaustion, while Rennard was becoming faint from the terrible wound across the front of his right leg. Huma’s blade had just missed the muscles and tendons that would have cost Rennard the limb.

“Surrender, Rennard. You will be treated fairly; I swear it.”

The pale knight looked more drawn than normal. “I think not. A traitor such as myself, who has killed one Grand Master and almost another, could hardly expect fair treatment from the knighthood.”

Huma knew that his strength would return the longer they talked, while Rennard’s would only continue to seep away. Even now, it was difficult for the other to stand.

“Come, nephew. Let us finish this.” With amazing stamina, Rennard charged Huma, attacking with a variety of moves. Huma stood his ground and slowly began to move on the offensive. Rennard’s face became blurred as all was reflex, and the lessons – ironically, Rennard’s lessons – allowed Huma to counter each and every move.

A thrust broke through Rennard’s defenses. It caught him in his sword arm and the traitor almost dropped his weapon as the injured limb jerked uncontrollably for a moment. He was left wide open, and Huma’s blade came within an inch of his face.

They were both caked with mud now. Rennard had lost the madness that had possessed him, and he now seemed to realize that he had all but lost. Huma was better than he; his eyes knew it even if his face revealed no emotion. Now, it was all Rennard could do to prevent the killing blow.

Huma broke through his uncle’s guard again, and Rennard suddenly wavered on two badly bleeding legs.

He collapsed to his knees.

That broke the spell. Huma blinked, looking down at Rennard, whose life fluids were mixing with the muck. A look of disgust spread across Huma’s face.

“It’s over, Rennard. I won’t kill you. It would serve no purpose.”

Rennard tried to stand. On one knee, he waited, his sword at shoulder level, ready to defend.

“I will not go back, Huma. I will not suffer the mockery of a trial.”

Huma lowered his sword. “Let me help you. You were a good knight. One of the best.”

The laugh that Rennard responded with became a hacking cough. The cultist barely kept from toppling over. “Do you not understand? I’ve never been a knight! Since that day, my life has been in the hands of another god, and I have failed even him. Look at me!” Rennard smiled feebly and Huma was shocked to see that his former companion’s pallid skin was slowly turning scarlet. “My reward for failure. I never truly have been cured, I’ve merely lived day by day.”

“Rennard. A patrol will be by. They can locate a cleric.”

“No cleric will touch me.”

Whatever spell or nightmare the former knight had cast upon the village was gone, for now the people were screaming and crying at the sight of this, one of the worst plagues. Within seconds, the two armored figures stood alone.

“Rennard —”

It had become a strain for the other knight even to speak. The plague was coursing through his body.

“Don’t come near me, Huma. It spreads through touch.” Rennard was smiling. “There’ll be nothing left when it finishes. They’ll be lucky if they find more than a shell.”

Where was a patrol? Huma scanned the horizon in frustration.

“For whatever it is worth, nephew,” sputtered the dying figure, “I hope you find what you are looking for. Perhaps there still is a chance.”

There! Huma spotted distant figures on horseback. They were moving too slowly, though. Much too slowly.

“Huma …”

The young knight looked down. Rennard’s face twisted with pain. “Pray to Paladine, Rennard! The patrol is nearing this village. When I explain —”

“There is nothing to explain, save that they must burn my body where I lie.” Rennard straightened and gripped the hilt of his broadsword with both hands, to steady it.

With a speed that belied his sickness, Rennard ran the edge of his blade across his throat.

“No!” Only the realization that he would carry the plague prevented Huma from wrenching the sword from the ragged figure. It was too late already. No cleric could bind such a wound in time.

Rennard’s limp hand released the sword, which fell and buried itself in the mud only a moment before Rennard’s lifeless form did the same. Huma dropped his own weapon and fell to his knees.

“No.” His voice was less than a whisper. Huma put his face in his hands and let his battered emotions run their course. Faintly, he heard the clattering sound of many horses, and then all was silent.

Chapter 20

Silence.

The intermingled cries of the oncoming horses and the terrified villagers who believed that the worst of plagues had been released in their midst, the tumult of hoofbeats – even the wind – all turned to silence.

The silence was interrupted by the distant beating of metal against metal.

Slowly, unbelievingly, Huma raised his head from his hands and stared wide-eyed at the world around him. The weary lands outside of Vingaard Keep, the entire outdoors, for that matter, were gone.

What stood before him now was the mirror – the same mirror that he had fallen through days ago. Now, all it revealed was the disheveled form of a worn knight who looked scarcely alive.

He was back in Wyrmfather’s cavern.

Had it truly happened? It seemed unlikely at first. More conceivable that it had been an illusion. But Huma still felt the pains that had been inflicted on him in that so-called dream. A nightmare, then. One very real nightmare. For Rennard was indeed dead.

Huma leaned back and removed his gauntlets. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the cursed mirror.

He was both angered and relieved – angry at feeling like a puppet, relieved that he was going to be permitted to continue on his quest and perhaps reunite with Kaz and Magius.

Where had they been all this time?

Huma continued to stare at the mirror. The shock of Rennard’s betrayal and death was still with him. Rennard was dead and Huma would pray for him, but the knighthood – no, all of Ansalon – still had a chance, if what Huma had been told was truthful – that somewhere in these mountains was the key to victory.

His reflection stared back at him from the mirror, and Huma’s mind finally registered what he was seeing.

He stumbled forward quickly. Huma had momentarily forgotten what had taken place in this chamber, what had happened to him. He had, as difficult it was to conceive, almost forgotten Wyrmfather.

If time passed here as it had at Vingaard Keep, the huge form should be ripe. Carrion-eaters of all shapes and sizes should have established their territories. But neither was true.

The gigantic head and neck lay exactly where they had fallen, true, but Wyrmfather’s gigantic bulk had turned to metal, metal of the purest nature, more brilliant than silver. At the same time, it resembled that other metal more than any other. He ran his hands over it, feeling the smoothness and marveling at how great a quantity there must be. For lack of a better name, he called it dragonsilver.

He stumbled awkwardly around the great mass, his interest suddenly magnetized by the object that had destroyed Wyrmfather. Somewhere within its massive jaws, the huge corpse concealed the sword that had spoken to Huma. He was sure it had called to him, just as he was sure that he had to have it. If Huma gained nothing else from this experience, he wanted the sword.

The head of the dead titan was twisted upside down, and Huma discovered that the lower jaw rested firmly atop the upper. That meant that the sword was buried within a tremendous mass of pure metal, with no way to retrieve it. Angered, Huma banged his hand against the snout of the creature; the shock brought his senses back, and he briefly wondered at his obsession with the ancient blade. Best if he —

He kicked something with his foot. It made a metallic sound, and Huma looked down to see the very object he had been seeking. With a startled cry, he fell to his knees and practically cradled the weapon. It was to be his. This was a sign.

From the moment his hands touched it, the blade had begun to glow again. Huma basked happily in that glow, for it soothed him and made him forget the terrible events of the past few days. Reluctantly, he sheathed the sword and crawled on top of the great beast. Wyrmfather’s sloping neck proved to be an excellent ramp from which Huma could climb to one of the upper tunnels that dotted the cavern and seek the mysterious smith. That was, he believed, his logical destination.

Neither the endless mounds of gold nor the gleaming caches of jewelry interested him, now that he had the sword. The mirror still intrigued him, but he could not carry it with him through the cavern. He consoled himself with the thought that he could return for it if he succeeded.

With a proper blade in his hands for once, Huma was soon feeling rested and confident as he strode up the amazingly long neck of Wyrmfather.

The tunnels immediately above were naturally lit, though not to the degree that the lower ones had been. Gazing down one, Huma could see no difference between it and the passages he had traversed originally. Dark shadows were everywhere. Emboldened, now that he held a weapon worthy of him, Huma stepped off the neck of the petrified Wyrmfather and entered the closest tunnel.

He became impatient as time dragged and he found only more corridors. Where were the challenges? Wyrmfather had been one, but Huma knew there must be two others. Still, he thought, they could not possibly compare to his brush with the huge beast. Perhaps having faced Wyrmfather was test enough.

One hand stroked the pommel of the sword. Maybe there was no actual need for whatever else lay within this mountain. The sword alone was worth an army, and Huma controlled the sword.

His impatience grew as he continued to follow what seemed like endless tunnels. All Huma wanted to do now was leave. Challenges no longer concerned him. The blade was all he needed. What could the cavern offer that would better a weapon of such power and perfection?

The thought of a flank under his command occurred suddenly to him. After all Huma had accomplished, Lord Oswal surely would reward him. Not only had he brought back a weapon of great value, but he had exposed Rennard and saved the elder knight’s life.

A major command position had always been Huma’s dream. From there, it could not be long before he would command an entire army.

A smile began to spread across his face.

“Step no further.”

At first, Huma had not noticed the figure standing before him. Clad in a long, flowing cloak of gray, the figure blended in well with his surroundings, especially with the shadows now dominating. The figure’s face was gray, as were his teeth and tongue. The only noticeable change from the previous encounter with the gray man was that he was not smiling in the least this time.

“You again!” Huma was happy to see the odd mage – if mage he was – because he now could boast to someone other than himself. “I have beaten your challenges, easily! I’ve come to claim my prize – not that it seems so important now.”

“Certainly. Leave your sword where you are and walk forward.”

“My sword?” The gray man might have asked for his arm.

“Your sword. I always assumed the acoustics in here were fairly good. Am I wrong, then?” At the moment, the mage’s face was as unreadable as Rennard’s had always been.

“Why?” Huma did not care for this suspicious move. The gray man was a servant of the Dragonqueen after all. It must be that the gods now feared Huma’s power – and why not?

“That thing there is not allowed within these chambers. It should not be allowed anywhere.”

“This?” The knight held aloft the magnificent sword, admiring the way it glowed so strongly. He had thought it well-made before, but the radiance of its fully awakened beauty was something to behold. Give it up? Huma would fight first!

“That ‘wonderful’ blade you bear is known as the Sword of Tears. It’s a relic from the Age of Dreams. Through it, Takhisis seduced the ogre race, twisted them from beauty, until all but a handful strayed from the path. It is said to be the weapon with which the champion of darkness will challenge light on that final battle before the last day. It is pure evil, and should be banished. If there is any true choice.”

“You’re wrong. This is the key to our victory. Look at it!”

The gray man shaded his eyes. “I have. Many times. Its wicked travesty of illumination still irritates after all these centuries.”

Huma lowered the blade, but only so he could point it toward the man barring his way. “Is it that? Or are you one who shuns the light in general? I think it is you who are the danger.”

“If you could only see your face.”

“My face?” Huma laughed arrogantly. “The Sword of Tears, you say. Could it actually be called that because of the tears that the Dragonqueen will shed when at last faced with a power stronger than she?”

The gray man’s face screwed into an expression of disgust. “I see the horrid blade has not lost any of its charm.”

Holding his sword possessively, Huma folded his arms. “I’ve listened to your little tirade long enough. Will you let me pass now?”

The guardian brought his staff up to eye level. “Not with the sword.”

Huma only smiled and thrust the sword into the rocky wall to his left. The blade sank in as if the tunnel were made of curdled milk rather than stone, and the weapon flared with emerald light. With similar ease, the knight drew it out. The blade looked unscratched, while that portion of the wall had lost its natural glow.

The gray man only curled his lip and said mockingly, “You had better strike it again. It may have some fight left in it.”

Huma glared at him. “Your last chance. Will you yield?”

“Not unless the sword is forfeited.”

“Then I shall slice a path through your body.”

“If you can.”

The knight raised the Sword of Tears, which seemed to glow more brilliantly – as if in anticipation – and stepped forward. The gray man stepped out of his defensive position and – threw his staff on the tunnel floor. Huma stood there, arm raised, momentarily stunned.

“Have you surrendered, then?”

The hooded figure shook his head. “If you would continue, you must strike me down.”

Strike him down! a voice shouted in Huma’s mind. The green glow of the Sword of Tears dominated the tunnel now. Strike him down! the voice repeated.

“This is —” Huma struggled to complete the thought. The voice became insistent. Strike him down and gain your prize!

“— wrong!”

“Give up the sword, Huma. Only then will you be free.”

“No!” The word issued from the knight’s mouth, but it was not he who had spoken. Instead, the source seemed to have been the blade itself, which now caused Huma’s arm to rise as if he were intending to smote the gray mage.

“No!” This time, it was Huma who spoke. He collapsed against the side of the passageway and regarded with sudden disgust and horror the thing he held in his hand, despite the brilliance that caused even the gray man to turn away.

Take me! Wield me! I was meant to glory in blood! I was meant to rend the world for my mistress!

“No!” The denial came more firmly now as the shock in Huma’s eyes gave way to anger. He had torn free from the malevolent artifact’s spell. The blade had asked the impossible of him – to purposefully strike down one who neither deserved it nor sought to defend himself. Huma had not been able to do so with Rennard, and he could not do so now with the dun-colored guardian.

Power surged from the sword, and Huma screamed. The Shockwaves threw the knight to the floor. It felt as if every fiber of his body were being torn apart. He could see only green, could feel only the pain, and could hear only the incessant command of the Sword of Tears as it sought to overcome his will.

“Huma!” Another voice, familiar, sought to assert its influence on him. He took the lifeline and concentrated.

“You must be willing to part from it – totally – or the demon sword will have your body and soul!”

Totally? Huma struggled against the pain. He saw now that the Sword of Tears worked only for its own wily purposes and would never truly be anyone’s servant. That realization gave Huma the willpower he had lacked.

“I deny you!” He held the sword at arm’s length, sickened by it. “I will have no part of you and, therefore, you have no power over me!”

The pain diminished and Huma pressed his advantage. Slowly, he forced the outside presence from his head, reviling it, confident now that it had no true power. The presence seemed to shrink back from his determination, and the emerald brilliance diminished dramatically.

Master, it called. You are truly master.

It cowed before his mind. Huma’s confidence grew, until a thought flashed through his head. Now that he had defeated it, could he not use it safely?

No! Huma pushed the thought away. Sweat dripped from his forehead. His skin had gone white.

Huma threw the demonic blade wildly across the corridor. As he did, he thought he heard, or felt, a maddened cry. The sword clattered against the opposite wall and dropped to the ground. The glow had all but vanished.

“Never,” Huma panted. He leaned against the wall, his hands on his knees. “Not for all the power in the world.”

Slow footsteps indicated the near presence of the gray man. A strong hand fell on Huma’s shoulder. “There is no more reason to fear. The Sword of Tears is nothing. No more than smoke in the wind. See?”

Huma looked up. The demon sword was wavering and beginning to fade, to sink through the stone to nothingness. Within seconds, there was no trace of its physical form or the sinister presence within.

“Where is it?”

“Hopefully, back where it belongs. The thing has a mind of its own, but you know that. I think I’ve put it in a place where it will take some doing for it to break free.”

The knight looked up. “You saved me – and my soul.”

“I?” The gray man looked slightly amused. “I did nothing but make a few friendly suggestions. It was you who had to face the real battle. You persevered, though.”

“What happens now?” Huma stood slowly. His body ached. His head ached. He did not think he was capable of anything just yet. Huma slumped against the wall.

“Now?” The gray man sounded amused. Huma could not see what was so funny. “Now … you step through and claim your prize. You have defeated all three challenges.”

“Defeated —” The knight shook his head sadly. “You’re mistaken. I barely escaped with my life, much less my soul.”

“You live. Yes. That is the purpose of everything. To strive for life, for purpose.”

“Wyrmfather. The Sword of Tears. That makes only two challenges. Unless —” The truth struck Huma forcefully.

The gray man smiled a sad, gray smile. “Your trip through the mirror was no accident. A dark stain had spread itself deep within the fabric of the knighthood, and who better to cleanse the knighthood of that foulness than one of its own? Most, I think, would have been pleased to slay Rennard without permitting him a chance to surrender. You wanted to save him, even then. That – the passion for life – is what the knighthood truly strives for, above all else.”

Huma straightened, stared at the seemingly endless tunnel behind the gray man, and then turned back to the hooded figure.

“Are you Paladine?”

The gray mage smiled mischievously and tapped the side of his nose. “I could say I am, but I won’t. Let us just say that the balance between good and evil must be maintained and I am one of those chosen to see to it – much like yourself, though I fear my part is small compared to your own.” He gave Huma no opportunity to reply. “It is time you went through this last tunnel and claimed your reward. As I said before, you must go weaponless. Weaponless, save your faith.”

As Huma stared, the gray man raised a hand, which held two daggers, gingerly, by the tips. Huma reached instinctively to his own belt, but his daggers were gone. They belonged to the gray man now, only the gray man was gone, too. Only the gaping tunnel stood before Huma.

He took a step toward the darkened passageway.

Huma said two prayers – one to Paladine and the second to Gilean, Lord of Neutrality – and walked into the darkness.

Huma could not judge time, but he was sure that he had been walking for a long period when the first echoes of the hammer reached him. They seemed neither far nor near, and the intensity never changed. It was not as it had been in the great chamber, where the towering, maddened leviathan had shrieked out at such torment. Rather, the familiar sounds of a smith at work put the knight at ease as he recalled a point in his training where he was taught the basics of the trade. All knights had some knowledge of the craft, for each might be called upon to mend armor or shoe a horse. A good smith, as the knighthood dictated, could do virtually anything with an anvil, a hammer, and fire-red metal.

Whoever worked at the anvil had to be a mighty man, Huma decided, for the fall of the hammer went on with such regular rhythm and for such a great length of time that most men would have fallen to their knees by now. At that, who said it must be a man? Might it not be Reorx himself? Here, he knew, was a place of gods and power. Anything might lie ahead.

Then, when he had not noticed it somehow, Huma found himself standing in the massive armory.

Countless implements of war and peace hung, stood or lay from wall to wall, as far as he could see in the dim light, and even from the ceiling high above. A sickle whose blade, if straightened, would be at least the length of Huma’s body. Swords of all shapes and sizes, some curved, some straight, some thin, and some heavy. Jeweled and plain. One-handed and two-handed.

Here he saw even more suits of armor than in the chambers below. The suits ranged from the most primitive breastplates to the latest full armor as worn by the Ergothian emperor. Shields hung above the suits, representing every crest ever created, including that of the Knights of Solamnia.

There was so much more, and Huma longed to see all of it. He felt as if he had stepped into the lost tomb of some great warrior. Yet this was no lost resting place of the dead, for the weaponry and artifacts here were devoid of dust or any sign of age. Each piece he inspected might have been made only yesterday, so sharp were the edges and smooth were the sides. No rust infected the armor; the wooden handle of the sickle had not rotted. Huma knew, however, that these creations were even older than the chambers below, that before all else in this mountain maze, this set of chambers had been first. He could not say how he knew, just that he knew.

The fall of the hammer had become a pattern in his ears, and he did not notice at first when it stopped. When he did, he had already wandered midway through the armory, his gaze flickering back and forth. Huma paused then, momentarily unsure. It was at that moment that he saw the flicker of light from ahead and heard the unknown smith resume his work. Only two massive doors barred his way.

Huma reached forward to knock upon one of the doors, even as it swung open. The slight movement was accompanied by a tremendous squeak, and it amazed the knight that the hammer kept falling as if its wielder had heard nothing or did not care.

It was a smithy of godlike proportions. A huge tank of water that could only be for cooling the product. A massive forge where – Huma had to squint – shadowy figures stoked the furnace with might and gusto.

The hammering ceased with finality. He wrenched his eyes from the sun-hot forge and turned.

The anvil stood as high as Huma’s waist and would have weighed half a dozen times his weight in full armor. The soot-covered figure that stood beside it, a two-handed hammer held easily in one hand and raised high above his head, turned to study the newcomer. The figures at the forge ceased their activity, as did two others near the anvil. The smith lowered his arm and stepped forward. Huma’s eyes did not go immediately to the face but were riveted instead by that arm. It was metal, a metal that gleamed like the material that Wyrmfather had become.

Then Huma looked into the face of the smith. Like the body, it was soot-covered, but Huma could see that the smith claimed no one race as his own, for the features were a blend of elf, human, dwarf, and something … unidentifiable.

The smith studied him from head to toe and, in a voice surprisingly quiet, asked, “Have you come at last for the Dragonlance?”

Chapter 21

Huma gave the towering smith a confused look and said, “The what?”

“The Dragonlance. Are you at last the one?” The dwarven features pinched together in outright anxiousness. The smith’s eyes narrowed as he waited for a response and his thin, elven mouth was no more than a flat line across his mostly human face. That “other” gave him a frightening yet handsome appearance that was not common to any of the other three races.

“I have faced the challenges, or so I am told. That is what the gray man said.”

“The gray man said it, did he? Even ancient Wyrmfather?” The hulking figure did not wait for a response. “Yes, I suppose you did, for he has been rather quiet of late. It seems so strange not to hear his rantings and ravings anymore. I cannot recall a day when he was so quiet. I shall have to adjust, I suppose.” He shrugged.

“Have I answered your question to your satisfaction?” Though Huma’s confidence had not yet recovered, his dignity had. He did not want to appear overwhelmed.

“Indeed you have,” the smith whispered, more to himself than to the knight. “Indeed you have.”

The smith let out a strong, hearty laugh. “Great Reorx! Never did I think to see the day! At last, someone will be able to properly appreciate my handiwork. Do you know how long it has been since I’ve spoken to someone qualified?”

“What about them?” Huma pointed at the spectral figures behind the smith. They seemed unoffended.

“Them? They are my assistants. They have to like my work. They would not understand the true use of the Dragonlance as a knight would. Paladine, I’ve waited so long!” The huge man’s voice echoed through the chambers.

“I forget myself.” The smith’s voice faded abruptly, and his face became dour. Huma noted that the other’s mood changes were as abrupt as his features were unique. “I am Duncan Ironweaver, master smith, armorer, and student of Reorx himself. I have waited far longer than I wish to remember for your coming. For many a year, I worried that you might never set foot near here, but I should have known better.” Duncan Ironweaver reached out a hand to Huma, who took it without thinking and found himself grasping warm metal.

The smith noticed him staring at the device and grinned. “Wyrmfather himself took my arm years ago, when I was a foolish young man. Though it pained me, I have never regretted its loss. This works so much better that I have often wondered what it might be to have an entire forged body.” He seemed to consider this for several seconds before realizing he had drifted from his subject. “Of course, without the silver arm, I would lack the strength and resistance necessary to forge the great dragonsilver into a finely crafted Dragonlance.”

Again, the Dragonlance. “What is the Dragonlance? If it is what I have come for, can I see it?”

Ironweaver blinked. “I’ve not shown you?” He put a hand to his head, unheedful of the soot spread on both. “Of course not! My mind is addled. Come then. Follow me, and we shall gaze together on a wonder that encompasses more than my simple skills and your daring.”

The smith turned and wound a path into the darkest depths of the chamber. The four shadowy assistants made way for their master and the knight. The helpers seemed to melt into the darkness itself by the time Huma was near enough, and the only things he could glimpse were four pairs of eyes that seemed to stare straight through him.

Several yards ahead of him, Ironweaver was whistling a tune that vaguely resembled a Solamnic marching song. That made Huma relax a little, though he did wonder just what connection the smith had with the Knights of Solamnia and how far back it went. By this point, the knight would not have been surprised if he had awakened back at Vingaard Keep and discovered that all of this was a dream.

They came to another door, and the huge smith stopped and turned to Huma. “Beyond that door, only you will go. I have much work to get back to. Another will lead you back to the outside world and your friends.”

Friends? How did Duncan Ironweaver know about Kaz and Magius? “And the Dragonlance?”

“You will know it when you see it, my little friend.”

“Where do —?” Huma started to ask something else but stopped abruptly when he found himself talking to air. He quickly turned back in the direction they had come, but the smithy itself was no longer visible. Only darkness. Huma took a few tentative steps in that direction and then retreated in disgust as his face came in contact with a spider’s web of incredible size and thickness.

He spat the foul substance from his mouth and examined the web. It was old, the culmination of generations and generations. Dust lay thick on its surface. Here and there, it connected to rusting implements, swords, old metalworking equipment – things forgotten by their creators and users since long before Huma had been born.

But he had just come that way.

An uneasy thought intruded; what spider would need a web so great?

His eyes still on the web, Huma reached a hand out toward the door. The handle, a long, jagged one rusted with age, would cooperate only after a struggle. At last the door opened, unleashing a cloud of dust. Slowly, and with great reverence, Huma stepped into the room of the Dragonlance.

He saw a charging stallion, armored in purest platinum and snorting fire as it raced the winds. He saw the rider then, a knight bold and ready, the great lance poised to strike. The knight also was clad in platinum, and the crest on his helmet was that of a majestic dragon. On his chest he wore a breastplate with the symbol of the Triumvirate: the Crown, the Sword, and the Rose.

Within the visor that covered the face was light, brilliant and life-giving, and Huma knew that here was Paladine.

The great charger suddenly leaped into the air, and massive wings sprouted from its sides. Its head elongated, and its neck twisted and grew, but it lost none of its majesty or beauty. From a platinum-clad steed it became a platinum dragon, and together knight and companion drove the darkness before them with the aid of the lance … the Dragonlance. It shone with a life, a purpose of its own, and the darkness fell before it. Born of the world and the heavens, it was the true power, the true good.

The darkness destroyed, the dragon landed before Huma, who could only fall to his knees. The knight released the Dragonlance from its harness and held it toward the mortal figure below him. With some hesitation, Huma slowly rose and stepped forward. He reached out and took the lance by its shaft. Then the dragon and its rider were gone, leaving Huma alone with the wondrous gift.

He held it high and cried out in joy.

Sweat drenched him. Nearly all energy had been drained from his body, but Huma did not mind, for it was the exhaustion felt after the joyous exhilaration of achieving one’s dreams. There would never be another rapture like it in his life, he knew.

He lay on the floor of the room, bathed in white, pure light. Rising to his knees, Huma gazed at the light and was awed.

Above him, life-size, stood the dragon. Its eyes gazed down upon the mortal, and it seemed to have just landed. It had been formed from pure platinum and sculpted by an artisan whose skills must have rivaled the gods. The wings were outspread, stretching far across the room, and Huma was amazed that the metal could stand the strain. Each scale of the dragon, from the largest to the smallest, had been finely wrought in detail. Had it breathed, Huma would not have been surprised, it was so lifelike.

The rider, too, might have been ready to leap off his companion of the skies, so real did he appear. Like the dragon, his gaze seemed to be on Huma, though it was difficult to tell; the visor was down. The armor was as accurate in every detail as the dragon’s skin, and Huma could see every joint, every link, and even the detail of the scrollwork on the breastplate.

What had lit up the room was the Dragonlance.

Long, sleek, narrow, the lance would have stood almost three times the knight’s height. The tip seemed to taper off to a point so sharp that nothing would bar its path. Behind the head, nearly two feet from the tip, sharp barbs arose on each side, assuring that any strike would be costly to the foe.

The back end of the lance ended with an elaborate shield guard formed into the fearsome visage of an attacking dragon with the shaft emerging like a river of flame from the leviathan’s maw. Behind the guard, the platinum knight’s arm steadied the lance for battle.

Huma felt unworthy to take the Dragonlance from the knight, so perfect was it. Nevertheless, he steeled himself and moved to it, climbing to undo it from the harness that held it in place on the saddle. The post of the harness pivoted, allowing Huma some flexibility, but he was unsure how to remove the metallic knight’s hand from the weapon. As he touched the fingers, they seemed to loosen of their own regard and the lance nearly fell into Huma’s waiting arms.

The Dragonlance was heavy, as was to be expected, but Huma did not care about that now. He was overwhelmed that this had come to him, the least of knights. That Paladine should so bless him was a miracle in itself and, when he had brought the lance to earth, he went to his knees and gave thanks. The Dragonlance seemed to glow even brighter.

When at last his initial awe had passed, he noted the other lances that decorated the walls around him. That he had somehow missed them perplexed him, but he gave thanks that again Paladine had foreseen things, for one lance certainly would not be enough. He counted twenty total, nineteen like his own and one smaller one that was no less brilliant and must, he decided, be for footsoldiers.

One by one, he removed the lances from their resting places, taking each into his hands with reverence. Here were tools with which Krynn could be rid of the Dragonqueen; there should be no end of volunteers.

Oddly, there seemed to be no other exit than the doorway he had come through earlier. Huma wondered how he was going to get the lances out of the mountain and back to Solamnia. Had he come this far to fail because of an obstruction so relatively minor?

Gazing around the chamber, his eyes fell upon the figure of the mounted knight. It was looking slightly off to the side and upward – as if it sought something near one of the far corners of the ceiling. So intense was the image that Huma could not help but turn and look the same direction.

He saw nothing at first. Then, Huma spied the nearly invisible outline of a trap door. Hurrying over to investigate, the knight discovered hand and footholds in the wall below the trap door. They were only indentations, impossible to make out unless one stood directly in front of them.

Huma turned and stared anxiously at the lances he had gathered together. He hated leaving them here, but he knew that he required assistance if he was to get even one of them out of this chamber. He needed Kaz and Magius.

Gingerly, he began his climb. It was not as difficult as he had expected and he was soon near the ceiling. Opening the door, however, proved to be difficult, for Huma was forced to lean back precariously in order to push properly. The muscles strained in the hand that held him back from a deadly plunge. Huma had been forced to remove his gauntlets for a better grip and now was paying for that as the skin slowly tore from his fingertips.

When the door was finally open, he let out a sigh of relief. Whoever had designed this had purposely made it difficult for reasons Huma doubted he could ever guess. Still, what mattered was that the way out was now open.

He reached up and felt a cool breeze dance through his fingers. Moving his hand around he discovered that something soft, perhaps snow, covered the ground. Gripping the sides of the hole, Huma pulled himself upward.

It was daylight. No rain. No cloud cover. The sun lit the mountainside, and Huma hung there, suspended halfway in the ground, as he drank in the view. How long had it been since he had really seen the sun? Huma could no longer remember. It was a magnificent sight and a sign, perhaps, that the tide had turned at last.

A thin layer of snow did indeed cover the ground. There were no tracks in the snow around him, so he was alone unless something flew above him. The skies were clear, though. Clear and blue. He had forgotten the heavens were blue.

Huma pulled himself from the unseen hole and then took care to study the site. The knight located a large rock nearby and placed it near the hole as a marker.

“I hoped you would succeed; I prayed you would succeed. Had you not, I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Gwyneth!” The name burst from his lips even as he whirled.

She was clad in a simple cloak of silver hue, her hair fluttering. The young woman who had seen to his recovery in the tent looked nothing like this stately – priestess? What was her part in all this?

“I have indeed succeeded, Gwyneth! Below our very feet lay the weapons that will rid this world of the Dragonqueen!”

She smiled at his enthusiasm and stepped forward. Her feet seemed to barely touch the snowy ground, and Huma noted then that she left no trace of any path.

“Tell me about it.”

He tried to, how he tried to, but the words that tumbled from his mouth were too weak, too complicated, too simple for what he was trying to describe. It all sounded so improbable as he related his quest to Gwyneth. Had he really undergone all that? How had the ancient terror called Wyrmfather been turned into a gleaming metal artifact several times the size of the knight? Had the vision in the chamber of the Dragonlance been real or the product of his own delusion?

Gwyneth took it all in, her face impassive save for an unidentifiable look in her eyes as she observed Huma. When he was finished, she nodded sagely and said, “From the moment I first saw you, I saw greatness. I saw in you what so many others before you did not have. You truly care about the folk of Krynn. That is where the others have failed. They cared, but it was little compared to their personal ambitions.”

Huma took her by the arms and held her. “Will you vanish now, like the gray man and the smith?”

“I will, for a time. You must locate your companions. When you return, another will be waiting for you. One whom you have met and who will be of aid in the coming days.”

“And Kaz and Magius?”

“Near.” She smiled. “I am surprised that they have tolerated one another this long.”

“I must find them,” Huma decided suddenly. There was so much to be done. He hated to leave Gwyneth, even though they would meet again. Wouldn’t they?

An uneasy look came into her eyes, and she squirmed free from his grasp. The smile was still in place, but it grew weaker, more of a mask or defense. “Your friends are that way.” She pointed to the east. “You had best go to them now. They are becoming anxious for you.”

She turned from him and stepped quickly and lightly away. Huma almost followed, but he cared enough for her to respect her wishes in this matter. That he might never see her again tore at him, but he let her go and turned his back.

Eastward, Huma made his way through the soft snow. The cloud cover, he noticed, had not dispersed. It merely avoided this peak.

He had walked for no more than ten minutes when he heard the voice. There was no mistaking it. It was Kaz, angered. The knight’s pace picked up. Only one person would anger the minotaur so.

“If only I had done what I had desired and ended your miserable existence there and then. You have no honor, no conscience.” The minotaur stood tall. His fists emphasized each point as he battered the air as if it were the object of his reprimand.

Magius sat with odd quietude on a large rock, his head in his hands, unmoving, as the minotaur continued to berate him. Huma tensed as he stepped toward the pair.

It was Magius who sensed his approach. The mage’s face was pale and drawn, his hair radiating wildly about his head. His eyes had sunken in. They widened as he raised his head, and his numbed mind finally recognized the figure of his only friend.

“Huma!”

“What?” Kaz jumped at the sudden shout. He saw the direction of the magic-user’s gaze and turned. The blood-red look in his eyes vanished, and a toothy grin appeared on his bovine face. The anger of a moment before was temporarily forgotten. “Huma!”

As the minotaur stepped forward, Magius seemed to curl into himself. The mage stared pitifully in Huma’s direction, but made no move to join Kaz in greeting their lost comrade.

The minotaur almost crushed Huma in a bear hug. Kaz looked down at him, smiling all the time, then suddenly lifted the hapless knight off the ground and spun him around. Huma felt like an infant in the hands of the huge man-beast.

“Where have you been? I sought you out, but could not find the path you had taken. I searched again and again calling to you, but only the wind and that infernal cry responded. Sarg – Gods! I finally thought you were dead.” He put Huma down. Kaz turned on Magius, who stepped back as if struck. “When I told that one what had happened, he fairly shouted with glee at first.”

“WHAT?” Huma gazed over at Magius. His childhood friend would not look at him.

Kaz thrust a finger at the knight. “Do you know why you were so important to him? It was not your friendship. It was not your skills. His mad vision had convinced him that there was indeed a gift from Paladine somewhere here but that he would die if he tried to claim it. So he intended to send you in his place. You would have taken the attack that would have killed him! Your life was expendable!” The angry warrior laughed coldly. “Can you believe it? He claimed a knight in sun-drenched armor and bearing a lance of incredible power would run him through; did you ever hear such nonsense?

“When he thought you were dead, he believed the vision had been altered forever. He was confident that he would almost immediately find this great secret and live to use it in your memory and his glory.”

Kaz paused to catch his breath, and Huma chose that moment to step around the minotaur and confront Magius. The mage looked up at him, almost fearfully, and moved back a step. Huma reached out a hand, but Magius refused to take it.

The minotaur came up behind Huma. “When we found no path or cavern, he started to fall apart. I could have never believed this one could have a conscience. I suppose I helped, for I reminded him every hour of every day about what he had done. How you had talked of him as a good friend.”

Huma leaned down. His voice was soft. “Magius. There is nothing to be fearful of. I do not hate you for what you did. That was not you; it was never you.”

The shadow of the minotaur covered them both. Magius turned away.

“What are you saying, Huma?” the minotaur demanded. “This one betrayed you, had planned on betraying you since before you and I met. All for some utter, senseless madness!”

“You weren’t there!” Huma snapped. “I’ve heard tales of how real the Tests are. Sometimes they exist only in the mind; sometimes they are completely and terribly existent. In either case, the magic-user who is being tested can die.”

“Magius,” Huma whispered to his conscience-stricken friend. The spellcaster seemed to be on the edge of collapse. It must have seemed that the knight’s ghost had come back to haunt the one who had betrayed him. “Magius. Forget the vision. You were right about the mountain. I’ve found what we were searching for!”

The mage’s eyes widened and narrowed, then he began to calm down. “You found it?”

“I did. I faced the challenges in the mountain and passed.”

“What’s that you’re talking about?” roared Kaz. “What challenges?”

Huma briefly described what had taken place within the mountain. The story of Wyrmfather brought a strange light to the eyes of Magius, who, stuttering, confessed he had made a study of the design of the statuette years before, only to come up with nothing more than a few scraps of legend. The treachery of Rennard shook both listeners. Magius had grown up with Huma and often had wondered about the knight’s father.

“By my ancestors twenty-five generations back! Would that I had been there when you fought the father of all dragons. Such a battle, and I missed it!” The minotaur shook his head.

The knight grimaced. “It was more a battle for survival than anything else. Luck had much to do with it.”

“I think not. I do not see luck as a factor in these challenges. How many would have taken such action? How many would have run or stood trembling before the dragon? Many minotaurs would have thought it folly.”

Magius tugged at Huma’s arm, almost as a small child might do. “The Dragonlance? You have it with you? I have to see it!”

A solid, clawed fist materialized before the spellcaster’s face. “You’ll see nothing!”

Huma dared the minotaur’s wrath by pushing the fist down. Kaz glared at Huma, then forced himself under control.

“That is what I need your help for now,” Huma told them both. “Another person may be waiting to aid us, but I’ll need your help to pull the lances from the chamber. All but one are more than twice your height, Kaz. It will be difficult.”

“We shall do it, though, and this vermin here will help.”

Magius paled, but he stood his ground. “I will do every bit as much work as you – most likely more.”

The wind whipped the minotaur’s mane around his face, giving him a particularly wild look. “That remains to be seen, mage.”

“Enough!” Huma shouted. He would drag the lances out himself if need be. “If you are coming, do so, or stay here and let the snows eventually cover you!”

He stalked away. A moment later, the other two followed quickly and without comment.

He had marked the spot as well as he could. The rock was where he had left it and he stepped over it and reached down. Kaz and Magius looked on in curiosity, especially when Huma’s hand found only hard earth and not the hole that should have been there.

“What’s the matter?” Kaz asked.

“I can’t find it! I can’t find it!”

The others fell to their knees and began searching the ground.

“There is no need to search further,” a voice suddenly said. “The Dragonlances are safe and ready for their journey out into the world.”

The voice came from above them. A great wind buffeted the trio, forcing them to step back. The voice apologized and the great wings slowed as the majestic dragon came to stop on a nearby outcropping.

“I heard the summons,” said the same silver dragon who had given aid to Huma and Kaz, what seemed so long ago. “The lances are ready, awaiting us in a safe place.” She gazed – fondly? – at the knight. “The next step in their journey, Huma, is up to you.”

Chapter 22

“You? Gwyneth sent for you?”

The silver dragon’s head bobbed in acknowledgment. “This was the area of my birth, long ago. I still come here; it is part of my duty, part of my destiny to stand watch here, waiting for the day the Dragonlances will be revealed to the world.”

“How did you fare against the darkness?” Huma asked. He remembered the dragons as they waited for the magical blackness to envelop them. At that time, he had wondered whether they would live or die.

“We were vanquished.” There was very human bitterness in her voice. “It was more than just the work of the renegades. We could feel the presence of the Black Robes, though they were reluctant to be involved, for some reason, and something else. Something so malevolent that two of our number died there and then, merely because of its presence. We suspected and by the time we had lost, we knew.” She hesitated. “Takhisis has come to Krynn itself.”

They were all stunned. The minotaur’s mouth worked, but no sound emerged. Magius was shaking his head again and again, as if he could deny it. Huma just stood there, the stony look on his face masking well the fear and anguish he felt. The Dragonqueen on Krynn – hope, it would appear, was lost.

Or was it? Immediately, Huma remembered the vision of the platinum knight who had vanquished the darkness with the glory of the lance.

He cut off any comments by stating flatly, “This means nothing. We have the Dragonlances. Hope remains.”

Kaz shook his head while Magius simply absorbed every word. The dragon looked on in satisfaction. She seemed quite pleased with Huma’s reactions.

The wind was beginning to pick up, and neither Huma nor his companions had any intention of staying on the mountain any longer than necessary. They needed food and rest.

Huma asked the silver dragon, “Where are the lances?”

“They are far down below with your horses. I could carry them all, perhaps, but it would leave me barely able to maneuver, much less keep aloft. It would be best if I remain unhindered should we be attacked en route.”

A thought occurred to Huma. The knight turned to his companions. “Kaz and Magius, you will take the horses. I would like to trust the two of you to work together. Is that possible?”

Kaz glowered at the mage, who, having been relieved of his guilt, was rapidly returning to his former arrogance and thus returned the glare with equal dislike. They would work together, though, because this goal far transcended their pettiness. Satisfied, Huma continued.

“There was a saddle on the dragon statue in the chamber of the lances,” he told the dragon. “It enabled the rider to maintain control of his weapon. I would like to create a makeshift version of that saddle. Then, if you permit, I can ride upon your back, a Dragonlance ready should we be attacked.”

She raised her head and seemed to consider. Finally, the silver dragon nodded. “An excellent thought. I must tell you that when I first arrived in the mountains, I ran across one of the dreadwolves of Galan Dracos and immediately slew it, but rest assured that Galan Dracos will send his lackey, the warlord Crynus, to deal with you.” She extended her lengthy talons. “I would not dislike a second confrontation with that obscenity called Charr. Too many of my kind have fallen to that black dragon and his warlord companion.”

That said, the silver dragon spread her wings, rose into the air as briefly and gently as possible, and then dropped to a point low enough so that she was almost eye level with the trio. “Climb aboard. I can take the three of you to the lances. Be prepared for many turns, however. The winds can be fierce in the mountains.”

When they were securely upon her back, the leviathan spread her wings again and launched herself into the sky. At first, the trio saw the earth far below rushing up to meet them, then it seemed to be pulled back, as the silver dragon rose higher until she was able to maintain a proper balance.

Huma stared at the peak they were leaving. So much had happened there that he would never fully understand. He had not even climbed to the top, as he had first thought. At least a full quarter of the mighty giant still loomed above them.

Below lay the cloud-enshrouded world. As they entered the misty ceiling over Ansalon, Huma shuddered and prayed that, despite his victories in the mountain, he was up to the challenges ahead.

“There.” The silver dragon indicated a spot on the southern base of the mountain. Huma looked down and saw the horses and a wagon. The silver dragon had planned well for the difficult journey.

Only when they were on the ground did Kaz argue. “You cannot expect horses such as these to pull a wagon! They have not been trained for such labor. They are beasts of war, not burden.”

“They will do what they can,” replied the majestic leviathan.

Huma, meanwhile, was fast at work on his own idea. He had removed the saddle from his mount. With the aid of a dagger borrowed from Kaz – his own still lay somewhere within the mountain – he cut the saddle on each side so that it would fit more comfortably on the dragon’s back, which was much wider than that of any horse. As the straps would not reach around the midsection of a dragon, Huma was forced to employ rope. Fortunately, the skin of a dragon was much stronger and harder than that of a horse, so the coarse bonds would not irritate or hamper her.

There was little Huma could do about the post on which the lance should have pivoted. The most he could really do was carve away part of the pommel so that the lance could at least rest in something. Then, he strapped the Dragonlance securely to that side and tested it. Huma found he had some movement to his left, but his right had little. Satisfied that it would work, Huma removed the lance and presented the silver dragon with what he had created. She looked at it questioningly, then accepted its design.

“The saddle I saw,” the knight explained, “was very much akin to a horse’s saddle. It is a wider saddle since it must be worn by a dragon. Essentially, the true difference lies in the post on which the Dragonlance sits. The one on the dragon statue pivoted as I removed the lance. I cannot do that without more equipment and more time. Therefore, shaving the pommel to fit the handle of the Dragonlance was the only choice.” Huma frowned at his handiwork. “I did very little actually.”

“This will do,” replied the winged creature.

While Huma was at work on the saddle, Magius investigated the wagon. He did not particularly care for the thought of dragging the lances by cart all the way back to Vingaard Keep – provided the Solamnic citadel was still standing – and he vocalized his doubts to those around him.

“There is no need for all this. I can transport the lances in virtually no time.” The magic-user raised his hands and began to mutter.

Huma dropped the saddle as he realized what was happening. “Magius, no!”

It was too late. The mage completed his spell – and nothing happened, except that the Dragonlances seemed to gleam a little more brightly. Magius looked at the cart and then at his hands, as if the latter were somehow responsible for his failure.

Kaz let out a bellowing laugh.

“Don’t ever do that again!” Huma practically shouted. “You are fortunate; the Dragonlances are impervious to your magic. There’s no telling what might have happened if you had tried a more powerful spell.”

The saddle was secured to the dragon shortly thereafter. It fit – barely. The cuts Huma had made into the sides of the saddle let it flatten out. The ropes were tight, but did not bind the dragon uncomfortably. When that was finished, the knight separated the original lance from the others and, with Kaz’s help, tied it loosely to the left side of the saddle’s pommel.

It was decided that Magius would drive the wagon and Kaz would ride along as escort on the remaining horse. Above them, Huma and the dragon would act as scout and protector.

Huma paused before mounting the dragon, and he stared at the peak. “Gwyneth? What of her?”

The silver dragon turned her head and peered at him with great interest. “You care for her?”

Though admittedly not the best judge of his own emotions, Huma finally nodded. “Though it’s been a short time, I feel I have never known someone as well. Is she not coming with us?”

The dragon opened her massive jaws to speak, paused, and then visibly changed her mind about whatever she had planned to say. “There are things that she must do. It is possible you will see her again when you least expect it.”

It was not what Huma had wanted to hear, but the knighthood needed these lances; there was no more time to waste.

“We may come across some of my kin on the way,” the dragon commented. “If so, we could transport everything in the air and save much time.”

Huma secured himself. He checked the Dragonlance. It felt right in his hand. “Let us be off.”

A lone figure astride a massive warhorse awaited them when they departed the chain of mountains. From the distance, it was impossible to make out whether this was friend or foe, and so Huma, on the back of the silver dragon and high above his other companions, moved on ahead, low and swift, to investigate. Midway there, he saw the figure raise a hand and shout a greeting. Recognition came to Huma a moment later.

Buoron watched wide-eyed as the dragon landed before him. He saw the knight sitting high atop the back of the giant creature, the gleaming lance poised for use.

“Huma?”

“Buoron.” Huma did not dismount. “Why are you still here? Has something happened to the outpost?”

The bearded knight shook his head. “No … I felt that someone should wait here, just in case.”

The faith of the other knight touched Huma. “I appreciate your perseverance, my friend. We are on our way back to Solamnia. I fear we have little time to stop at the outpost, but we will have to do so in order to gather supplies.”

“There is no need.” Buoron indicated several large, heavy sacks attached to his saddle. “I have enough here for four for a week. The horses can graze; there is plenty of good land. Water is also no problem. I can show you a number of streams.”

Huma squinted. “You speak as if you are going with us. I appreciate the thought, but we could not ask that of you.”

Buoron smiled slightly. “I have received permission from Taggin to return with you to Solamnia. He feels that a report should be made of activities at the central command and to see if there is anything Grand Master Trake would have of us.”

“Trake is dead. Oswal is now Grand Master.”

“When did this happen?”

Huma opened his mouth to speak and then paused. He still had not quite convinced himself that it was all true. “I will explain later. If you are free to join us, I doubt if my comrades will have any complaint.”

The other knight made a face. “The minotaur – and the mage?”

“Both are helping.”

Kaz and Magius arrived at that point. Huma turned to them and broke the news that his fellow knight would be joining them. The minotaur greeted him as a fellow warrior while Magius seemed to regard him as a necessary adjunct.

They made little more distance that day. Though the warhorses performed excellently as substitute draft animals, they grew weary as the day lengthened. Eventually, Huma and the silver dragon landed ahead to supervise a camp for the group.

Later, as they settled down, Huma raised his head in alarm at a sound from the distance. It was faint, quite faint, but unmistakable. He caught hold of Buoron and asked, “Tell me, are there many wolves in this region?”

Buoron shrugged. “Enough. Other than ourselves, there really is not much in the way of civilization – at least as we know it. I daresay the elves would differ with me on that question. Why?”

Huma shook his head wearily. “No reason. Just nerves.”

With Kaz and Buoron riding on each side of the wagon, the group started off again the next day. The silver dragon rose high in the air. For the time being, though, Buoron, more familiar with this territory, would guide them.

They reached the forested regions, and Huma tensed. From above, it was often impossible to see what lay beneath the treetops. Worse, because of the weapons, his companions below would have to stick to whatever trails existed in the woods.

So intent was Huma on maintaining visual contact with his companions that he neglected his own safety. The silver dragon, too, only barely saw the streak from above.

Huma clung to the saddle as foot-long claws barely missed pulling him from the back of his great companion.

A shriek, fierce, threatening, and deadly, rent the air. A large red dragon filled Huma’s view momentarily before his own silver one dove even closer to the treetops. Huma glanced up quickly. There were two dragons, both crimson red.

The silver dragon did not hesitate when Huma shouted commands. She turned around and lifted herself as swiftly as possible toward the two attackers. Huma steadied the Dragonlance.

Both beasts had riders, and the knight’s mind briefly registered that they wore the ebony of the Black Guard. Then the two red dragons were arcing toward them, and all thoughts of anything else vanished.

Huma tapped the left shoulder of the silver dragon and she immediately swerved to take on the red in the lead.

The thrust of the lance went through the terrible crimson beast so quickly, so suddenly, that the silver dragon was almost dragged to earth with it when she could not pull away fast enough. The rider of the dead leviathan was able to take one swing at Huma in that brief time, then struggled helplessly as the lance was extracted, and man and dragon plummeted toward the forest below.

The second dragon, above the brief battle, dove and attempted to wrench both rider and lance from the back of the silver dragon. The silver dragon, already backing up, increased her velocity. The red beast, instead of landing on its intended victim, came to a confused halt only a few lengths in front of its opponents.

The red’s rider shouted something. The enemy dragon tried to continue its descent, but it hesitated a moment too long. Unfortunately, the lance succeeded only in penetrating the outer hide. The silver dragon, though, raked the left wing of her evil counterpart as she passed over.

The guardsman on the red dragon’s back turned and swung at the silver dragon with a broadsword, striking a lucky blow across her snout. The sword had cut deeply. The Black Guard was not so defenseless as either Huma or his dragon had believed.

The red wobbled away, the damage to his wing severe. But it turned in a swift, jagged arc and came charging back.

At that moment, two more dragons broke through the cloud cover. One was red; the other was huge, bigger than the reds – and was coal black.

The black shrieked angrily – not at Huma and his companion, but at the wounded red dragon. The red ignored the call, so intent was it on avenging itself.

To the surprise of all, the black dragon – it was indeed Charr, Huma could finally see – unleashed a fearsome blast of liquid. The rider of the red turned just in time to see it coming.

The liquid engulfed both rider and dragon. They became one single burning mass, and Huma gasped. Acid. Charr’s own desire for vengeance was so great that he destroyed the two. He wanted the silver dragon, and the knight who rode her, for the wounds they had inflicted on him and his master, Crynus. The remnants of the red dragon and rider plummeted earthward.

The sole red and its rider remained in the background as Charr and the tall figure astride him, the warlord Crynus, sought the two who had humiliated them earlier. This time, Huma knew, the battle would not end until one or the other was dead.

Huma chanced a look downward. As he feared, dark, armor-clad figures dotted some of the more open spaces in the woods. More of the Black Guard. He could see no sign of the wagon or his companions and prayed they could hold their own. Huma already had more than he could handle.

As if marking those thoughts, Charr dove at them.

“Be ready, Huma,” the silver dragon called. “If I can, there are a couple of tricks that I can make use of, but the Dragonlance is our best hope of defeating this obscenity once and for all.”

The two dragons battled for superiority. Higher and higher they rose, neither gaining an advantage. Huma felt the silver dragon shudder as she drew a deep breath. Was she tiring? he wondered. Charr, sensing this, seemed almost to smile in triumph.

Huma’s companion suddenly unleashed a cone-shaped mist that enveloped the front portion of Charr. The black froze in mid-flight and began to fall earthward.

“Huma!” the silver dragon cried hoarsely. “I did not strike him directly, and he is terribly strong-willed. We must attack before he recovers from the paralysis.”

Even as she spoke, she slowed to dive. Huma gripped the saddle with one hand, the Dragonlance with the other, and the neck of his companion with both legs. Had he not ridden before and faced so many trials since then, he was certain that he would have blacked out long before now.

As they dove, Huma watched the black slowly return to life. Charr was already slowing his descent. Astride him, Crynus ranted and waved his battle ax and pointed at the knight and silver dragon above them. Charr’s head turned slowly upward. This time the two dragons came together and fought to the maximum.

The Dragonlance pinned the sinister dragon by its shoulder. Blood dripped freely from that wound.

As the two massive heads thrust at one another, time and time again, the riders drew near enough to strike. Huma, hampered by the weight of the lance, could not draw his sword. Crynus swung his two-headed battle ax, barely missing the top of Huma’s helmet.

Both dragons had become splashed with blood, and it was difficult to decide who had suffered more. The necks of both bore dozens of cuts, bites, and gashes. The black dragon had been raked in the front but had managed to slice apart some of the lower membrane on the silver one’s right wing.

The shoulder wound and the earlier wound to his wing were beginning to tell on Charr. He sank a little, and the silver dragon succeeded in giving the side of his neck a nasty set of gashes. Once more the Dragonlance dug into Charr’s shoulder.

In desperation, the black inhaled sharply, and Huma, afraid that his companion did not notice it, kicked her sharply in the sides. Whether because of his warning or not, her snout came down hard on Charr’s own, clamping the dark dragon’s mouth shut. The acidic blast that Charr had been ready to exhale found itself stopped and reversed. The black shivered and shook, suffocating and burning at the same time.

The frenzy of his wounding sent his claws jabbing deep into the torso of the silver dragon. Charr stopped flying, as his entire system reeled from the acid and the loss of oxygen. All four combatants found themselves falling.

“My wings will slow us, but we still will strike with great severity!” the silver dragon shouted. “If I can, I will shift so as to act as a cushion for you.”

Crynus, meanwhile, seemed unconcerned with the fall. Even now, he struggled to reach Huma or the silver dragon. The wind prevented him from doing too much, and in anger or madness, the warlord unhooked himself from the safety of the saddle – and promptly was sucked away from the rest of the group.

He did not even scream.

Huma stared at the vanishing figure, unable to believe the insanity of the black-armored warlord.

The trees rushed up toward them. Charr’s grip suddenly became limp, and the silver dragon at last was able to release herself.

By then, it was too late. They dropped into the treetops with a tremendous crash.

Chapter 23

When Huma awoke, he felt bruised over every inch of his body, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.

He stood up and gazed at the wholesale destruction. The force of two such tremendous masses as the dragons had been enough to level much of the timber in the immediate area.

Charr’s inert form lay to one side, its neck snapped. The hideous face still had a toothy, upside-down smile. The deadly claws pointed uselessly into the air.

There was no sign of the silver dragon, even though at least some of the blood came from her. She must have moved under her own power, but to where?

Where, also, were his companions? Huma could hear no sounds and was disoriented as to what direction they must be in.

The Dragonlance and saddle lay nearby, where he supposed the silver dragon had fallen. The Dragonlance still gleamed brightly, and Huma felt a little better just to see it. At least one enemy rider and one red dragon remained – but where were they?

He could not very well carry the lance on his shoulders; it was more than twice his height. His only real option was to drag it. He looped some rope around the shield, tied it together, and then pulled it over his head and one arm. In his free arm, he held his sword, which had managed to survive the fall.

Dragging proved awkward, and Huma was barely away from the scene of destruction before he caught the lance on an upturned tree root. The knight put down his sword and began to work the very lengthy weapon around. It came loose suddenly, and Huma fell against a tree trunk. Every bruise in his body screamed, and more than a minute elapsed before he was able to sit up and coordinate his thoughts. The first thing he did was to reach for his blade. It proved to be an excellent decision.

The heavy ax struck the tree exactly at the level where his neck had been.

Huma tumbled forward as he grabbed his sword and attempted to untangle himself. To his surprise, no other attack was forthcoming. Instead, his attacker boomed forth with laughter.

“You can have all the time you need, Knight of Solamnia! It won’t do you a bit of good.”

Huma threw the rope down. He tightened his grip on the sword. He looked up to study his adversary – and shook his head, not believing what he saw. It had to be a trick!

Warlord Crynus was casually removing his battle ax from the tree trunk he had nearly severed. His plain ebony armor was dented and dirty in many places, but the warlord seemed in perfect health otherwise. His face remained hidden behind his visor, but his eyes glowed frost blue.

The tall, ominous figure should have been dead.

Crynus took a step forward. His deep voice hissed. “I am so pleased you survived, Huma of the Order of the Crown. You were lucky that day when we first met in the sky over that no-man’s land. By rights, I would’ve cleaved your head from your body. That accidental victory of yours never should have happened, and I have remembered ever since.”

One of the warlord’s heavy boots came down on the limb of a fallen tree and snapped it neatly. “I am the greatest of her infernal majesty’s commanders. She would have lost the war long ago if it had not been for me.”

“I have heard different,” Huma dared to say. “Some say the greatest is Galan Dracos.”

Crynus gave the double-bladed ax a practice swing. “He has his uses, but I distrust his loyalty.” The warlord paused and went on in a different tack. “Your thrust in that first, short encounter was a lucky one. As I said, that never should have happened.”

“Why not?”

“See for yourself, if you are fortunate enough.” The warlord charged Huma.

Huma ducked the first swing, and the ax bit into yet another tree. With incredible strength, the warlord turned the pull into a second attack, forcing the knight back as the ax suddenly came singing back over his head.

This time, Huma found an opening and thrust, but his aim was off, and the weapon deflected off the commander’s breastplate. Crynus laughed and renewed his vicious assault. Huma stumbled back and back as he sought to escape the continuing onslaught.

The ax missed Huma again by only inches. This time, though, the warlord had miscalculated, and the shaft of the ax struck hard against the side of a tree, bouncing out of Crynus’s hands. Daring everything, Huma lunged. This time, there was no mistaking the accuracy of his thrust. The sword came up and caught Crynus in the unprotected portion of his neck. Huma’s blade did not stop until it reached the back of the warlord’s helmet.

The black-clad figure stumbled away, attempting to wrest the sword from his opponent as he did so. The warlord stumbled, dropped his ax, and tripped. On his hands and knees, he gave a death rattle.

Then, the warlord’s maddening sound reverted to something more familiar – and chilling. While Huma watched, spellbound, Crynus slowly lifted himself to his feet, turned toward Huma, and smiled.

The mortal wound across the warlord’s neck was little more than a scar. He seemed – proud.

“I cannot die, Knight of Solamnia. I will heal instantly. I am, as I said, the greatest commander my lady has. My death would be a terrible blow to her. Thus I demanded of Galan Dracos this protection. At first, his attempt was only partially successful – almost to my eternal regret. Thus our foreshortened battle. My men would have taken you, but I wanted you for myself and they would not dare go against my wishes. I wanted you for what you had almost done.”

The battle ax came at Huma again. The knight was fully on the defensive now, for how does one slay an opponent who heals instantly? Crynus had the strength of many and stamina to match.

The warlord laughed at Huma’s efforts to dodge him and stay alive. Crynus was being openly careless, allowing his swings to go wild, taunting the knight with his immortality.

“I had expected more of a fight from you, young knight. You disappoint me.”

Huma backed into a tree. Crynus screamed as he swung the ax. The deadly blade narrowly missed Huma as the knight dove at the warlord. Behind him, the ax cut deep into the tree. The two collapsed into a heap and struggled. It was evident to Huma that he did not have the strength to match the warlord. Crynus pushed the knight away and tried to strangle him, but Huma kicked with his knee and threw his adversary off-balance. Both scrambled to their feet and faced one another. Huma still had his sword. The warlord was weaponless.

“What are you waiting for?” the ebony-armored commander gloated. “Run me through. I will still kill you with my hands.”

Huma tried to stall while his mind raced for ideas. “How is it your army functions without you? Aren’t you afraid they will blunder?”

Crynus laughed shortly. “Dracos is a competent commander. Besides, the time has come when my leadership can be spared. It is simply a matter of mopping up those who remain around Vingaard Keep. I leave such minor details to my staff.”

The battle ax lay only a short distance away. Huma took a step toward the weapon. If only he could get the ax.

Crynus screamed and threw himself on Huma’s blade. The knight released his hold and leaped for the battle ax. The warlord’s movements slowed as he attempted to pull the sword from his body. Huma picked up the battle ax and turned back to his opponent. Seemingly in no pain, the warlord began extricating the blade from his body.

Huma raised the ax. Crynus turned toward him.

The cut was clean and the helmeted head of the warlord went flying. The warlord’s body slumped to its knees. Huma threw down the battle ax with distaste. This was not his way.

The headless corpse rose to its feet again. All color drained from Huma’s face.

With definite precision, the hands of the decapitated creature removed the broadsword and tossed it away. Huma could see the wound healing itself. Even the armor, like a second skin, sealed itself. Huma waited for the thing to turn to him, but it was as if he had never existed, for the headless body began to walk off, toward where the warlord’s head had flown.

Huma could run, he knew, but the warlord would follow, never tiring.

“SARGAS!”

The cry came from the direction of the undead Crynus. Huma scooped up his sword. He knew of only one who would give such an oath.

If Kaz were around, the others were likely to be nearby. And the Dragonlance —

Of course!

Huma broke through the foliage. There was Kaz astride his horse, the minotaur’s mouth agape. The others were nowhere to be seen. The minotaur’s eyes stretched wide as the body of Crynus neared the disembodied head, which wobbled and tipped as if it still functioned.

“Kaz! It must not reach the head!”

The minotaur urged his horse forward – at the abomination that called itself Crynus.

The warhorse charged forward until it was within six feet of the headless Crynus, then abruptly came to a halt, shrieking. Kaz wasted no time. He jumped off the panicked steed and raced the body for the head.

Huma, meanwhile, had returned to the Dragonlance. The knight picked up the shaft.

“Huuummmmaaa!”

Kaz burst through the foliage, nearly impaling himself on the Dragonlance. In his right hand he held a grisly prize, which still vibrated with ghastly life. Behind the minotaur came the sounds of something thrashing toward them with great purpose.

“Drop it!” Huma indicated the head. “Over there! Quickly!”

The minotaur tossed the head in front of the tip of the Dragonlance just as a gauntleted hand came into sight.

The headless body froze and then dove to the side before they could impale it.

“It knows!” said the minotaur with a snort.

Worse yet, as the body rose, it held out one hand, clutching the fallen and forgotten battle ax.

“This is madness,” Kaz muttered.

“WHAT is going on here?” cried a new voice.

Both Huma and Kaz looked up as the silver dragon hovered above them. She appeared drawn, and one of her forelegs hung limply, but much power still resided within her.

She turned her gaze from the two and stared at the horrible creature. “Is that —?”

The body reached for its head.

“Paladine!” the silver dragon uttered in shock. She inhaled sharply even as Crynus put down the battle ax and picked up his head. The arms of the monstrosity were raising the head high even as she unleashed a torrent of flame.

Dragonflame engulfed the warlord. The body wobbled, sank to its knees, and both head and trunk vanished in the purifying flame. Within seconds, no sign of the unliving Crynus could be seen within the miniature inferno.

The silver dragon landed in the clearing and readied herself for a second strike. “That should be the end of that thing,” she said.

“Wait!” Kaz cried. He rushed to the fire and picked up the battle ax, which had escaped the blast. He tossed the ax into the fire – then raced away as the weapon exploded. Bits of metal and wood scattered through the forest. Kaz cursed as a tiny piece of metal struck him on the shoulder.

“Sar – Gods! I cannot leave you alone at any time, Huma!” The two rose and dusted themselves off. The silver dragon, meanwhile, blew out the fire with a cold blast that left ice clinging to the nearest trees.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Huma said to her.

Her shoulders slumped from exhaustion. “The chill and the paralysis are among our normal abilities. The flame – the flame is possible for any dragon save the cowardly, ice-dwelling white, but it requires much of us – and I am afraid I overexerted myself. I must rest.”

Huma nodded understanding, then glanced around. “Kaz! Where are Buoron and Magius? Where are the Dragonlances?”

“Where I left them, I suppose. When we saw the dragons fall in the distance, I volunteered to go ahead and see if you were still alive.”

“Then you didn’t SEE them?”

“Who?”

“We must get to them, fast!” Huma turned to the silver dragon, but the great beast was slumped on the ground. Between the multiple wounds received from Charr, the fall from which she had cushioned Huma, and the tremendous final effort she had expended on the rampaging Crynus, she had reached her limit.

“Can we leave you here?” he asked.

Shining eyes opened and regarded him. “I will be all right. I’m sorry I can be of no assistance.”

Kaz retrieved his horse, the largest of their mounts. Once Huma was secure, Kaz urged the animal onward.

They could hear the clash of arms well before they neared the spot where Kaz had left the others. Huma had assumed that what he had seen from above was an out-and-out attack. In this, he was wrong. The Black Guard came upon Magius and Buoron from an ambush.

A bright light flashed before them, and Huma saw an ebony-armored figure go flying against a tree. It was not too late. Both Magius and Buoron still lived, still fought.

Huma did not wait for the horse to slow, but rather slid off and rolled to a crouch. Kaz removed his own battle ax and, with a cry, charged into the fray.

Magius crouched on the wagon, keeping most of the attackers at bay with short-lived spells. Buoron stood on the ground behind the wagon, fighting off those guardsmen who had encircled the mage. The enemy was drawing tighter.

Huma picked off his first opponent and charged into the next. As their blades clashed, Huma heard the howl. It was very near, and there was no mistaking it this time. A dreadwolf.

It leaped up onto the back of the wagon. Buoron saw it first, but that brave knight could only shout; he was already engaged with two other foes. Magius, pale and drawn, turned to face the creature. The mage shouted and unleashed a spell, but it sputtered and evanesced before it reached its target. Magius had reached his limit.

This time, the dreadwolf – or rather Galan Dracos, since his was the mind that controlled the unliving creatures – did laugh. Huma succeeded in disposing of his guardsman adversary and tried to reach the wagon. He was cut off by two more ebony-armored guardsmen and could only glance helplessly as the burning eyes of the creature brightened and the renegade unleashed a spell of his own. Huma did not see what happened next, but when the wagon came into his view again, Magius was standing unharmed. The Dragonlances had in some way protected him from Dracos’s foul power. The dreadwolf cringed back. Dracos had not expected this setback.

Then Huma was pressed back and Kaz was pulled from his horse. There was a flash of light and a tall, circular opening materialized in the air itself. It was a portal, the knight realized, a gate large enough to drive a wagon through. Huma struggled against the two warriors who blocked his path, and they gave quarter.

A guardsman leaped up behind Magius, and the spellcaster turned just in time. The hapless attacker crashed to the ground. The dreadwolf was nowhere to be seen.

One of Huma’s opponents made a fatal mistake and paid for it. The other fought with desperation. More guardsmen were swarming around the wagon. Buoron seemed to have vanished.

Two more black figures jumped on the wagon and this time Magius was not quick enough. One caught his arms and held him back while the other sought the reins. Other warriors began retreating through the portal, their destination most likely Galan Dracos’s citadel.

Another guardsman joined the other two on the wagon. Huma finally slew his last adversary and charged toward the wagon. A white abomination blocked his path briefly, but it appeared more intent on retreating through the portal than anything else. It did not even glance in the knight’s direction.

Though the wagon was only yards from the portal, the driver hesitated as the portal seemed to blink in and out of existence. The horses fought him for control. One guardsman leaped off the cart as Huma reached it. At the same time, Magius succeeded in breaking the hold of his captor and pushed his hand in the man’s visored face. A small burst threw the guardsman back, but it was only enough to stun him. Magius half-collapsed, the final effort exhausting him. He had no more power and little strength. He crawled forward and tried to wrap his arm around the driver’s neck. He succeeded in halting the progress of the wagon, but both men fell from the vehicle.

One of the few remaining guardsmen shouted something, and then they were all retreating toward the gate.

The horses, unsettled by all the commotion, again began to move. Huma grabbed the reins. The horses protested, but Huma began to shout commands to them. Kaz, daring everything, stood before the steeds and took hold of the bridles. With strength no human could match, he held the horses firm. They struggled a little more, then finally gave in to his control. Huma slumped down on the driver’s seat and nodded thankfully at the minotaur.

The portal vanished.

A groan came from behind the wagon. Huma jumped up, sword ready, only to feel a sting of pain from his left leg. He looked down to see a long gash that a broadsword must have opened during the fighting.

Kaz reached the groaning figure first. It was Buoron, lying half-underneath the wagon. His left arm was covered with blood, and there was a gash across his face. The blood from the facial wound had momentarily blinded him.

“Are you hurt severely?” asked Huma.

“My eyes sting and I fear no one will ever use me as a sculptor’s model, but the only true pain is in my arm. I am thankful it was not my sword arm. I fear it will be useless for some time.” Even as Buoron spoke, Kaz was already at work on the knight’s wounds. The minotaur himself was covered with countless minor wounds, but he seemed unconcerned with his own welfare.

Huma nodded and limped slowly to the front of the wagon. He peered over the far side and then froze.

Magius! Where was the spellcaster? Ignoring his pain, Huma leaped out of the wagon and searched the dead. All wore the black of Takhisis and her commanders. The few who had suffered at the power of the mage were easy to identify. Of Magius himself there was no sign.

Near the woods, Huma spotted a small rod lying among the scattered remains of the attackers. He walked over and picked it up.

The rod quivered, and Huma almost dropped it out of surprise. The surprise turned to fascination as the rod expanded, growing and growing until it was taller than Huma. It was the staff of Magius. The spellcaster was never without the staff.

It had been lying directly beneath where the portal had been.

Magius was in the hands of Galan Dracos.

Chapter 24

“We do not know if he has indeed been taken, Huma, and even if he is a prisoner of Galan Dracos, it would be impossible for us to rescue him. They must have him in the citadel of the renegade, himself,” Kaz pointed out for the hundredth time.

“Our best hope is to deliver the Dragonlances to Vingaard Keep and the Grand Master, Huma,” Buoron added.

Huma nodded. They were both correct, he knew, but his inability to protect Magius, whom he had known nearly all his life, gnawed at him.

Buoron, the wounded arm in a sling, drove the wagon now. Huma sat with the lances, watching the trio’s backside. The silver dragon had volunteered to seek out the assistance of her kin, and Huma had approved the idea. With Crynus destroyed and his guardsmen in disarray, the trio should be safe for the time being. In actuality, a part of Huma almost desired a second accounting.

The next few days passed without incident as the companions traveled toward Solamnia and Vingaard Keep. There were times when Huma would wake to what he was sure were the cries of the dreadwolves, but nothing came of these.

In all this time, the silver dragon did not return. No one cared to conjecture on this, although all three assumed it had something to do with the steadily advancing hordes of the Dragonqueen. Huma recalled the words of Crynus – that the Knights of Solamnia had been virtually defeated and that Vingaard soon would fall. As much as he wished to believe otherwise, Huma tasted too much truth in those statements.

By this time, they were far to the northwest of Caergoth. Huma recalled Lord Guy Avondale and prayed they would pass this region without confronting the Ergothian commander. After Huma’s abrupt departure, he was not sure how Avondale would welcome him. Nor was Huma confident as to what the Ergothians would do once they saw the Dragonlances. They might very well confiscate them.

The trio was making good time, all things considered, but it was still not fast enough for Huma. The evil of Takhisis was enveloping everything, and Huma felt impotent.

They crossed plains now. That would continue for much of the journey. While it made their going easier, it also provided them with little cover.

At midday, only two days from the border, they sighted a huge patrol, too far away to be identified. But it was plain the patrol had seen the trio as well, for the soldiers shifted in their direction and their pace quickened.

Kaz removed his battle ax. Huma leaped from the back of the wagon and unsheathed his blade. Buoron remained with the wagon, but he pulled out his sword and waited for the approach of the patrol.

The bearded knight was the first to identify them. Turning to Huma, he said, “Ergothians. Part of their northern army, I would say.”

There was no way to outrun them. How would Ergothians act when confronted with an ax-wielding minotaur and two knights from an order responsible in great part for the decay of the once-mighty Ergothian Empire?

The commander of the patrol raised his hand as the group neared the trio. A broad, almost fat man with a small beard and thin gray hair, he studied each of them in turn, his gaze lingering on Kaz, who, despite his nature, tried his best to look unthreatening. In Huma’s opinion, the minotaur failed completely.

First, the Ergothian addressed Buoron. “You are from one of the outposts in the south, are you not?”

“I am.” Both knights stiffened. This commander was a keen observer.

“Your companion knight is not?”

Huma answered. “Lord, I am Knight Huma of the Order of the Crown.”

“I see,” said the Ergothian with about as much interest as if he had been told that there was grass growing on the plains. He pointed at Kaz. “And that? Where did that come from? I’ve heard rumors …”

“I,” the minotaur announced proudly, “am Kaz. I have rebelled from my former masters and am now companion to Huma, most noble and brave of knights.”

That might have brought a few smiles to the faces of the Ergothians if they had not seen the dark look on the face of Kaz and knew he meant every word of it.

“I am also a minotaur, not a ‘that.’”

“I see.” The commander shifted his girth in the saddle and turned to Huma. “I am Faran and though we have never met, I and my men are presently attached to an acquaintance of yours, Lord Guy Avondale.”

Huma could not help but flinch.

“I see you remember him. I have been asked to escort you to him, and I will not take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Huma looked at his two companions. The patrol outnumbered them and included more than a few archers. To resist would be foolish. As long as they lived, there was hope. “We will gladly accept your escort.”

Faran smirked. “I thought you might.” He waved his hand and the patrol split, one half flanking each side of the wagon. There would be no escape. “We have a day’s journey ahead of us, so I recommend we waste no more valuable time.”

“I must admit to being greatly surprised at your sudden absence that night, Huma,” Lord Guy Avondale was saying the next day.

The three of them sat, alone, before the chief commander in his tent.

“I have explained those circumstances.”

“Yes, you have.” Lord Avondale put down his goblet. The trio had been offered wine as well, but none of them had accepted. “I should have known better, I grant that, but when we discovered that nest of pestilence, I was more than happy to accept the mage’s assistance.”

Kaz, his patience wearing thin, stood up fiercely. “We have been sitting here for the past three hours, two of which were wasted waiting for you, commander. For the past hour, you have spoken of nothing but false pleasantries and news so old – how much longer are we to put up with this? Are you going to let us pass into Solamnia with the lances?”

Two guards came rushing in, but the commander waved them off. They did not leave the tent, Huma noticed.

The Ergothian put down his goblet. “For the past three hours, and all of last night, I have been debating in my mind as to what to do about you and those weapons. In answer to your last question, yes, you may pass through with the lances. For what reason would I turn them over to the emperor? He would merely mount them on some palace wall as the latest of his trophies, despite what they could do for all of Ansalon.”

Huma and Avondale locked gazes. “Other than a few diehards, most of us are realistic enough to admit the truth. It is no longer the emperor we truly fight for, although perhaps that once might have been the case. We are fighting for Ergoth, our homeland, and our families. That is what matters in the long run. Emperors come and go, but it is the people who sustain. We lost sight of that at some point, and a good portion of the empire decided they could do better without us – but you know that, of course.”

“Then,” Huma said calmly, “if what you say is true, why are we being held here?”

“You are not. We are waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

A horn signaled the approach of someone or something. Guy Avondale rose and smiled knowingly. “I think that is them now. Come with me, please.”

They stood and followed the Ergothian commander. They were trailed by the two guards.

When they had entered the camp, the first thing Huma had noticed was the vast, open plain situated before the tent of the commander. He had wondered at its purpose then, even as he had wondered until now how Avondale had known where they were and that they were coming at all. Now the knight understood.

The first to land was the silver dragon herself. She seemed fully healed and, in fact, greeted Huma with such enthusiasm that he was overwhelmed.

“I apologize for the delay, Huma, but it proved more difficult than I thought to locate assistance. But I have found them!”

Two more silver dragons landed, one female and one male. They were introduced as the silver dragon’s siblings, and both greeted and gazed at Huma with such seriousness it was as if they were inspecting him. Huma returned their greeting with some unease.

The final newcomer was a bronze-colored dragon, slightly smaller than all the rest. What he lacked in size, though, he more than made up for in muscle and speed. He had, from humans, acquired the nickname of Bolt, which he wore proudly. Here at last, Huma decided, was a kindred spirit for Kaz.

“Four or five lances between us will be no difficulty,” Huma’s silver dragon explained.

“The saddle —” Huma began.

“I have had someone working on that,” interjected Avondale. “We have four saddles, which should suffice. I assure you that they will be more than capable of withstanding the rigors ahead.”

“They had better be,” Kaz muttered.

“You said four,” Huma said. “We have only three, without Magius. “Unless you think —”

“I do not!” The Ergothian commander looked Huma straight in the eye. “In the name of Paladine and all of Ansalon, I forbid you from going and throwing yourself at the renegade in a futile attempt to rescue the mage! You yourself have spoken of how much the Dragonlances mean to the future of all of us. If you throw your life away, you are condemning us to the Dragonqueen’s dark dreams!”

Inwardly, Huma felt shame at the relief that flowed through him upon hearing Avondale’s words. Part of him desperately wanted to rescue his companion, while another part of him yearned for his own safety. Huma was torn.

“Who is to be our fourth member, then?”

“I am.”

“You?” Kaz snorted in derision. “Have all the world’s commanders gone mad?”

Lord Avondale replied coldly. “Faran is more than capable of stepping into my role. Despite his dislike of Solamnia, he is a practical man. He will not do anything to upset the situation. I would trust no one more.”

“What would your emperor say?” asked Buoron, silent until now.

“What the emperor would say, he may tell me if I survive. As I told you, I am fighting for Ergoth. I would never forgive myself if I placed another’s life in such danger, though I am sure many would volunteer. Someone must go with you, to represent Ergoth to your Grand Master, and it may as well be me.”

Huma agreed, albeit with great reluctance. They were in Avondale’s hands at present; there really was no choice – and he would be a good man to have on one’s side, Huma decided.

It was agreed that Huma would again ride the silver dragon, while Buoron and Avondale would take the younger male and female, respectively. This left Kaz with the volatile Bolt. As Huma had suspected, the minotaur and the bronze dragon took to one another like two old soldiers. His only fear was that the two might take it on themselves to charge on ahead, and he voiced this opinion to the silver dragon.

She chuckled. “Bolt and Kaz do indeed make a troublesome pair, but the dragon at least knows better – I think. I shall warn him once we are in the air.”

“Make sure it’s understood that the warning is for both of them.”

“There will be no doubts.”

They had wanted to leave without fanfare, but Faran would not hear of it. The second-in-command had an honor guard waiting to see them off.

Bolt, especially, was intrigued by the Dragonlance. Already a terror in the skies – according to himself – he claimed he now had the perfect edge with the lance and Kaz in the saddle. The silver dragons all looked on in poorly masked amusement, although Huma’s did admit shortly thereafter that the bronze dragon’s words were not bluster. He was indeed a formidable opponent.

The dragons rose into the sky one at a time, with Huma and his mount the first, Kaz and Bolt last. The sun was already well into the sky, but with the dragons bearing them, they would cover a vast distance that day in any case.

By the time night had triumphed, they had long passed the border into Solamnia. One thing they had not thought of slowed them, though. The drizzle that had started in Ergoth was a downpour at this point, and all four riders were soaked. The dragons seemed unaffected, especially the bronze, who seemed to enjoy the shafts of lightning that almost skewered them twice. At Huma’s urging, they finally landed for the night in the hope that the morning would bring better conditions. The dragons formed a protective square around them and the four set up the two tents Avondale had thought to bring along. The tents kept the rain from them and Huma’s only regret was that the true smell of a wet minotaur became very obvious as the night aged.

In the morning, Kaz had the same comment about him.

The rain did not cease, but it did lighten. The riders covered themselves with their cloaks or in the few blankets they had brought. Thanks to the dragons, they would be within the vicinity of Vingaard Keep in two days. Had they not been burdened by the extra lances, it would have taken even less time.

Still, their journey was by no means over, for now they were to face the Dragonqueen’s forces. Dracos had a stranglehold on the heart of Solamnia, for he had finally cut off northern and southern routes into and out of Vingaard, effectively creating a wall that encircled the Keep. Supplies were becoming scarce. Control of the sky was still a question, but morale was having its effect even on the dragons of light. The only thing that had kept them going, the silver dragon revealed, was the rumor of the Dragonlance.

The male silver was in the lead when they felt the first probe in their direction. A presence was nearby, reaching out with magic to detect outsiders. The probe was no more than a momentary contact with their minds, but it was enough to send the entire group into an abrupt halt.

“Back!” cried the male.

The four leviathans whirled and retreated some distance back along their route. They conferred as they flew.

“What was it we felt?” Huma’s female asked.

“A mind – not a dragon’s mind, but a powerful human mind. Undisciplined, too. This one was never a student of the Orders of Magic.”

“Not a cleric?”

The male shook his massive head. “No, definitely a mage. A renegade.”

Huma looked around nervously. “Surely, he is not a threat to you!”

“Physically, no, Huma.” It was his own silver dragon who replied. “But he would have no trouble warning others of our presence – if he hasn’t already – and those others may be a threat. His sole purpose is to watch the skies.”

“Let me take him!” Bolt shouted.

“What would you do,” the young female silver asked, “that could possibly prevent him from sending out a message before you strike?”

The bronze dragon clamped his mouth shut.

“I think,” the silver male commented, “that an opening has been left for us. He is, after all, only human. I will fly to a level much higher than we normally fly. Once there, it is possible that I can discover whether his range of power can extend that high. I must risk our discovery to be sure.” He added, “If my companion has no objections …”

Buoron shook his head, although he gripped the saddle pommel tightly.

“What of the rest of you?”

There was no argument from the others. Taking that as a positive response, the male spiraled once and then turned skyward. As Buoron held on, the silver male began to soar higher and higher and higher until he was lost in the cloud cover. Several minutes passed while the others waited anxiously. Then Huma spotted a form breaking through the clouds.

Buoron was rather pale, but otherwise seemed none the worse. His dragon seemed elated. “I was correct. So typical of many earthbound minds; his search extends only to the cloud cover. As far as he is concerned, anything above that does not exist.”

“I could’ve thought of that!” complained Bolt.

“You did not, and neither did I,” commented Huma’s dragon. “Now that I hear it, it amazes me. I had forgotten how closed-minded some humans are. Still, he may yet come to that realization by accident, so we had better move quickly.”

The others followed Huma and his companion skyward, soaring up until they burst into the cloud cover, the mists, and then broke through to the other side. From there, they estimated their present position from Vingaard Keep and continued their journey.

The dragons flew on through the night while their riders slept. Huma awoke to the sound of Kaz arguing with the great reptilian creatures about the need for them to land before every muscle in his body stiffened, war or no war. The dragons themselves were visibly tired and ready to land in order to get a new fix on their positions.

First Bolt, then the others spiraled swiftly downward. The bronze dragon disappeared into the silky, white sea, followed quickly by the other silver female. Huma and the silver dragon followed next.

The cool mist surrounded him, and he could not even see the dragon’s head. A harsh, grating crashing came from below them and Huma’s first thoughts were that they were entering into a tremendous storm. Then, suddenly, they were out of the cloudcover —

— and into chaos.

They had assumed, incorrectly, that they had crossed beyond the enemy forces. Huma’s mind spun with horrible nightmares as he realized how tightly the Keep was surrounded. Fighting raged everywhere.

Men and ogres were clashing furiously with one another. In Huma’s eyes, it seemed as if the land below was swarming with the dead and dying. Both sides were advancing and retreating at the same time, depending upon where he looked. It was chaos. Dragons of Takhisis continually dove down, assaulting both the ravaged lines of the knights and any of their ogre allies who were unfortunate enough to be too near. There were dragons of gold, silver, bronze, and copper, but they always seemed outnumbered. Worse yet, there prevailed a sense of malevolent power all about that the courage of the good dragons could not seem to counter. Even up here, away from the battle, Huma could feel discouragement and surrender building up within his soul.

“Takhisis is here,” Huma’s companion muttered to him. “She is here on Krynn, feeding our cousins with her power, chilling the minds of her enemies. I did not think she could retain so much of her power on the mortal plain. It is as if she were before us herself.”

It was true. The Dragonqueen’s presence was overwhelming. Huma shivered from a cold that threatened to numb his mind more than his body. How did one fight a goddess?

“Up ahead, Huma. Can you see it?”

His gaze followed the direction her head pointed and, after wiping his eyes more than once, he identified the tiny object on the horizon.

“Vingaard Keep!” Kaz shouted from ahead of them. By now, they all could see it – and the battle that seemed to cover every inch of ground all the way to its walls.

Lord Avondale cried out and pointed to their right. A gold dragon battled two reds. The combat was fierce, and all three bore wounds. When it became obvious that the gold dragon was beginning to lose, Bolt waited no longer. With Kaz readying his Dragonlance, the two charged into the fray.

Suddenly, there were dragons everywhere, most of them foes. All thoughts of food and rest vanished. There were only the claws and the teeth, the cries and the screams, the blood and the pain.

And the Dragonlances.

The dark dragons here knew nothing of the lances, perhaps because Dracos had not wanted them to fear. They soon learned that fear, however, as one after another perished on the points of lances which, when pulled free, were unstained and unscratched, and glowed with a brilliance all their own.

The children of Takhisis soon began to turn and flee from that brilliance, for they marked it easily as the sign of Paladine and they had no power against him. Others, farther off, noted the frenzy with which their brethren fled the battle and assumed then that the day was lost. The fleeing of the first dragons soon became a wave of confusion in the sky as more and more retreated in uncomprehending panic.

Freed from battling their counterparts, the dragons of Paladine added to the strength of the knighthood, and the tide on the ground began to turn as well. First the west, then the eastern lines of the Dragonqueen’s forces began to bend, give, and then at last crumble. Without the aid of their dragon allies, the ogres and humans who fought for the darkness lost courage, and many simply threw down their weapons and fled.

Eventually, the fighting died. That the skies rumbled ominously and lightning blasted the mountains to the west disturbed only a few. A victory of some kind had been desperately needed, and it had been produced. No one at the time knew how, but they gave thanks to Paladine and his house for the miracle and then grimly waited to see what would happen next.

Well past midday, four exhausted dragons landed in the courtyard of Vingaard Keep. On their backs they each bore a rider, all of whom also were pale and exhausted. A silvery glow encompassed the newcomers and eventually someone realized it was the great lances that glowed so godlike, and not the dragons and riders themselves.

By that time, though, the stories were already spreading.

Chapter 25

“They told me it was you, but I could not believe it! Not after the tales that have circulated.”

“Tales?” Huma and his companions had climbed down from the dragons – where they would have been swarmed by knights and commonfolk alike if not for the quick thinking of Lord Grendal, who controlled the Keep’s defenses. Several of the well-trained veterans who made up Grendal’s force were out and around the newcomers within the first minute after the landing.

Lord Oswal, Grand Master, indicated Huma himself. “You know what I speak of. The stories of your battle with the demon who seeded plague and dissension throughout the land.”

“Rennard?”

“Rennard. Amazing how faulty their memories can be. When he was revealed for what he was and you defeated him there, they quickly forgot how much they wanted to believe the rumors he spread. They blamed him as an evil demon or cleric – I forget what exactly. Then, to top it all off, you supposedly vanish into thin air like Paladine himself.”

Huma’s face turned dark crimson. “The part about my vanishing is true, but I assure my lord that it was not by my own power.”

“Indeed.” Lord Oswal’s eyes strayed to the Dragonlances and his body seemed to shake momentarily. “Are those, then, what you have been seeking? What we have so desperately needed?”

“Yes, milord. The Dragonlances. We would have been here sooner, but we became caught up in the battle.”

“I daresay. I’ve had men and dragons alike speak of how the eight of you came from nowhere, dealing fear and death to the Dragonqueen’s lackeys. Perhaps they are right; perhaps you are Paladine in mortal guise come to Krynn.”

“Lord Oswal!”

The Grand Master chuckled. “I have not come around to that way of thinking, Huma. Not yet.” Despite his evident desire to inspect the lances, Oswal turned to the rest of Huma’s band. “I know you, minotaur, and glad I am that I had faith in you. You live up to all the good I have heard of your kind. I thank you for your assistance.”

Kaz was oddly quiet. “I did what I was required to do. I have sworn an oath to Huma.”

“Is that all it was?” The Grand Master smiled and turned to the others, starting with Lord Avondale. There was just the hint of coolness in the Grand Master’s tone. “I welcome you, Ergothian commander, as a fellow knight. I do not suppose you have brought your army with you?”

“When we met that one time, Grand Master, I knew you would someday hold your present position, but I hoped it would mellow you before we had to face each other again.”

Oswal accepted the veiled reprimand with a more genuine smile. “Forgive me if I sometimes forget I am also in the presence of a cleric of Paladine.”

Huma, Kaz, and Buoron looked at one another. While they respected Lord Avondale, they would have never taken him for a cleric of Paladine. Then again, who was to say what a cleric had to look like so long as his belief and his ways did not contradict the teachings?

“You’ve let out my secret, but it’s just as well. Perhaps Huma now will understand why I wanted him to accompany me to Caergoth. When I noted the sign of Morgion on such an obviously loyal knight, I worried that he might be marked for some foul deed.” Avondale turned back to Huma and smiled.

The Grand Master turned from Avondale and regarded Buoron with some amusement. With his great beard, the knight from the southwest stood out. Buoron was shaking in the presence of the Grand Master.

“You are …”

The knight blinked several times before blurting out his name. “Buoron, milord!”

“From one of our remote Ergothian outposts, I imagine.”

“Yes, milord.” Buoron was white.

“Good man.” Lord Oswal patted him on the shoulder and turned away. Buoron breathed a sigh of relief and gave a sickly smile.

“Now, then, Huma.” The Grand Master was all seriousness. “If you would be so kind, I would like you and your companions to join me in my quarters. I want to hear everything.”

“Yes, milord, but the Dragonlances —”

“Will be handled with care and placed in a safe location until we decide what can be done with them. Now come; I suspect you all could do with something to drink. I know after today’s near-catastrophe, I could.”

Huma’s report was punctuated every now and then by the thunder and lightning playing havoc in the mountains to the west. Takhisis letting loose her rage on those who had failed her, Kaz suggested, or perhaps Galan Dracos furious over his followers’ failed attempts to seize the Dragonlances.

Lord Oswal tapped the table as he absorbed all Huma had related. “Paladine! I never would have believed it if it had not been you – and to actually see them! You make an old man proud, Huma. Durac would have been proud, I know that.”

“Thank you, milord.” That compliment meant more to him than all others.

“Made from dragonsilver by a smith with one silver arm, and bearing a god-forged hammer, as well.”

Huma looked perplexed. “I made no mention of that.”

The Grand Master smiled knowingly. “I am a student of old lore, Huma, which is one reason I believed in you all along. If this smith is as you described him, he must be bearing a hammer that was forged by Reorx himself. I am thankful that our ancient records are true after all and you have lived to bring the weapon to us.”

Something had been building up inside Huma and he finally stood. “Milord, I beg of you. I appreciate all you have been saying and I know there was much you had to hear, but we now have the Dragonlances and I must ask of you a favor. There are twenty lances that may be utilized in the heavens. Give me but one lance and let me fly to the domain of Galan Dracos and his dark mistress. I must free Magius!”

“Knight Huma.” The Grand Master’s voice was toneless, frighteningly akin to Rennard’s. Lord Oswal stared at him until Huma sat. “One man or woman, be they companion, lover, or blood kin, is not worth the lives of hundreds – and I say that even if I were that one. You may disagree with me, and that is your prerogative – in private. We are fighting for the existence of all Solamnia, of all Ansalon if not Krynn itself. I cannot condone your idea.”

“He was taken defending the lances.” Huma’s bitterness began to show.

“I understand that, Knight Huma, as I understand the dangers to you that I think you do not. My answer remains the same. Understood?”

Huma said nothing.

“Now, then, you have twenty-one lances, one of which is designed for a footsoldier, you said.”

“Yes.”

“Twenty lances are hardly sufficient. We were fortunate this time, in that the dragons did not expect you, and your sudden appearance threw them into confusion.”

“They fled with their tails between their legs,” remarked Kaz smugly.

“This time. When next they come – and do not believe they will not – they will act with more cunning and more confidence, and four lances, let alone twenty, will not prevail.”

“You are claiming the fight is lost already. This is not what I expected to hear from the Grand Master of the Knights of Solamnia,” Lord Avondale commented.

The Grand Master ignored the look of disdain on the Ergothian’s face and kept his gaze fixed on Huma. “While some may see this as accepting defeat, it is only because they have not bothered to wait and hear. What we need to do is clear the smithy of all else and create, as accurately as possible, lances as near in quality to the originals as we can.”

Guy Avondale’s eyes narrowed, and a thin smile played across his lips. Kaz and Buoron exchanged looks of puzzlement. Huma hesitated, then saw where the elder knight was leading.

“A ploy! We’re going to ensnare them with a great bluff!”

Lord Oswal smiled, an edge in his gaze. “A bluff. Exactly. We already have the setup for creating ordinary lances. Now we shall make as many faithful forgeries of the Dragonlances as possible.”

“How long will all this take?” asked Avondale. “As you yourself have indicated, it will not be long before they return.”

“Metalworking in most of its forms is an art with us, commander. It is part of the secret of our success. Shoddy weaponry and protection make for shoddy armies – a paraphrasing of something in the Measure. Given two days, we will have more than a hundred lances. They will be, as I said, copies, forgeries of the true Dragonlances. The word has no doubt spread as to the cause of the rout. When next we face them, I hope to have at least a hundred lances ready. When the Dragons of Takhisis come, they will find themselves facing a veritable cavalry charge. The element of surprise will be ours. I am hoping that a hundred lances, supposedly actual Dragonlances, will cause a new panic. With the dragons at bay, our own forces will advance and meet the ogres.”

“This is more than a bluff. You intend to win, Dragonlances or not. It is an interesting plan. You have faith in it? Truly?”

“As a cleric of Paladine, you should know. Besides, it is not so much the plan I have faith in as it is in my men. We are, after all, Knights of Solamnia.”

“Huma.”

He had been walking alone, trying to sort out all that was happening. Magius, the Dragonlances, Galan Dracos, Gwyneth —

“Huma?”

He whirled. She was there in the shadows of the stable. She was clad in a flowing robe of silver-blue, her slim form partially revealed as she walked toward him. Huma could only gape.

“Gwyneth?”

She smiled. “You expect someone else?”

“No!”

“I wanted to come to you earlier, but it wasn’t possible. There are – some things – I must sort out. I hope you don’t mind if I walk with you, though.”

“No. Not at all.”

Gwyneth took his arm, and the two walked slowly around the courtyard. It was the first nearly clear night that Huma could recall. There were even patches of actual sky, as if the cloud cover at last were breaking up. Huma knew better than to hope it would vanish. Only one thing would bring that about: total defeat of the Dragonqueen.

It took him some time to build up the nerve, but at last Huma asked, “How did you get here?”

She turned her face from him. “Please don’t ask that now. I promise I’ll tell you soon.”

“Very well. I’m just glad to see you.”

That made her turn back. “I’m glad of that. It makes everything worthwhile.” Gwyneth’s expression suddenly darkened again. “I heard something about you wanting to go after Magius by yourself.”

“The Grand Master forbids it.”

“What will you do?”

“I obey the Grand Master. It’s my duty.”

They were silent after that. Gwyneth had rested one hand on Huma’s arm and, as they walked, he was astonished at the strength in that hand. There was so much he did not know about her, including her connection with the Dragonlance. She must be a cleric, he decided, but of which god he was not sure.

Gwyneth suddenly stared ahead and stiffened. Huma followed her gaze and caught sight of an unfamiliar male of approximately his own age. The man was dressed like a villager – they had come straggling in to Vingaard Keep just before the war reached their homes – but his stance was not like one of them. The face was fairly well hidden by shadow, but Huma could have sworn that the eyes blazed. After glancing at both of them, the stranger disappeared around a corner.

“Who is that?” Huma’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword. If someone stalked Gwyneth …

“No one,” she replied, much too quickly. Gwyneth disengaged herself from Huma’s arm. “I have to leave now. I’ll see you again later, I promise.”

She turned the way they had come, and hurried away. Huma thought to follow her, but she was out of sight almost instantly. The knight blinked; he could not recall when or where she had turned.

Reaction to the Dragonlances was not what Huma and the others had expected.

He had offered to demonstrate the methods and uses of the Dragonlance. To his amazement, only a handful of knights came to see him. One of them revealed the reason for the astonishing apathy among his brethren. Huma, stunned, told the others what the knight had said and how widespread those feelings were among the knighthood.

“The time for miracles is past. They will not accept the magic of the lances, and who can blame them? We are asking them to risk their lives uselessly as far as they are concerned. Those who ride with the true Dragonlances will bear the brunt of the assault and then attempt to break through and strike at the heart of evil, Galan Dracos and his infernal mistress. But suicide is against the Oath and Measure. And few have the true faith in Paladine where this is concerned. I was told a few believe I created the lances myself. They want to know why they should risk their lives so needlessly when they could be here, with their comrades, fighting a definite foe on more equal terms. Fighting dragons is one thing; facing the Dragonqueen herself is folly. That message was relayed to me more than once.”

Lord Oswal rose at that point. “They’ll risk it, curse them! They’re knights, not skulking thieves! I’ll order them to take the lances and use them!”

“And they’ll die,” Avondale threw in.

“What’s that?” The two commanders locked eyes.

“They’ll die, Grand Master. With little or no faith, they’ll simply die. It’s not a matter of whether the power of Paladine flows within the Dragonlances. The hand that guides the weapon also must believe or else reactions will be a little too slow, a little off the mark. They must have faith, as we do, or they will lose because they will see these lances as they have seen all lances – objects that will bend, break, or shatter on the hides of the dark dragons.”

“But a Dragonlance —”

The Ergothian cleric held up a hand for silence. “We have twenty Dragonlances, correct?”

“Plus the footman’s lance,” Huma quickly added.

“Twenty lances. All we need are twenty men. I think Paladine is watching over us. If there are only twenty Dragonlances, then there is a reason. If we are to obtain more, Paladine will see that we do. If our faith is strong, twenty lances or a thousand, we will triumph.”

Lord Oswal looked at Huma. “He’s right.”

Huma studied those assembled in the room. Kaz, Buoron, and Avondale would follow him on this. He needed only sixteen other men. “Let there just be the twenty, then.”

More than one eyebrow was raised at that. Huma did not wait for questions, instead plunging immediately into his thoughts.

“Buoron, Kaz, milord Avondale. I know that you three will join with me. You know the Dragonlance; you know what it can do. If twenty lances are all that stand between us and defeat by the Dark Queen, then we should thank Paladine we have even those and use them to the utmost.”

“You should have been a cleric, Huma, for your faith is stronger than any I have ever known.” There was no mockery in Lord Guy’s tone.

There was a knock on the Grand Master’s chamber door, and one of the Knights of the Rose who made up the ruling knight’s guard entered. “Grand Master, Knight Bennett wishes to speak with you.”

“I summoned him from the Keep walls some time ago. Where has he been?”

“He did not say, milord.”

Lord Oswal glanced at Huma and then nodded slowly. “Allow him to enter.”

“Milord.” The guard spoke to someone in the hall and then stood at attention. Bennett, looking more like his father than Huma had ever seen him, stalked imperiously into the room. He saluted his uncle deferentially and acknowledged the presence of the others politely, though he stared long and hard at the Ergothian commander.

“What is it, Bennett?”

“Unc – Grand Master, I have been studying the Dragonlances.”

The elder knight’s expression darkened. “Who gave you permission?”

Some of the imperiousness vanished. “I did it of my own accord. I could not help it, after you spoke to me of it following Huma’s – his disappearance.”

Bennett looked at Huma as he talked, but the latter could read nothing in the stiff, hawklike features.

“And?”

His nephew’s eyes widened, the mask fell away, and both Huma and Lord Oswal were astonished at the wonder that spread over Bennett’s face as he spoke. “They were smooth to the touch – so smooth they must cut the air effortlessly. I’ve never seen a point so sharp, nor a metal so bright – so alive. I’ve heard that many doubt the authenticity of the lances, but I cannot believe but these were sent to us by Paladine, through his chosen champion.”

For the first time ever, Huma felt a deep respect emanating from the Grand Master’s nephew, and directed at Huma himself.

Lord Oswal was no less surprised. Kaz snorted quietly in derision, but the look Bennett threw him caused him to stop immediately.

“I want to be one of them, Grand Master. I counted but twenty and I know not if we will have any more, but I want to be one of them. It is what I have trained for – to give myself in service to the Triumvirate and to Paladine. I will face any test if needed to prove I am worthy.” Bennett exhaled and his shoulders slumped. He had bared himself to all present and now awaited judgment.

The Grand Master looked from Huma to Avondale and then back to his nephew.

“Knight Bennett, you are, I see, the son of my brother – my brother before the strain of leadership tore us apart. If you can but remain as you are now, I see in you what many have always believed – that you will be among the first and best in our ranks.” Bennett’s shoulders stiffened in unconcealed pride. Oswal continued, “If you would truly be what we all strive to be, then I ask that you make your example this knight here —” he pointed at a stunned Huma – “for he is the embodiment of our teachings, whether or not he believes it so himself.”

“Am I then —”

“You are, and I charge you with a special task. Find others like yourself, from all three Orders and numbering fifteen total, who are willing to believe in the strength and will of Paladine and who will ride the skies with the Dragonlance before them.”

Bennett nearly stumbled toward the door, then turned to his uncle. Lord Oswal waved him off. The Knight of the Rose departed with haste.

Bennett did exactly as he was told. He sought volunteers from all three Orders and chose them based on merit and belief, not whether they were loyal to him, as he would have done prior to his father’s death. Among the volunteers were veterans and near-novices. Included by Bennett, surprisingly enough, were three knights who lacked limbs or were permanently disabled, all from the war. Had this been peacetime, Lord Oswal would have given these men work in the Keep, something to keep them active but away from awkward situations. Now, though, every man who could fight was needed. Men who had lost a leg could still ride and swing a sword. One useless arm still meant that the knight could use his other. A Knight of Solamnia did not quit until he was either triumphant or slain. Had they eliminated such men from the ranks, the available forces in the Keep would have been cut by nearly a quarter.

With the retreat of the Dragonqueen’s forces from the vicinity of the Keep, lines of supply reopened, albeit sporadically. Awaiting their first opportunity, knights in the southern reaches shipped food and raw materials. It was dangerous going, for the ogres and dragons still harried the routes, and some wagons never completed their journey.

The mountains to the west were ominously quiet, and Huma found himself staring at them, on and off. Magius was still out there, and Huma still felt the desire to attempt some sort of rescue. Waiting in the Keep for whatever Galan Dracos and his mistress plotted next irked him.

It might have been easier if Gwyneth had been with him, but she had not returned since that one night. Huma had taken to conversing with the silver dragon. They spoke only when alone together, for the presence of the other dragons guarding the Keep – and especially the silver dragon’s two siblings, who watched Huma intently each time he came around – embarrassed him.

She listened to his every word and answered his questions with such intensity that it was often easy to forget he was speaking with a creature vastly larger and more ancient than he. At the same time, she seemed filled with a sadness that Huma was never able to identify. He pressed her only once on it. When Huma had probed too far, the great dragon had turned and moved away without another word.

Huma could not explain the reasoning behind the feeling that had surged through him then, but he somehow knew that the sadness which had become so much a part of the leviathan was due to him.

He was careful never to bring up the point again, for fear of what truth he might discover.

Three days passed, and then it was as if the heavens themselves had erupted. Knights in the Keep pointed skyward, and the murmuring began. Though they would deny fear, many turned pale as they remembered the last time the sky had looked like this.

Huma rushed to the battlements, Kaz and Buoron close behind him. Both Huma and the minotaur stared through narrow eyes at the horror before them. Buoron, having come from the southwest outpost, had not been present at that time, but he studied the scene and then turned to his companions, seeing for the first time the looks on their faces.

Turning pale himself, he asked, “What does it mean? Why is it so black?”

The rolling darkness, which had nearly lost the war for the knighthood in that earlier battle, spread slowly toward the outermost lines of defense. The winds around the Keep were building to a pitch.

Chapter 26

“The Dragonlances! We must fly now!”

The others were gathering even as Huma and his companions entered the courtyard. Bennett looked to him as an aide might look to his commander. Here, Huma was in charge.

The dragons were there, also. They had had trouble in choosing who would join with the knights. Unlike the humans, all the dragons volunteered. It was the silver dragon who finally chose, she being most closely associated with the lances. Her choices were not questioned, for each of the volunteers was picked on the basis of past performance and physical endurance. There were silver ones, bronze ones – Bolt being the most vocal of these – and even a gold dragon.

More than enough saddles had been made and the well-trained knights were already finishing with that part of the preparations. Someone also had thought to secure the footman’s lance to the silver dragon Huma would be riding.

When all was ready, Huma turned to see everyone waiting. Then he grimaced, realizing that they were awaiting his orders. Even Lord Avondale, who Huma felt was certainly a more qualified flight leader, was deferring to him. Turning forward and assuring himself that all was secure, Huma kicked the silver dragon lightly and gave the signal to depart.

What an impressive sight, he thought, as he momentarily turned back to look. The twenty dragons made an arrowhead formation with Huma at the point; Kaz and Bolt were to his left, a little farther back, and Buoron was to his right. He could not see Lord Avondale, who was flying to the rear.

His thought were broken by the visage of the silver dragon as she turned to speak to him. “Huma, I …” He looked ahead, expecting to see the Dragonqueen’s children breaking through the darkness. “Nothing. I – I merely wished to say you may count on me in all things.”

“I will always be thankful,” he shouted, for the wind was now so great that it roared in his ears, and he could not be sure how well she heard him. She had already turned away.

It became a battle merely to enter the curtain of blackness that had been raised by the followers of Galan Dracos. The winds were fierce. The riders were strapped down and the Dragonlances were hooked to their mounts for safety. Huma and the silver dragon were the first to enter and it was as if there were no Krynn. Sky and earth were gone. There was only the knight, his dragon, and his lance. No, Huma realized. There was more. Behind him, he could see the glow of the other Dragonlances. At first, Huma worried that they would shine like beacons to the forces of Takhisis. Then he saw how the lances ate away at the darkness, destroying the spell. It did not matter then whether they were seen or not. The darkness ceased to be a threat.

“We’re through!” the silver dragon shouted.

The world snapped back into existence. When Huma had wandered on foot, it seemed such an incredible distance, an endless darkness in which things not of this plane chittered and slunk toward their unseeing prey. Now, it seemed like nothing.

The enemy dragons were upon them.

The first came at Huma and the silver dragon as they emerged again into the light. One lone rider and dragon must have seemed easy prey for the red dragons, and the two of them turned from their brethren to deal with Huma. The other dragonriders began to emerge behind Huma, though, and the easy prey became the deadly hunter. The two overconfident reds fell swiftly, unable to break away in time. The others, blue, black, and red, came more hesitantly. It seemed to Huma that they attacked only for fear of their own mistress, a fear greater than that of the Dragonlances.

One of the twenty, Hallerin, a newly appointed but skilled Knight of the Crown, went down, burning from the acidic blast of his foe. The other knights had accounted for four of the enemy and the rest of the dark dragons turned in retreat, deciding to risk the wrath of their mistress.

Some knights wanted to chase after them, but Huma signaled against that idea by remaining on his present course. Huma’s target was the source of the shifting darkness.

Several times, they faced onslaughts of creatures of the air. There were dragons of nearly every color. At one point, they clashed with large, birdlike creatures with leonine jaws and three pairs of claws. Another dragonrider was lost to horrors that only could have been the mad creations of Dracos himself. Huma was particularly saddened by this loss, a scarred veteran of the Rose, named Marik Ogrebane. He had been one of the disabled knights and was the first to volunteer. Now only eighteen remained. As they flew, Huma memorized the place and circumstances of each death, hoping to mark the bravery of these men in some way, later on, in song or verse.

They were close, Huma knew, close to the source of the spell. He could feel it.

“I spy something, Huma,” said the silver dragon.

“Where?”

“Down there to the right.”

He followed her gaze. There was nothing but a hill, barren but for a few bent and decaying trees, arranged almost in a pattern. It was certainly not what he was anticipating, and he told the silver dragon so.

She smiled knowingly. “Look not with your eyes, Huma. Look with the wisdom of Paladine. Have you ever seen trees growing in the form of a pentagram?”

The knight looked again – and realized how precise the pattern was. As he observed, the trees began to waver, as if they were not real. They did not fade, but twisted into brown-robed forms, like the mage who had attacked Huma in the woods in what seemed such a long time ago.

Now he saw them more precisely. Nearly a dozen figures squatted in the dirt, their heads down, their arms outstretched toward the center of the pentagram, where one of their number stood with arms raised high.

“Shall we take them? They seem unaware,” Kaz shouted from the side. Bolt eagerly expressed similar sentiments.

“I want to take them alive if possible.”

Kaz snorted. “If possible?”

Bolt plunged ahead – and barely missed being grievously wounded as something rose and shattered the air currents, as if lightning had emanated from the earth. Kaz and Bolt circled for another try and this time, when the attack came, Bolt easily dodged it. A crack of lightning split the heavens and struck the hill. When the smoke cleared, a small crater marked where the figures had been.

Huma turned at the sound of laughter coming from the silver dragon. “Thus his nickname, Bolt. All bronze dragons are capable of that trick, but only a few have such precision as he has shown, and none are his equal.”

Their defenses shattered, the renegade mages were suddenly active. They rose as one and turned toward the newcomers. Though Huma could not be sure from this distance, he thought their faces remarkably similar. They all might have been siblings. Then Huma realized what was so similar about each figure. They acted as if under a spell or with such concentration that it had become etched in their faces and movements. They were, in a sense, one being and they were pointing their hands toward Huma and the silver dragon.

“Dive!” he cried, but she was already doing that. The renegades tried to follow their progress, but the silver dragon wove a complex tapestry of turns and dives. While the mages concentrated on her, the other dragonriders moved closer.

How long could the renegades keep up this defense and still maintain the darkness? Huma wondered.

“Huma, beyond!”

Just over the hill, and marching steadily along, was the ogre army. The land was literally crawling with ogres, their human allies, goblins, and a few unidentifiables – experiments of the mages, no doubt. Things with too many arms, too many legs – even too many heads and trunks.

The very air ripped apart as he watched, and Huma had a glimpse of a place known to him only in nightmares and prayer. It was only a glimpse, but of a blackness so overwhelming, so ready to devour him, that he knew it could only be the Abyss.

They had that much strength. They had opened a rift in the mortal plane – and it would swallow him! Huma shook uncontrollably, and even the silver dragon wavered at that sight. The rip seemed to widen, giving them no place to run or hide. It came closer – then the power keeping the rift open crumbled as the renegades fell to the oncoming dragons of light. The mages had reached their limits in concentration; too many things were happening of too great importance. As the dragons attacked, first one, then another, then another, a few of the renegades stood to fight and died on the spot; the rest scattered, the link between them destroyed.

Behind them, the darkness dissipated. Things screeched in horror at the light. They had been bred in the darkness, perhaps even in the Abyss. Light to them was death. Their forms could not exist without the darkness; they faded away like dew, leaving no trace of their coming or going.

That would not, however, deter the massive force that marched even now toward the hill where the mages had scattered. The Dragonqueen’s commanders, lacking the imagination and daring of Crynus, were throwing all they had into the first battle.

The silver dragon turned to Huma again. “They are frightened, Huma. Not of us, but of Galan Dracos and the Dragonqueen, I think.”

“What can we do?”

“YOU CAN DIE.”

Behind him, Huma heard shouts and cries from the others. Before him, a figure hovered in mid-air with arms folded, smiling smugly from beneath a brown hood. He was tall, perhaps even taller than Huma, and slim, more like a well-trained knight than the mage he obviously was. Other than his reptilian smile, the floating spellcaster’s face was little more than a shadow.

“Galan Dracos.” Huma whispered the name to himself, but it was apparent the mage understood, for he cocked his head in acknowledgment of his identity.

“You are Huma. You look quite different when seen through human eyes. The one failing of the dreadwolves. One sees as they see.”

Huma could barely restrain himself from ordering the silver dragon to charge the floating figure. Here was the living embodiment of all that was evil.

Galan Dracos was smiling broadly. “You are wasting your time, good knight. True, those lances are an advantage over the dragons, but you have – pardon, had – only twenty, and there are far too many dragons. See for yourself.” The mage indicated the horizon behind him.

Huma squinted. A dark mass was coming up over the horizon. At first he thought it to be another spell of darkness. Then he saw that the mass was not one thing, but many large, flying creatures.

Dragons. The children of Takhisis. Hundreds of them.

Galan Dracos was still smiling when Huma turned to him. “With my dark lady’s aid, I have summoned them from all over Krynn. Every last one. Black, red, white, green – all the different dragons. They have been flying for days to come here, and they have almost arrived.”

Twenty lances – eighteen now. Eighteen against hundreds and hundreds of dragons. If only they had more lances …

“If you surrender now, there might still be a place for you. My mistress has been quite impressed with your ability to survive. If you would be willing to turn your talents to her, she would prove most – grateful.” The renegade smiled. “You’ve really seen only her warrior persona. She has other – talents – of equal wonder.”

Below him, the silver dragon gave an uncharacteristic hiss of fury, and Huma suddenly found himself closing in on the mage. Oddly, Dracos only laughed as the great leviathan leapt at him, jaws wide, claws foremost.

The jaws clamped harmlessly together.

“Illusion,” Huma muttered.

A mocking laugh seemed to hang in the air. The group hovered uncertainly, awaiting instructions from Huma. He continued to stare at the spot where the illusion of Galan Dracos had floated.

Unable to stand the waiting anymore, an unidentified knight behind Huma cried, “We’ve lost!”

“We have not lost until the last knight is dead, Derrick,” Bennett shouted at the man. He whispered to the gold dragon, who promptly moved him close enough so that he could speak to Huma without being overheard by the other riders. “What do we do now?”

Bennett asking him for guidance? If the whole situation had not been so tragic, Huma might have laughed. “Pull back. We must warn the Keep. With so few lances, we ought to circle Vingaard. Make the taking of it as costly a task as possible.”

“You’re giving up?”

“Not at all. For now, the defense of the Keep remains our best option.” Huma turned to the others. “Back to Vingaard!”

Huma tried to hide his own disappointment as they turned to flee the coming horde. The situation seemed hopeless.

Something bright glittered in his eyes then, and at first Huma thought it was the reflection of the sun. Only, he suddenly realized, there was no sun. What glittered in his eyes was a light with no visible source.

As Huma’s eyes focused on the tiny flickering light, it seemed to beckon. It was not exactly light, more a greenish glow. It reminded Huma of the glow emanating from the Sword of Tears.

The glow seemed to flutter earthward, and Huma hesitated. Huma drew the silver dragon’s attention to the glittering object.

“What do you make of it?”

“A messenger of some sort, but I suspect its maker wears black. Ignore it and a let us return before things worsen. I – I do not like it here.” She was acting strangely, Huma realized. She had been quiet and almost sullen since her attack on Dracos had failed. It had been Dracos’s comment on his mistress’s charms that had set her off, Huma realized. But why? Had the silver dragon been afraid that he would fall prey to such a false dream?

Huma took a deep breath – and shook his head. “Follow the light down.”

“Huma —”

“DO IT.” He had never spoken to her like that, but he did not think he could trust her reactions at this moment. The decision would be his.

“Huma!” Kaz called from ahead of them. Huma shook his head and pointed back toward the Keep, his face expressionless. The minotaur muttered something to Bolt, then turned to the others, to see what was happening. Kaz shouted something. Regardless, the massive easterner would wait with his dragon while the knight investigated whatever held his fascination.

With reluctance, the silver dragon began following the greenish glow downward. When they had reached the base of a particular hill, the greenish glow twinkled abruptly out of existence. The silver dragon landed, and Huma looked around expectantly.

“I come in peace, Knight of Solamnia.” The voice was low and grated on the ears. Its owner was the image of a short, wiry man with an oversized head and narrow, weasel-like features. Not a stitch of hair grew on his head.

He wore a black robe.

“A trick! I told you!” The silver dragon reared up, ready to defend Huma. The Black Robe cowered, though there was no fear in his eyes. Huma shouted until his companion quieted. He was becoming disturbed with her new restiveness.

“Hear me out,” grated the dark mage.

Huma stared sullenly at the Black Robe. “What do you have to say? I’ve already spoken with your master.”

The magic-user made a face. “There you touch on the point of this meeting. The renegade who has styled himself our master. That carrion!”

“You both serve the same mistress do you not?”

“Listen carefully, Knight of Solamnia, for I’ve no way of knowing when the cur will notice my absence. We need your agreement.”

“Mine?” Huma blinked. A Black Robe seeking aid from him?

“We know of you – through one who has worn many robes in his life and who even now wears another, in spirit if not in body.”

“Magius!” The knight leaped on the vague description. “Where?”

The spellcaster raised a hand to silence him. “No time for that. Listen. We know now that if the Dragonqueen is victorious, we will be no more to her than you are. Dracos has already become her mortal voice, and his world will seem one born from the Abyss itself. You have seen his abominations. Would you like to see them made permanent? We wish to join with you. Better to die fighting than to be forever at her mercy – and she will have a special place for both our orders, mark me.”

An offer of alliance … from a Black Robe? “How can I possibly believe you, one of her creatures?”

The mage straightened. “My first and foremost loyalty is to Nuitari, Dark Lord of Magic. We erred in believing we served him when we chose to serve – I will not call her his mother – let us say she who had given birth to him. Nuitari, though, cares for this world. That is why he, Lunitari, and —” The spellcaster hesitated at saying the name. “— even Solinari of the Light abandoned the struggle for Krynn and created the Orders of Sorcery as a separate entity, one that should work for the betterment of magic in the world. If Takhisis is victorious, Krynn will become little more than a cold rock among the stars. Our lord’s dream will perish. We cannot have that.”

“What do you want?”

“It is not so much what we want as what we can give.”

“Give?” The silver dragon, silent through much of this exchange, narrowed her eyes and laughed sarcastically. “A Black Robe gives nothing but misery and death.”

“An unjust falsehood. However, in this case, any misery and death we deal shall be aimed toward Dracos and his ragtag band – but we need an opening.”

“An opening? What do you mean?”

“I offer you this.” The mage held out a bony hand. In his palm rested a tiny green sphere. “Unless you can get close enough, you will never see the castle of Galan Dracos; it lies on the edge between our plane and the Abyss. With this, you will be able to locate it.”

The silver dragon scoffed. “Is there not the matter of your former mistress, the Dragonqueen? Is she to step idly aside while we charge the domain of her most trusted servant?”

The spellcaster indicated the Dragonlance. “I’m told that she has doubts about these. That she remains within the confines of the castle, near the path to the Abyss, because she fears the power of the Dragonlances.”

“Preposterous! Huma, I won’t let you …” The silver dragon turned as she spoke and froze at the look on his face. “Huma … you cannot believe this.”

The knight ignored her. “What will you do when we strike, assuming we do?”

“Within the castle, the remainder of the Black Guard and those renegades who willingly follow Dracos will be your greatest threat. We shall deal with them. If possible, we shall strive to turn away the dragons as well.”

“Madness!”

A shadow loomed above. All three looked up to see Kaz and Bolt hovering. The minotaur was shouting.

“Be quick! I see dragons scouting ahead.”

The mage quickly turned back to Huma. “By Nuitari, I swear that my name is Gunther and that you may trust me. Take it!”

The Black Robe had sworn by his lord. For the followers of Nuitari, the penalties for breaking oaths were ofttimes fatal. Huma reached down and accepted the small green sphere.

“We are with you.” The mage vanished abruptly. Huma kicked his mount gently. She spread her wings and began rising, relief evident on her features.

Kaz saw Huma’s closed fist and blinked. “What is it?”

Huma stared at the approaching sea of destruction and thought how simple the spell of darkness seemed now. He glanced down at the hand that held the small sphere. “A desperate hope, at best, I think.”

Chapter 27

“By the triumvirate! How much more can they possibly throw against us?”

Guy Avondale shook his head. “Evil always grows abundant when given the chance to take root. Melodramatic statement by my predecessor, but all too true.”

They stood in the courtyard where the dragons and their riders had landed. The loss of two of their elite number disturbed the Grand Master, as did news of yet another wave of evil rising toward them.

“What of this deal with the followers of Nuitari, Huma?” asked Bennett. “Can they be trusted, in your opinion?”

After deep thought, Huma finally answered. “I believe so.” He held up the tiny, emerald globe. It pulsated. “They gave this. Granted, it might be a means for them to draw us out so that we fall to them in the open field, but it was accompanied by an oath to the God of Dark Magic himself. No Black Robe with a desire to live will cross Nuitari.”

“I agree,” added the Grand Master. He sighed. “Well, we have quite a problem. We cannot possibly defend Vingaard for too long against a siege of this intensity. At the same time, it would be simple madness to go out and meet that horde.” He hesitated, then added, “I offered the dragons the chance to depart if they felt the cause was lost here.” Lord Oswal held up a hand to silence his anxious companions. “I had to ask. I believe, though, that they will stay with us until the end. We shall see. Where was I? Ah. We still do not know all about the east. The ogres are said to be stabilizing there. We can look for no help from the south – blast the elves! The north – water.”

“We have the fake Dragonlances,” interrupted Bennett. “Let us use them in one final assault. In the confusion of the foe, a few of them will buy time, if nothing else.”

Lord Oswal grunted and stared at the lances of the riders. “I think insanity rules the day, but unless there are other suggestions, we shall combine the epic charge my nephew so desperately craves with a coordinated search for and attack on the castle of Galan Dracos.” He looked around. No one, not even Lord Avondale, cleric and veteran soldier, could oppose the suicidal strategy.

Oswal shook his head. “If I am remembered at all, it will probably be as the Grand Master cursed for sending his men to the slaughter.”

A horn sounded.

“They’ve spotted the first wave,” someone said anxiously. Knights suddenly were moving all about. Horses were being readied and lined up. Row upon row of knights formed. Pikemen, lancers, bowmen, each and every type moved to assure that there was no disorder in this hour of peril.

“Break out the footmen’s lances!” shouted the Grand Master to one of his aides. The man saluted hastily and went to inform the squires, whose job it would be.

Huma wanted to order the remaining Dragonlancers into battle formation, but Lord Oswal prevented him. “No. If you hope to break through and make your way to the mountains, you’ll have to go when the dragons are engaged.”

“But the ground forces —”

“Will receive as much protection as they can get from the dragons. I —”

The horn sounded again, a different note this time.

“What in the name of Kiri-Jolith is that?” The Grand Master and the others hurried toward the front, where Lord Hawkeye was in direct command.

“Lord Hawkeye.” The ruling Knight of the Order of the Crown whirled.

“Grand Master, they’ve come to a halt, just in sight. Even the dragons have stopped. It’s as if they’re waiting for something. I’ve put everybody on standby.”

“Very good.” Huma held his breath until the Grand Master relaxed the evident strain on his face. “They are going to play with our minds. They want us to come charging out to meet them. The abysmal fools. We can’t be tricked into such an easy death!

“Let them sweat a little. Let them wait. When Galan Dracos or his mistress runs out of patience, then we will make our move.”

A gold dragon fluttered from a spire down to the courtyard. He was old, even for a dragon, for his hide was cracked and covered with ancient battle scars. There was no weakness in his form, though.

“I conveyed to the others your earlier offer.” The voice was deep and rumbling, a bit like the earth elemental that had served Magius.

The knights became silent.

Lord Oswal had hesitated, but now he asked, “And what was their response?”

The dragon gave him a look that could only be described as I-told-you-so. “We will not abandon you. Without Vingaard Keep, the outposts will not stand. This is the place of decision. Vingaard falls, then Ergoth falls, then the elfin lands and dwarven lands fall. The Queen rules all.”

“I only sought to keep the cause of Paladine alive if we failed here.”

“The cause for good will always live. Even Takhisis must know that.”

Despite the activity around them, it was as if all sound had ceased for the group. Huma understood that the dragons had committed themselves to a battle to the death. For the sake of their human allies. For the sake of their belief in the teachings of Paladine.

The Grand Master did something unprecedented then. He went down on one knee and paid homage, not to that particular dragon, but to all of its kind. With the way to freedom open, they were remaining.

“Thank you. I hoped – but one never knows.”

The gold dragon gave a majestic nod, spread his lengthy wings, and departed skyward. The Grand Master watched quietly, then turned at a new sound. Squires bearing the simulated Dragonlances for footmen rushed toward the assembled knights. Huma stared at the lances that were removed from the boxes. How they glowed! It was as if …

“Milord!” Huma surprised himself as he interrupted the Grand Master.

“Yes, Huma?”

“If you’ll excuse me, there are some things I must prepare.”

“Then go.”

“Kaz.” Huma pulled the minotaur aside. “Retrieve one of the lances the squires are passing out and compare it to one of the real Dragonlances.”

“What —” The minotaur got no further.

“I’ll explain when I return.” Huma rushed away, leaving the minotaur to puzzle over his comrade’s request.

The smithy itself was only a short distance away, just out of sight of the Grand Master and the others.

Even as Huma approached it, the massive wooden doors swung forward and Huma stepped back quickly, coming face-to-face with a stranger.

“It would be best to avoid standing near doors if you do not wish to injure yourself.” The newcomer had silver-black hair and a narrow, long head. His eyes seemed to burn for a moment, and Huma was reminded of the figure who had stared at Gwyneth the one night when they had walked the courtyard. She had been afraid of that man. This could not be the same person, though. This one was taller and thinner. But the eyes …

“You are Huma of the Lance,” the stranger decided. His eyes were piercing.

“I am Huma.” The knight was no bard’s hero that he should carry a title such as that.

“The master smith has been busy, but I think he can spare a bit of time for you.” The smile was odd, so alien that Huma shivered. What was he reminded of?

Voices carried from inside. Both were familiar, but one especially so.

“— Can you give me no advice?”

“— I have been away from the world of men much too long – and my time on Krynn is almost done. Best you should seek one of your own.”

“— None of them understand! How am I to tell him that I am not what he thinks I am? That I have flown with him nearly every day without him realizing it? Do you think he could love me if he knew I – we —”

There was little light, save around the forge, and that only served to silhouette the two figures standing there.

“Gwyneth?”

The one figure, female, turned at his voice, uttered a gasp, and fled through the rear doorway. Huma made to follow, but the remaining figure blocked his way and greeted him heartily.

“Huma! How good it is to see you one last time!” Duncan Ironweaver lifted him high, shook him like a babe, and set him down again. Huma glanced behind the towering smith, but there was no sign of where Gwyneth had gone.

“You actually thought I’d leave you with only twenty lances? Lad, you surprise me!”

“Then they are real! It isn’t my imagination!”

“Not hardly! I had many, many more than twenty, but not situated near. Besides, you would never have been able to bring them all back. Too many of her spies about. Besides,” he smiled, “I needed the trip.”

“And the smithy …”

Duncan Ironweaver indicated the work area. “They were in need of a master armorer and weaponry expert. I bent the truth a little and said you had summoned me from the south – which, in a sense, you did. They were understandably impressed with my work and let me take over. Soon it was just me and my assistants.”

“It’s – it’s incredible!” All this time, real Dragonlances were being created in the smithy.

The huge smith tapped his chest. “You’ve proved to them that the Dragonlances work, Huma. I don’t think even your illustrious Grand Master realizes just how many of those men believe in the lances.”

Huma’s mind began to spin. “Saddles! We’ll need more saddles.”

“Khildith!”

For the first time, Huma noticed the smith’s assistants. An elf, a human, and the dwarf who was evidently Khildith, as it was he who stepped forward.

“Master Ironweaver?”

“Are the saddles ready?”

The dwarf broke into a grin much like the smith’s. The dwarf was well-whiskered and, though he appeared quite ancient, moved with the speed and grace of one in his prime. “More than enough to go around.”

“Fine, fine.” Duncan Ironweaver walked over to Huma and put a hand on his shoulder. The knight felt himself politely but forcibly being steered away.

“Master Ironweaver. One question. Gwyneth —”

“That’s between you and her.” The change in expression on the smith’s face was enough to quiet Huma. “Remember, you have the lances now. Make use of them.”

Huma was out the door before he could say goodbye. The one-armed smith flexed his mechanical limb. “Paladine be with you, lad. Even the lances cannot help you if you truly lose faith.”

The horn sounded a new warning. Huma bolted. All other questions receded in the face of battle. The Dragonlances were real!

Kaz met him, carrying a footman’s lance in each hand. “Is this some trick, Huma? I’d swear —”

“They’re real! They’re all real! Where’s Lord Oswal?”

The minotaur used one of the lances as a pointer. “On the wall. He insisted on seeing it for himself.”

Huma turned and caught sight of Bennett organizing the riders. Huma hailed him. Bennett barked out one last order and then joined him.

“What is it?” Every muscle in the face of the Grand Master’s nephew was alive. Bennett was in his element and unconsciously reveling in it.

“The Dragonlances – they’re all real!”

The other knight looked at him quizzically. “Of course they’re real.”

Huma hesitated. Bennett had never been told the original plan. No one at that time had known that Duncan Ironweaver was going to appear.

Bennett waited silently until Huma at last let the tale come tumbling out. The Knight of the Sword’s visage slowly froze into an unreadable mask. When Huma finally finished, the two stared at one another.

The predatory eyes of Bennett flickered to where the rank and file of the knighthood had gathered to await commands. His eyes quickly returned to Huma. “Was there anything else? I have much more to do.”

The flat, toneless words shocked Huma. He had expected anger and surprise, but nothing? “Bennett —”

His sentence was cut off by an unblinking look from the other. Bennett indicated the knights around them. “Does what you say make any real difference, Huma? Whether the Dragonlances existed or not, these men would still be readying for battle – despite the probable outcome. I would be first among them, as I think you would be, too. Any damage we create, any strength we cost them, even in defeat, is a victory of sorts.” He took a breath and some of the fanaticism faded from his eyes. “It does please me to have it reaffirmed that we will not go naked into the maw, but that is all. Tell them that the Dragonlances are of no use; they will still march out and give the enemy their all. Would you yourself act any different?”

The faith Bennett had always displayed in the past took on new meaning to Huma now. He knew that the other knight was correct in his assumptions, especially where Huma himself was concerned. No matter how terrible the odds, one of the first knights at the forefront would have been Huma.

“Now, if you will excuse me, there is much that still needs to be done. You should find my uncle up there.” Bennett indicated a portion of the front wall to their right. “I think he’ll be happy to hear your news.”

Bennett walked off, shouting orders as he went and acting as if the conversation had never happened. Huma stirred and hurried off toward the walls.

At the top of the wall, the Grand Master was standing on an observation ledge.

Lord Oswal heard him approach and glanced his way. When he saw it was Huma, he said, “There’s movement over here. Something is forming in the sky.”

It was only a small blot in an overcast sky, far beyond the oncoming army, but once sighted, it held the viewer’s attention as nothing else in the heavens could. Huma felt as if a part of him were being wrenched toward that blot, as if his soul itself was being drawn to it. He caught his breath and tore his eyes away.

“What is it?”

The Grand Master shook his head. “I don’t know, but it drives the dragons and ogres toward us, I think.”

Huma recalled his reason for coming here and quickly informed Oswal of what he had discovered.

The elder knight acted even before Huma had finished. To his aides he shouted, “Alert all commanders! The dragons! Someone must alert the dragons! Have the ranks ready themselves!”

Turning back toward the oncoming horde, Lord Oswal shook his head. Even as they watched, the dragons of darkness were beginning to pull ahead of the ground forces. They would be here much too soon.

“Milord,” Huma said urgently, “let me take the original riders. We will delay the enemy while the others prepare. Send them up in groups of twenty, but have them wait above the Keep until their numbers are great. Then send them out, followed by the footmen. If we gain control of the air, the ground will also be ours.”

“You’ll be dead!”

The younger knight hesitated – only for a second. “Then I will have given my life over to Paladine, as any knight should do.”

Oswal nodded wearily. Huma hurried back down, wondering just how long it would take to gather the others. To his surprise, however, he found them all waiting, riders seated and lances at the ready. In the short time they had been together, the group had become one entity. The silver dragon was there, too, waiting for Huma’s orders.

In the deadly calm that can occur before battle, Huma stood before his assembled band and explained the danger of their mission and the likely outcome. He expected opposition, voices of dry logic that would tear down his plan. Instead, he was stunned to discover that they believed in what he proposed, though their lives might be forfeit. Bennett nodded in approval and even some of the dragons indicated their agreement. Oddly, only his own mount gave no response. She appeared withdrawn, though she also made no protest when he climbed onto her back. When he gave the signal to depart, she obeyed with speed and coordination, if not enthusiasm.

Once in the air, Kaz and Bolt edged closer. “We shall make them remember us well, before we perish. Mark me on that, Huma.”

“We must seek out Dracos,” Huma replied. “He is the key to everything.”

“He and his dark mistress.”

Huma nodded.

When they were high up, Lord Avondale, who was peering to the southwest, suddenly pointed. “Look there!” he shouted. “Do you see anything?”

Bolt was the first to reply. “It is another army. The enemy grow even stronger!”

Avondale laughed at that. “It is we,” he shouted, “who grow even stronger!”

It was the northern Ergothian army. Knowing that only defeat and slavery awaited them if the knighthood fell, they were risking all in the hope of making a lightning strike at the foe from the rear. That they had not been noticed thus far by the servants of Takhisis was good fortune, indeed.

“How long before the others will be aloft?” shouted Avondale.

“Not long.” It was Bennett who shouted the response, for which Huma was grateful. He would not have wanted to guarantee anything at this point.

Even as they spoke, the group was moving closer to intercept the first of the dragon scouts. They kept in tight formation, knowing too well that individually they would be cut down.

It seemed that the dark dragons realized their intentions, for some moved accordingly. Others, however, were obviously of different opinions as to what the knights were capable of and broke away from the rest, speeding toward their enemies. Huma could not help smiling briefly. As the evil dragons bared teeth and claw and challenged the newcomers, he realized that they did not believe in the strength of the Dragonlances.

All but a few of the attackers perished in minutes; most of them skewered themselves on the lances of Huma and his companions. Two more died before Huma signaled for his band to allow the survivors to escape. They would bring their terror to the other dragons who had waited.

Huma glanced briefly at his comrades. Kaz was flushed and full of life; Bolt could barely restrain himself from chasing the survivors. Lord Avondale stared toward his army. Buoron was quiet and almost expressionless. His arm had healed, and he was keeping the Dragonlance as steady as he could.

Scores of manned dragons came to meet them. Red, black, green, and blue. White dragons also charged, but they were without riders and Huma suspected they were to be fodder, for they worked more by animal cunning than intelligence, and this environment was not suited for them at all. Though smaller than the other dragons, they could be deadly, and their presence would buy an advantage for the Dragonqueen.

Below, the course of the two armies had altered. The Ergothians were forming a long, wide line, and the southern portion of the ogre forces was turning to meet this new threat. The northern half, having yet to learn of the attack, began to pull away, leaving the middle to scatter about as warriors sought proper orders. Confusion seemed to be spreading.

Now! Huma shrieked in his head. We should be attacking now! Of course, the knights in the Keep could not see the Ergothian army. But they most certainly saw the splintering of the ogres and realized that something to their benefit was occurring. How long before they reacted?

Then, the tiny group of lancers met the first of the seemingly endless waves of foes and there was no time to think of anything but survival.

At first, dragons seemed to appear and disappear each time Huma blinked. There were screams all about him. It became as black as the Abyss and as bright as the sun, for the dragons unleashed their various magics, and riders, some of whom were clerics or sorcerers, added their own powers to the battle.

As the silver dragon dodged a blow from an attacker, Huma saw one of the lancers and his mount fall prey to a band of at least six dragons. Rider and mount vanished beneath the terrible power of the creatures, and it was all Huma could do not to scream at the brave deaths. In the chaos, he could not identify who had perished.

They were becoming separated. Kaz and Bolt still remained with Huma and the silver dragon. At one point, the knight heard the powerful voice of Guy Avondale as he shouted something.

A fearsome black bearing one of the Black Guard came diving from above. Huma shouted at the silver dragon, but she was hopelessly engaged with a red dragon who was pushing the Dragonlance deeper and deeper into his own shoulder, too furious to even realize it. The knight pulled out his sword, useless against such a dragon, and prepared himself for the impact.

Suddenly there was a silver streak, and a sleek dragon intercepted the black. There was a rider on the silver dragon’s back, and Huma realized it was Buoron. The other knight already had been struck more than once; blood stained his armor and his mount.

Pain! Huma fell back as something sent Shockwaves through his left leg. He stared down at blood flowing from a deep wound. The leg twitched and the Shockwaves continued to assault his mind. Through tear-covered eyes, he caught sight of an ogre straddling a dragon. With strength beyond that of a human, the ogre had attacked with an ax and his blow had been lucky.

Huma deflected another blow from the ogre, but felt himself unable to concentrate. The pain demanded too much.

To his relief, the silver dragon was at last able to push away her own adversary. The red, weakened by the loss of so much blood from so many wounds, fluttered helplessly toward the ground, taking his hapless rider with him.

“Huma!”

It took him a few moments to realize the silver dragon was calling to him. She looked at him with eyes filled with terrible fear – and not for herself. He had seen eyes like that before, but —

His thoughts were interrupted by a renewal of cries from all around. His first thought was that this was the end, that more dragons were coming to join the ones already attacking the small band.

He was wrong. The dragons he saw as he looked up and around were gold, silver – all the bright metallic colors of the dragons of Paladine. There were more than one hundred, and each had a rider and a knight, armed with a lance that gleamed brightly and aimed true. Dragonlances.

There was mass confusion among the dark dragons. If they had been told anything, they had been told that there were but a handful of Dragonlances. The nearest of the dragons perished without raising claws in defense, so disbelieving were they.

Huma put a hand to his brow and came away with blood – his own. He wondered when that had happened and how.

Thinking of injuries, he again looked down at his leg. The blood was flowing freely still, and he knew he would pass out soon if he didn’t do something to stop it. The silver dragon began to pull away from the fighting.

More and more dragons were coming from the Keep. How many Dragonlances had the smith made?

The silver dragon flew as if pursued by the Dark Queen herself. She would glance back in his direction every now and then, that same fearful look in her eyes. He frowned and clamped his hands against the leg wound in order to stanch the flow.

At last, they flew over the Keep walls, narrowly avoiding another set of lancers rising, and she brought him to where other survivors of his band were being treated.

“Take him from me!” The dragon’s voice was so commanding, so harsh, that no one dallied. Huma lost sight of her and the world as a whole.

When he awoke, Gwyneth was over him, cleaning the wound, touching it with her hands in a way that deadened the pain. He could almost feel power flowing from her fingertips. Her face was pale and covered partially by her hair as she leaned over the leg.

Huma’s eyes wandered. They were on a hill, away from the fighting, but not so far that they could no longer hear the sounds of battle. Avondale was there, his left side a bloody mess. Kaz was nowhere to be seen. Of the original band, only nine remained. Bennett, uninjured but looking as if he and his armor had been dragged across the plains, was staring at Gwyneth with an emotion somewhere between revulsion and fascination. His eyes briefly met Huma’s, then turned swiftly away.

“Buoron is dead, Huma,” Oswal’s nephew finally said, his gaze still on Gwyneth. “The last I saw, he and his dragon took on that black one to save you. They perished.”

This last shook not only Huma, but Gwyneth as well. She removed her hands from the wound and cried in them. Huma reached out and touched her arm.

“It’s not Buoron she weeps for —” Bennett was having trouble finding the right words.

“Let it be, Bennett.” Guy Avondale tried to rise.

“Huma!” Bolt flew into sight, with Kaz waving his battle ax in greeting. Both dragon and minotaur were covered with scratches and minor wounds, but neither seemed to be weakened by them. Huma glanced at them only momentarily, then his eyes returned to Gwyneth. She looked away. He continued to stare at her, even when he finally responded to Bennett’s statement.

“What do you mean, Bennett? What are you trying to say?”

The hawklike features of Bennett swerved toward the Ergothian cleric/commander. “Everyone else saw it. Why hide it? If she cannot tell him, someone surely will. He needs to know. I know how he feels about her.”

“It is between them!” Avondale was furious.

“Stop it.”

The words were from Gwyneth. She rose, all the while staring at Huma. Her arms hung limply by her side.

Avondale slumped back suddenly. He glanced at Bennett and Kaz. “You two, help me up. A chill is coming over me. I need to move somewhere less open.”

Reluctantly, Kaz and Bennett helped him rise, and the three moved off.

Gwyneth finally spoke. “I weep for Buoron. I weep for any who fall fighting the Dragonqueen.”

“As have I.”

She tried to smile. “I weep especially for the dragon Buoron rode, the large silver one.”

Brother to his own, Huma recalled. Why would Gwyneth cry so for this one dragon?

She stared moodily around. The area had been emptied. As Huma looked puzzled, her features softened. “Before I tell you this, know that I love you, Huma. I would never do anything to harm you.”

“I love you too.” The words seemed to flow so easily all of a sudden.

“I think you may change your mind,” she said enigmatically.

Huma did not have time to ask what she meant, for Gwyneth was suddenly aglow – almost like the Dragonlances. As he watched in horrid fascination, her face elongated and her nose and mouth grew into a toothy snout. Huma thought of witchery and rose to help her, but his leg was not well yet and the head wound had not been salved. He slumped to the ground.

Her long, slim arms grew even longer – and more muscular. The small hands twisted and turned, becoming terrible claws. She fell onto all fours and seemed to grow and grow and grow. Something wiggled and moved on her back. She was no longer remotely human, and what she did resemble caused the knight to shake his head again and again and again.

Her garments vanished – to Paladine knows where – but she had no more need of them in her present form. The odd wiggling and moving on her backside came from two great humps that burst open, revealing batlike wings. They spread wide, and in moments the transformation was complete. The thing that had been Gwyneth stepped forward, tall, straight – and frightened.

It was a dragon – a silver dragon.

His own.

Chapter 28

The silver dragon’s eyes were downcast. “Huma, in Paladine’s name, please say something!”

The voice was unmistakably Gwyneth’s. He looked up into that reptilian face and saw the fear in it – fear that he would reject her. Huma could not say what was truly going through his own mind. Everything seemed to be tumbling down around him. This could not be Gwyneth. Could it?

“You saw my brother that night – as you saw the other who served Duncan Ironweaver – dragons both, but in human form. We admire you so, Huma, you and your kind. In your short lives, you accomplish so much.”

Huma said nothing. Involuntarily, he pulled himself slightly farther from her. It was not out of fear, but out of confusion.

She did not interpret it that way, and her words spilled out faster. Even as she spoke, her form reverted. The wings shriveled. Her four limbs smoothed and twisted until they were once more human and she was able to stand. Her body shrank rapidly, as if the huge form were melting before his horrified eyes. The face grew smaller and rounder and the great maw of the dragon dwindled down to the full, perfect lips. Hair of shimmering silver came sprouting from the dragon’s head, cascading down the back. Huma nearly fled. The metamorphosis he had witnessed could not be real.

“My brother told me what I did not see at first, that I had fallen prey to what has happened to only a few others in the past. I had lived among you for so long that I had come to love as you do.”

“Why?”

She frowned, unsure exactly what he was asking, and then replied, “You embody the very beliefs of Paladine. You are brave, kind, never hateful. I came to love you for you, nothing else.”

“Ah, the happy lovers.”

The cold, triumphant voice woke Huma from his stupor. It could not be, not here …

Galan Dracos, looking much as he had earlier, materialized before the knight and the dragon maiden and smiled. “I would have made my presence known sooner, but I did not care to interrupt such a beautiful scene.”

Gwyneth gave a cry that no human could have been capable of and would have struck him, but Huma was already moving and barred her way. The knight succeeded in taking only a few steps before his leg gave out and he fell to the ground. Only then did he remember that the figure before him was an illusion. He silently cursed his own stupidity.

The renegade laughed. “I’ve come to add to your miseries, Huma. I’ve come to repay you for the loss of Crynus. I must admit, his insanity grew unpredictable in the end. But he was my best commander and I shall miss him. Pity.”

Kaz and Bennett, alerted by the voice of one they knew all too well, came racing around the corner. The illusory Dracos raised a hand and they halted, as if striking a wall.

“An eye for an eye, you pathetic mortal.” Dracos raised his hands, and something began to materialize before them. It was not until it was nearly fully formed that Huma recognized it.

“Magius!”

They had tortured him. His face was a bloody pulp, and one eye was swollen shut. His robes were in tatters, and Huma was surprised to see that they were white, not red. One arm was bent at an impossible angle, and neither leg seemed in the least functional. Magius forced himself up with his good arm.

“Hu – Huma.” Several of his teeth were missing. “I was right – in the end.”

Dracos smiled indulgently. “He babbles like that occasionally.”

With great effort, Magius turned around and spat on the garments of the renegade. Galan Dracos became furious and stretched an open palm toward his captive. Magius screamed as his body rippled from the renegade’s torture.

Gwyneth moved forward. “Test your spells against me, Galan Dracos.”

The phantasm smiled nastily. “I have more power than you could believe, but I do not choose to use it now. I have merely come to show Huma the foolishness of his dreams of victory.”

Huma rolled forward, desperately trying to reach his tortured friend.

Magius shook his battered head. “Don’t, Huma. There’s no reason anymore. Defeat Dracos. That’s all I ask.”

Dracos raised both hands toward Magius. “Your time is up, my friend.”

With a gesture, the renegade sent shafts of green light at his captive. The shafts seemed to pass through Magius, and he screamed as if each were a steel lance. He wavered just a moment, then toppled forward to lie in a heap, very real, at Huma’s feet. His death was no illusion. Huma shouted and struggled to move. The others stepped forward, but Dracos was already fading out of existence.

“The price of defiance, Knight of Solamnia. The price you all will be paying before long unless you embrace my mistress.”

“No, renegade,” the knight said, raising himself high. “If anyone pays a price, it will be you.”

He could not tell if Dracos heard him, for the last was said to empty air.

Bennett and Kaz stumbled forward. The minotaur was the first to speak. “Huma! Are you all right?”

Without answering, Huma looked intensely at the crumpled form of Magius.

“If you seek vengeance, Huma, I will gladly stand at your side.” Kaz had never cared for the magic-user, but he had, in the end, gained respect for him.

Huma shook his head. “Vengeance is not the way.” He raised an arm. “Help me over to him.”

They did. It was odd, but now Magius looked at peace. He certainly had never looked this calm in life.

Putting the mage’s head down softly, Huma gritted his teeth and rose by his own power. Bennett and Kaz waited to assist him, but he waved them off. When he finally stood, Huma turned to face the three.

“I need your help – all three of you. It is time that the balance be restored. It is time that Galan Dracos and his dark lady learn that where there is evil, there must also be a balance with good. Magius was living proof of that. In his time, he wore the robes of all three Orders, ending with the white of Solinari. From evil to good, the pendulum swings both ways. It is time it swung to our side.”

“You intend to seek out the castle?” asked Bennett.

“I do. I ask your help and that of any surviving from our band. If you hesitate, I will understand, for it is surely suicide.”

Kaz seemed ready to burst with indignation. “If you expect me to turn from any battle, especially this one, you know nothing of my people. I may not be a Knight of Solamnia —” he ignored the sharp look from Bennett “— but I know when I must fight. I will join you.”

Bennett nodded. “I will come. I am sure those who can still ride will say the same.”

“Give me a few minutes alone, then. Bennett, please tell the Grand Master what has occurred here. I would like him to give Magius a proper funeral no matter what occurs.”

“As you wish.”

Both the minotaur and the knight departed. Huma stared at the body of Magius, remembering simpler times. He was interrupted by a female voice.

“What of me, Huma? We were interrupted by this tragedy. I do not ask for a response to my feelings; I do not even hope that you can return my love. I will say this: In the matter of Galan Dracos and Krynn, I am still your partner. When you fly into the maw of the Dragonqueen, it will be I who will carry you.” She waited for a response. Huma could say nothing. “I will be waiting, ready when you are.”

He heard footsteps then. They faded until he could hear nothing more. Huma did not move from the spot until clerics from the temple came to carry Magius to a place where his body could rest.

Huma limped toward the group. All of the original members who could still ride were ready. There were eight men in all, and eight dragon steeds. Lord Avondale could not accompany them because of his wounds, but he was there to see them go.

Huma spoke first to Avondale. “Any word on your men?”

“Bogged down, but still very much alive. Your Grand Master has released the ground forces. They are advancing. The ogres have ground to a halt.”

Huma nodded numbly. He heard only part of what the Ergothian was saying. The renegade’s killing of Magius had been a desperate act, an attempt to break Huma’s spirit. Indeed, he felt broken and confused as he entered into this, his important and shining hour.

“Wish us luck, cleric.”

“I’ll do better than that.” Avondale reached up to his own neck and tugged on a chain. As he pulled it over his head, a medallion, buried under his armor and clothing, came into view. “Lean forward.”

Huma did. Avondale placed the medallion around his neck. “You are more deserving of this than I.”

The knight took the medallion in one hand and gazed at it. A representation of Paladine stared back at him. The medallion seemed comfortably warm in his hand. “My – gratitude.”

“Do not thank me. Find Dracos!”

Huma nodded and rose. The others were all mounted. Huma walked over to the silver dragon. He started to say something to her, thought better of it, and mounted. Someone handed him his lance. He noted that the footman’s lance was again strapped onto the silver dragon.

On his signal, they rose into the air, determined to make their way past the enemy and seek out the stronghold of the mage. Huma held up the small, greenish sphere and concentrated. He willed it to lead them to the citadel.

The sphere glowed brightly, rose from his hand, and began to fly toward the mountains in the west.

The eight pairs followed.

The battle was turning into a slaughter. The dragons, spurred by their fear of their mistress, charged again and again at the lancers. They were repulsed each time with heavy losses.

More than a fifth of the lancers and their mounts had perished in the meantime, overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The ground forces also had suffered, especially at first. Once they learned of the effectiveness of their lances, however, casualties dwindled. Soon, no dragon dared come near. Their magic and breath weapons still rained chaos on the knights, but there was a limit to those powers, and many of the Dark Queen’s children became easy prey for flying lancers, so greatly had they exhausted themselves.

Despite their intentions, Huma and his band could not avoid the battle completely; it was too widespread by now. More than once, they swooped down to help a remnant that was in danger of being overrun. The children of Takhisis were in no way defeated, though. They had formed into groups and were charging whatever point seemed weakest. Already, many had broken through and were heading toward the Keep. They would be in for a surprise, Huma knew. The Grand Master was no novice. More than fifty knights and dragons were ready to fly at a moment’s notice.

Below them, the ogres and their allies were a mass of confusion. They were now being forced to fight a war on two fronts, for the Ergothians had found good ground and were harrying the southern flank with great success.

The sky suddenly became dark all around them, and Huma and his companions were filled with a sense of terrible, oncoming evil.

Lightning bolts moved with terrifying accuracy, striking dragons and riders and leaving few remains. The advancing Dragonlancers faltered, were pushed back. The children of the Dark Queen began to fight with new energy.

Huma slammed a fist against the lance shield. How did one fight a storm? No mage had created this. He put a hand over his eyes. If he had a physical target, then he might be able to do something, but what could even the Dragonlance do against the elements?

His question was answered even as he entered the heart of the storm. The presence of evil was so great that Huma could almost picture the Dragonqueen before him, hurling the rain and lightning toward him. A flash of lightning struck close behind him, and Huma heard a scream. By now, he could not tell whether it was rain or tears that dripped down his face.

The Dragonlance suddenly burst into such brilliance that he was forced to close his eyes momentarily. From the shouts around him, he gathered that the same thing was occurring to his companions. When his eyes had recovered, Huma dared open them – and continued opening them until they were wide with disbelief.

The storm clouds were dispersing. Rapidly. To his shock, Huma found the sun shining bright upon his armor. Was that right? By all calculations, it would be late day. The sun should be setting, yet here it was, high in the sky.

No one on either side needed a more dramatic sign of which way the battle was going. The dragons of darkness lost their momentum, backtracked, and began to retreat from the fight in ones and twos. Even the powerful fear of their mistress was not sufficient to deter them. Paladine was proving to be the greater of gods.

The ogres, though, fought with near-berserk fury. The dragons might flee to fight another day, but not the ogres and their human allies. There was nowhere they could hide that the knights could not hunt them down. For them, it was victory or nothing.

Kaz and Bennett rode to each side and a little back of Huma. Huma fingered the medallion given to him by Lord Avondale. The warmth remained strong and, on impulse he leaned forward and touched it to the Dragonlance.

A surge of strength channeled through him.

The mountains were directly ahead. Somehow, the green sphere had stayed with them all that time, unaffected by the storm or the Dragonqueen’s fury. Huma became alert for any sign of a castle. There was no telling how near they might be, and the castle certainly would not be undefended.

Suddenly, a burst of energy shot from one of the smaller peaks to the southwest. Huma turned to face it, hoping the lance would break its power, when the burst was met by another. The two canceled one another out. Huma’s gaze shot to the source of the second burst. Even as he watched, the groups on the two peaks began to battle in earnest. After a few seconds of watching, Huma understood. He smiled grimly and turned to Kaz.

“The Black Robes are making their move! They’ve turned on Galan Dracos and his band!” He repeated the message to Bennett, who passed it on to the stalwarts behind them.

A dozen red dragons, each bearing a rider, rose suddenly from within the mountains. The riders were all clad in black and – to the horror of Huma and his companions – each had a Dragonlance.

They had, no doubt, lifted them from the dead. He should have recognized the danger, Huma decided. A lance was just as deadly no matter whose hand controlled its path.

They outnumbered Huma’s band two-to-one.

Bennett and the others came up alongside Huma. The apparent commander of the guardsmen, cloaked and wearing a visored helmet topped with two wicked horns, signaled to the others. In alternating order, the red dragons rose or fell, creating two levels. Their strategy was immediately apparent. Whatever group Huma’s men chose to attack, they would be left open to a second attack from the others.

When the red dragons neared, Huma lifted both arms wide and then brought his hands together as if he were clapping.

The knights split into two groups, one to the left, one to the right.

The maneuver spread confusion through their opponents. The evil dragons hesitated, then their order began to crumble as each moved to protect its own flank from the deadly lances. Clustered together as they were, this proved more detrimental. Two red dragons collided with one another. Huma skewered one hapless creature. The others moved in. Speed was of the essence in this strike.

The knights wasted no time or opportunity. Ducking a blast of flame from one ferocious red, the silver dragon brought Huma and the lance directly toward its underbelly. The Dragonlance sank in without resistance, and the red dragon quivered. The rider, realizing his lance was useless at this angle, frantically pulled at a bow on his back. He did not have time. His dragon convulsed and, to Huma’s surprise, burst into flames, turning both man and leviathan into ash.

Huma had a brief glimpse of the commanding guardsman as the ebony-armored figure caught an unsuspecting gold dragon in the neck with one of the plundered lances. The dragon shook violently, pulling himself free from the Dragonlance. The wound was deep. The gold dragon thrashed around, throwing his rider free. The wound seemed to erupt. There was nothing Huma could do for the helpless rider, for now the guardsman was turning his dragon toward him.

The blood of the gold dragon dripped from the point of the lance, and Huma briefly noted that the weapon was stained, something that had never occurred before. Then both dragons were roaring, claws bared and jaws wide open in a terrifying display.

Silver dragon met red dragon. Both lances were in perfect position to strike, and Huma saw no way to prevent the death of Gwyneth – as he was finally able to think of her. As the lances thrust forward, he uttered a single-word prayer to Paladine.

The point of the stolen Dragonlance touched the right side of the silver dragon’s unprotected chest – then slid off the side and shot past her, puncturing the lower membrane of her wing.

Huma’s lance continued through, piercing so deeply that it came out the back of the red dragon. Because of that, Gwyneth was forced to grapple with the dying creature so that they could free themselves. Her damaged wing made the task all the more difficult.

The black-suited rider was no stranger to opportunity, and he unstrapped himself from the dying red dragon and crawled quickly forward. The silver dragon, busy with her counterpart, did not notice him until he had jumped onto her and behind Huma. By then, there was nothing she could do that would not imperil Huma.

The attacker gripped her shoulder tightly and reached back to a sheath behind him. The sword he pulled from there was a massive, wicked weapon with tiny barbs all along the edges.

Huma’s own blade seemed woefully inadequate, but, lacking anything else, he turned and met the guardsman head on. The two weapons struck together, and the knight’s was almost pulled from his grip as it caught on the barbs.

With a tremendous effort, the silver dragon at last freed herself from the massive corpse. Even as it spiraled toward the ground, she sought a way to buck the ebony-armored attacker without losing Huma as well.

Meanwhile, neither fighter had gained any advantage. Secure in the saddle, Huma was on a more stable base, but he could not turn easily. The guardsman, straddling the lower half of the dragon, was forced to stay his ground or risk losing his grip. He had no way to secure himself.

The knight tugged violently at the bonds securing him to his saddle and crawled forward to give himself some breathing room while he turned around. The other chopped with his jagged blade, but missed. Huma, now facing his opponent, reached across the saddle and struck a blow at the guardsman’s side. His adversary parried the attack and caught Huma’s blade in the barbs. They struggled, each attempting to wrest the other’s sword away.

This new struggle proved to be a fatal error for the guardsman. Huma’s position allowed him to use both hands; the other could not. The dark knight reached up with his other hand in order to save his grip on his sword – and lost his balance, slipping from the silver dragon’s back. He tried making a grab for her wings, but they moved out of reach, and the Black Guard commander could only clutch wildly at the air before plummeting out of sight, screaming.

Huma looked upward. Kaz and Bolt were looking down at the scene with mutual expressions of triumph.

Surprisingly, the Dragonlancers had lost only the one man in the battle. Huma gave thanks that no more than that had perished, but wondered what else lay ahead.

Then, the air began to shimmer all about them and Huma, strapping himself back in the saddle, thought for a moment that they were again under attack. The shimmering was disorienting, and a great chill accompanied it. The entire mountain range looked distorted, as if they were flying in several directions at once. There was nothing Huma could do but hold on tight and pray that it would end soon.

Perhaps Paladine had heard him or perhaps they had finally reached the other side of whatever spell Dracos had cast, for the strange disturbance suddenly ceased and when Huma opened his eyes again, the mountains were as they had been.

Save for one additional feature – a tall, massive black castle perched on the side of a jagged peak.

The citadel of Galan Dracos, renegade and servant of Takhisis, the Dragonqueen.

The place of final victory – or everlasting defeat.

Chapter 29

The castle stood like a neglected sore upon the northernmost side of the ravaged peak. Blacker than the night, blacker than the ebony armor of the guardsmen, it could only truly be compared to the Abyss of Huma’s dreams, so foul was it. Huma wondered if perhaps he should have waited until he could have gathered more lancers. Yet there was no turning back. The Dragonqueen had to be confronted.

“What now, Huma?” The silver dragon looked up at him. There was death in her eyes – not for him, but rather for herself. He could see that she had given up all hope of becoming his. The knight wanted to say something, anything, but he could not. Not to that reptilian visage, so alien. He felt ashamed.

“We find a way in. We find Galan Dracos.”

Seen closely, the castle was even more obscene. It looked to be rotting before their very eyes. Small chunks of mortar fell from time to time, but no substance seemed to be lost. Withered vines wrapped around its outer walls and, even while Huma pondered how vines such as these could exist at so cold a level, he noted that they appeared to have been dying for some time.

Gruesome gargoyles stood watch on the battlements. Close examination proved them to be not demonic creatures, but the works of some mad sculptor.

Two towers rose above all else in this edifice. One appeared to be a watchtower, for it had been placed on the far edge, away from the mountain, giving those at the top a fantastic view of both the mountain range and the lands to the east.

The other tower seemed completely out of place. It was broad, taking up nearly a quarter of the inner grounds. Where the rest of the castle seemed decrepit with age, the tower seemed new and nearly spotless. Huma had no doubt that this was where to find the renegade.

“There are no defenders!” Bennett shouted.

Not one sentry walked the walls. There was no one in the watch tower, nor were there any guardsmen in the courtyard. The entire structure looked as if it were abandoned, though Huma knew Galan Dracos awaited them.

Huma turned to the others. “Disperse! I’m going in alone.”

Below him, the silver dragon quivered but kept her eyes straight ahead. Kaz was not so silent.

“Disperse? Are you mad? Do you think we’d leave you?”

“Dracos wants me. That shall be the way it is.”

Bennett had his dragon shift closer. “I will not permit you to do this.”

“It is madness, indeed, Huma,” remarked the gold dragon serving Bennett.

With a suddenness that made Huma grab for the pommel of the saddle, the silver dragon swooped down toward the castle, leaving the others open-mouthed. She had taken the decision out of their hands. They might follow, but they would not be able to catch up.

The courtyard lay directly below. Huma wondered at the size of the castle. Galan Dracos could not be so powerful as to keep his citadel perpetually standing on the side of a peak and hidden from the sight of men and still have the strength for all he had done.

He was still pondering when something of tremendous power struck him and Gwyneth. What seemed to be a giant hand plucked him from the saddle.

The world vanished.

He awoke in a narrow hall. Only one torch lit a dim corridor. The walls were cold stone, and the place had a dank smell. It nauseated Huma.

Why was he here? If it was a trap created and sprung by Dracos, why was the knight not locked in a dungeon cell, his weapons and armor stripped?

Weapons. He reached down by his side and felt the hilt of his sword. After a quick inspection, he determined that he still had his knives as well. What sort of trick was this?

The clank of metal alerted him to the presence of armored figures just down a side corridor. Huma drew his sword carefully. He did not trust these corridors enough to go racing down them blindly. They reminded him too much of the cavern tunnels in which he had been hounded by Wyrmfather.

Sword raised, he stood on the right side of the corridor intersection and held his breath. By his reckoning, there were at least two. He could hope to get the first one and possibly the second, but not three without a general alarm being raised.

A dark boot came into sight. The familiar ebony armor swerved to the left. A second guardsman followed the first. Huma held his breath.

A gauntleted hand shot toward the long, wicked blade Huma had seen earlier in the hands of the dragonrider commander. The first guardsman turned around at the noise and went for his. Though the second had noticed Huma, he was unable to draw his sword quickly enough. Huma ran him through the neck before the jagged blade was even halfway out of its scabbard.

The walls rang as Huma ducked a swing by the other attacker. The guardsman’s blade cut deep into the stone and yet slid out easily. Huma parried a second attack and then took the lead.

His opponent was good, but not as good as a well-trained Knight of Solamnia. Defenses became more and more sloppy as the jet-black figure realized he lacked the skill to overcome the trespasser. Huma forced the other’s sword high, and kicked. Quarters were too close for the guardsman to dodge. As his opponent fell back and tried to recover, the knight ran him through.

The noise would surely bring someone.

Huma stared down both the corridor the guards had come from and the one they had chosen at the intersection. Both seemed to go on and on.

As quietly as possible, he began to make his way down the corridor in the opposite direction. It was virtually dark and Huma had to feel along the walls to make sure he was not missing any side corridors or intersections.

Where was the silver dragon? he wondered. Where was Gwyneth? the knight corrected himself. Whatever shape or form she wore, she was Gwyneth; he understood that much even if he really did not understand his own feelings. She had to be here somewhere, Huma reasoned. Perhaps, like himself, she was wandering aimlessly in some darkened part of the citadel in a fruitless search for him.

On impulse, he withdrew the medallion from his chest and held it close. Its warmth filled him, and the medallion began to glow with an intensity akin to the Dragonlances. Just then, a voice echoed down the hallway.

Two voices spoke in hisses. Not members of the warlord’s Black Guard, for they rarely spoke, Huma had noticed. Mages – but were they renegades or those who had sworn to aid the knighthood?

He held his blade ready, silently cursing the lack of true light. Darkness was a magic-user’s friend, for, like an assassin, magic-users were notorious for sleight-of-hand skills. Huma hoped he could take both of them quickly.

“He must be here!”

“Why did you do it?”

“The renegade had them both. He – aaaugh!”

The first of the two spellcasters suddenly found himself standing with a sword point beneath his chin. His companion made no move to attack Huma.

“No false moves,” the knight whispered.

“It is him!” the other mage hissed at his comrade.

“I can see that!” the spellcaster said, then added to Huma, “We are allies! Did not Gunther tell you?” The spellcaster’s face was difficult to read in the dark, but Huma thought his eyes were wide with fear.

“Gunther?”

“Slight, with animal features. Bald.”

A simple description, but fairly accurate. That did not mean these two were friends, however.

“He gave you a tiny, emerald sphere.”

“All right.” It was risky, but Huma decided to lower the sword. The mages sighed audibly. Both were of average height and one was on the heavy side, but Huma could only guess at details.

“Another time and we might have taught you what it is to threaten one of the Order of Nuitari,” the heavier one grumbled. “But now circumstances force us to aid you.”

“I care for it as little as you.”

“Dracos knew you would take the empty courtyard as an invitation to land, but he planned a surprise for you. We did not have the time to seize both of you, so we settled on you as most important. In order to prevent one of the renegades from tracing you, we were forced to fling you to a random location in the castle and hope for the best.”

“I had a very good idea where you would land; there was no reason to worry.” The narrower of the two mages gave an audible sniff of contempt.

“Some of us are purely lucky at times.” The words of the stocky mage were aimed at his companion, and Huma got the vague notion that they were brothers of the flesh as well as of the cloth. “Be that as it may, we want you —”

“You want?” Huma’s grip on his sword tightened, and he waved it at the level of the two spellcasters’ throats. “I do not take orders from Black Robes. We work together, yes, but as equals.”

Twin sighs. Allies such as these Huma could have done without, yet they had saved his life once already.

“What happened to the dragon I was riding?”

“That thing?” asked the first mage. “It’s frozen. In stasis. Galan Dracos wastes no raw material.”

“What does that mean?” The thought that something terrible might be happening to Gwyneth even now nearly put Huma into a panic. The mages mistook that panic for murderous anger and quickly did their best to placate him.

“Nothing! He’s much too busy at the moment! He has some grand spell which he claims is going to change Krynn forever. He has no time for the dragon.”

Huma took a deep breath and calmed. “You’ve been of invaluable assistance up to now, but I think you have compromised yourselves. Surely he suspects all Black Robes by this time?”

The thin mage sniffed again. “He does not know how great the revolt has become. He suspects it is only a few disgruntled members of our Order. He does not suspect that it is a mass conversion. We will not bow down as slaves to the cur and his mistress.”

“Be silent,” hissed the first. “You’ll draw her attention, and that is the one thing we cannot face!”

“Cannot?” Huma looked at both of them in disgust and wished they could truly see his expression. “So. You still intend for me to do all the work for you. Fine. Which way lies Galan Dracos?”

“You cannot be that mad!” It was difficult to tell which of the two had spoken.

“Which way?”

“We brought him here,” said the first to the second. “We may as well get it over with.”

“This is not the way we planned.”

“Has anything we planned from the beginning gone as we thought? Sagathanus died the first time he spoke up against the renegades – and he was the one who recruited them, promised them that we would agree to coexistence with them! That they would no longer be hunted down and destroyed if they refused to join the Three Orders and obey the guiding laws set down by the Conclave!”

“That was our mistake! We promised them freedom to continue their abominable experiments – experiments that go beyond even our tolerant limits.”

Huma prevented the present argument from going any further by thrusting the tip of his blade between the faces of the two bickering spellcasters. They became stone-silent instantly.

“Galan Dracos? Last time. Where?”

The stocky mage listed a sequence of turns and distances, repeated it again, and then asked Huma if he had it memorized. Huma did.

“We shall endeavor to free the dragon if we can. If not …” The mage shrugged.

“What about my other companions?”

“They departed when the trap was sprung. I cannot say whether they will return. Perhaps they have scurried back to Vingaard.”

Huma ignored the jibe. He was sure the others were nearby and were planning. It would be best if he continued his present course of action.

Footsteps echoed in the hall. The two magic-users literally jumped.

“Go,” whispered the narrow one.

With quick steps, Huma moved away from the Black Robes. He faintly heard the sounds of voices and realized that the two were stalling for him as long as they could.

Ahead he saw the shadows of armored men. Huma ducked back into another corridor and waited.

Six guards walked by silently, their attention fixed on whatever duties they had been given.

The Black Robes were in more danger than they knew. If Huma read the situation correctly, the guardsmen were beginning the process of rounding them up – if they did not intend to kill them immediately. That would leave Huma alone to deal with Galan Dracos and his goddess of pure evil.

Huma paused at the next turn, for he was suddenly confronted by three brightly lit passages.

Voices. Huma crept closer – then froze as he recognized one.

“You know what to do with the gem, Gharis?”

“A place has been chosen, Master Galan. We will wait for your signal there.”

“It’s merely a safeguard, Gharis. She demanded it – but it is my signal that you will obey when the time comes. Understand?”

The one called Gharis answered with a slurring voice. Huma suspected Dracos had need to reinforce his commands with something akin to mesmerism.

Apparently satisfied that he would be obeyed, Galan Dracos ordered the other to depart immediately. Huma stumbled back, but Gharis – seemingly a renegade like his master, for he wore a plain, brown cloak and not one of black – did not depart through that entrance. Instead, his footsteps dwindled away in another direction.

There was more than one entrance to the chamber. Apprehensively, Huma set off toward the chamber down another corridor. Slowly, as he edged closer, he peeked into the room.

If anything, the chamber was more a design in madness than the rest of the castle was. Huge, demonic figures lined the walls, each appearing ready to pounce upon any unsuspecting intruder. The thought made Huma shiver. Chief among the artifacts in the room was a platform seemingly made of black crystal. It rose in four tiers, upon the last of which stood a gleaming emerald sphere.

The knight pulled back quickly. Dracos was indeed there and standing before the sphere, his back turned toward Huma. The presence of the mage had been expected, but sitting calmly behind the sphere, three times the size of a man and watching intently, was a green dragon.

Huma had never seen such a dragon, and that was what disturbed him.

“You see now why I have always held the upper hand, do you not, my little friend?”

“Great is Master Galan,” the young dragon hissed. It had a cruel, sly voice even for one of its kind. What little Huma knew of the green dragons revealed them to be the most sinister, for they worked most often through trickery and deceit. Open combat was not their way, but they were just as respected for their physical abilities as their minds – their convoluted, treacherous minds.

“Cyan Bloodbane learns much watching Master Galan.”

The renegade’s laugh was just as cold and cruel as the young dragon’s voice. “Cyan Bloodbane will never grow to his full potential if he thinks to ever master me. You are an experiment, Cyan. Through me, you have come to understand the minds of humans, elves, dwarves, and all the other races as none of your kind has. When you are fully grown, your name will strike terror even in their dreams – but not if you cross me.”

Something began to choke uncontrollably, and Huma wondered if perhaps the dragon had decided to end the mage’s arrogant speech. A moment later, he heard Cyan Bloodbane apologizing frantically.

“Master Galan is all-powerful! No more! Please!”

“This room grows too foul from your chlorine-infested breath. Depart! I will summon you when I wish your presence again.”

“Master!” Wings flapped, and Huma realized that this chamber must have an outside entrance on a higher level.

The sound of footsteps alerted him that Dracos was moving away. Huma dared peer around again and caught sight of the mage’s back before the latter disappeared through another archway. The chamber torches seemed to dim as he departed.

Huma took a step into the chamber. He half expected some sorcerous trap, but nothing so much as flickered.

With carefully measured steps, he made his way to the black, crystalline platform and stared at the large sphere. Perhaps, he thought, this was what his tiny guide had been drawn to. Perhaps this was how Dracos kept the existence of the castle from the outside world – or it might be —

He was struck by a wave of revulsion that made him stagger and nearly caused him to drop his sword. It was coming, he realized dimly, from the globe itself. Huma closed his eyes briefly and concentrated. The hatred vanished, to be replaced with contempt and humor as someone mocked him – mocked his very existence. Huma forced his eyes open, knowing what he would see and refusing to let it daunt him.

She was there, staring at him from somewhere, staring at him through the sphere.

Takhisis.

Oddly, Huma’s first thought was whether Galan Dracos knew that she could reach into this chamber. Did she suspect – as Huma was just beginning to – that, based on his commands to the mesmerized servant, Dracos plotted something against her? Surely she suspected that one as ambitious as the renegade would never be satisfied unless he controlled all. Was that perhaps why she smiled?

Smiled? There had been no true face there at first. Now, though, the Dark Queen permitted herself eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It was a feminine face, though she might very well have appeared as an armored warrior or even a tree if it suited her fancy.

In truth, the more he stared, the more Huma knew that he had never seen such a beautiful face. These were the sculpted features of a queen among queens, truly an immortal. A man could easily become lost in that beauty – for eternity. For such a small price. What had the knighthood given him but misery? Because of it, he had lost his parents, Rennard, and countless comrades, including Buoron. Even his love had been taken away from him —

Lies! The fog lifted from his mind and he saw the lies behind the so-called truths. Rennard had been lost long before the knighthood; he had been responsible for the death of Huma’s mother. Huma’s father, Durac, had died fighting for something he believed in desperately, something he found worth dying for. As for Gwyneth – the thought remained unfinished.

Rather than strike him down, the Dark Queen merely smiled.

The face vanished. Only a touch of the evil that was the Dragonqueen remained behind to remind him what he had just experienced.

“I think it is time to end this game,” said Galan Dracos suddenly.

Chapter 30

Galan Dracos folded his arms and stared at the knight. His thin lips were curled in a smile like a scavenger.

The renegade mage reached up and pulled back the hood of his cloak so that his face was fully visible. His hair, thin and straggly, was plastered to his skull and formed a widow’s peak on his forehead. The head itself was elongated, almost inhuman. The mage reached out and patted the bone-white head of one of a pair of dreadwolfs that flanked him; the motion revealed long, bony fingers ending in talons.

“And so, we come to the end. I would have wanted it no other way. You had to be here to see my triumph … the ultimate triumph.”

“You knew I was here?”

“The followers of Nuitari do him no credit. They are so caught up in their self-importance that they do not realize what one can do when unconstrained by the laws set by those fools running the Conclave of the Three Orders. I wouldn’t look for support from them.”

As Dracos spoke, Huma was gauging his options – and there were not many. A plan born of desperation filtered through his mind. Huma took a step back and held his free hand over the great sphere in which the knight, only moments before, had faced the vision of the Dragonqueen. “One motion and I shatter this. Where will your dreams be then?

“They would literally fall to pieces – if you could indeed break the globe. I offer you the opportunity to try.”

Huma struck the top of the emerald sphere as hard as he could. His gauntleted hand bounced off. There was not even a single scratch on the globe.

“You see?”

Huma nodded and allowed his free hand to fall casually to his belt.

“I think —” was all Galan Dracos managed to say before Huma pulled out a sharp blade and threw it directly at the mage.

The dagger flew with accuracy. Yet, the renegade merely raised a finger and the blade slowed, arched – and blew back toward Huma. The knight dove forward and tumbled down the steps of the crystalline platform. The knife bounced off the huge green sphere and fell with a clatter to the floor.

“Pathetic. I had expected more of you after all this.” Before Huma could steady himself, Dracos snapped his fingers. The knight suddenly was gripped from behind by massive hands seemingly made of stone. He struggled, trying to pry apart the thick, monstrous fingers. The unseen menace did not waver, and Huma’s armor began to dig into his flesh.

“Against that wall.” Dracos pointed.

Huma was whirled around and lifted up. Something cold and rocky caught hold of each wrist and then his ankles. The knight was trapped.

The rapid, precise movements had given Huma no opportunity to glimpse the mage’s servant. Suddenly, Huma could see with dismay that his captor had actually been one of the gargoyles lining the room. As Huma watched, the gargoyle slowly returned to its niche. Over his shoulder, Huma could see that another gargoyle, little more than arms, held him tight against the wall.

“I see you admire my handiwork.” Dracos stepped closer, and the captive knight saw that a thin layer of scales covered much of his face. The renegade was almost reptilian in appearance, and Huma found himself wondering just how much of his humanity the mage surrendered for his power.

“To be fair, I underestimated you in the beginning. I thought you only a pawn of Magius, a former friend he once more found useful. Imagine my surprise to discover that not only weren’t you a pawn, but our mutual friend actually trusted you.”

Talk of Magius made Huma struggle, but the paws of the gargoyle permitted him no slack. He glared helplessly at the renegade, who only beamed in greater satisfaction.

“He renounced everything he had done, you know. I doubt there was a whiter robe in all of Krynn in those last few days. Pity. You should have heard the screams. My – assistants – can be imaginative. I had to punish one for overenthusiasm. He would have killed our friend.” The renegade chuckled. “I do so hate to discourage imagination, though. Not that it mattered by then. I fear that Magius was not really with us after that. He began to talk to himself – childhood things, I gather. It annoyed my servants to no end. He paid no attention to their fine work. In fact, he didn’t speak again until you and I met. You must have meant a great deal to him for him to come back from whatever safe haven he had thrust his mind into.” Dracos shrugged. “Enough talk of the past. Let us deal now with the future – for those of us who still have one.”

Huma smiled back at the mage, though his mind raced with worry. “The dragons are defeated; your renegades are defeated; Crynus and most of his Black Guard are dead. Before the day is through, the ogres will be retreating. You’ve lost. Within a few weeks, the war will be only a memory.”

The eyes of Dracos flared, and Huma saw he had struck a nerve. When the spellcaster spoke again, his voice was rough, angry.

“Correct on all counts save one. The ogres will retreat; they are bullies at heart, and bullies are cowards. They are fodder, nothing more, and they would be quite surprised to know what little importance they would have in my world.”

“Your world?”

“My world – as voice of my mistress, Takhisis, of course.” Dracos executed a flawless, courtly bow.

“You have no army.”

“That was the trouble with Crynus. He saw everything as a battle. Even when he conceded the benefits of my powers, he saw them only as the means to his own ends.”

Galan Dracos had crossed over to the dark crystalline platform and was now at the top, practically caressing the sphere. The emerald glow from it lit his face, making him look like a long-dead corpse. Huma shuddered involuntarily.

“The intensity of my power comes from my followers, both willing and unwilling. When the Black Robe, Sagathanus, found me, this was what interested him at first. I was a fool at that time, keeping no more than a few of the locals under my control – I actually had some sentiment for the foul place because it had been my place of birth.” He looked up at Huma. “Have you ever heard of Culthairai? No? I am not surprised. It’s a tiny farm province in the midst of Istar. Other than oats, the only thing of value they can sell are a few strong backs for mercenary troops. Imagine! The greatest mage who will ever exist – born in a worthless province!”

“It must have been terrible for you.” Huma surprised himself with the comment.

The reptilian features twisted into a harsh smile. “How true. No one else has been able to appreciate that. I imagine it is because you found yourself growing up under similar circumstances.”

Dracos, it seemed, had learned much about him.

It was left for you. The sudden clarity of that thought overwhelmed Huma. It was not his own. Rather, it almost sounded like Magius … What had been left for him?

Sensing something, one of the dreadwolves trotted over to him and sniffed. Its smell of decay sickened Huma.

For his part, Dracos stared at something within the sphere, something that perhaps only he could see.

The sound of long, leathery wings caused both to look up. Cyan Bloodbane had returned without his master’s permission. The look in the young green dragon’s eyes spoke of fear.

“Master Galan! The ogres begin to break! My brethren flee in panic – the cowards! What shall we do?”

Dracos was actually jubilant. “The time has come. The level of chaos is at a peak unprecendented since before the Age of Dreams.” To the anxious dragon he replied, “Leave us! I will not have your stench fouling this room at such a time!”

The young dragon departed in haste. Dracos summoned the two dreadwolves, who began to shiver uncontrollably.

Huma watched with disgust and amazement. He could actually see the life essence – if that was what one called it – depart from the two ghoulish abominations. They did not even struggle. Galan Dracos removed his hands from the two gaunt, motionless forms. The dreadwolves crumbled to ash.

“Fear is Chaos. War is Chaos. Chaos is unlimited power. It is a power that even the gods respect. Do you understand?”

Huma blinked. In his morbid fascination over the destruction of the two dreadwolves, he had not been listening. “What are you going to do?”

“This.” The mage stroked the globe. “This is the key to creating a conduit between our plane and the Abyss. A portal or gateway to the Dragonqueen’s domain beyond. Understand this: When gods come to the mortal plane – I mean truly come to the mortal plane – they are but shadows of their true selves. Which is not to say that they are weak. Far from it. However, their counterparts have them at a disadvantage.”

The knight’s eyes brightened with understanding. “Which is why the Dragonqueen has never been far from the gateway she has created. She fears that Paladine will strike at her during some moment of crisis. Now, though, you have created a way that she can draw upon her full strength even while on our world.”

Galan Dracos tensed, then smiled coldly. A tremor seemed to shake the citadel, but the mage paid it no mind. “You are more astute than I thought. Still, the small matter of your interference will be history before long.”

Almost! A vague image flickered into and out of Huma’s memory.

“Consider yourself honored. You are about to witness an event that will change all of Krynn!”

With that remark, the great emerald sphere flared with stronger intensity. Galan Dracos pulled his hood forward again and summoned a pale, bone-colored staff from thin air.

Huma’s eyes focused completely on the renegade’s staff. That was the key! The staff of Magius. Dropped by his companion after his capture by the Black Guard. Dropped? Left behind by its owner, more likely. Magius easily could have summoned it at any time just the way Galan Dracos had summoned his own.

What was he supposed to do though? Where was it now?

The torches flickered as the renegade raised high his own staff. He seemed to be drawing the flames to him. The chamber grew darker.

“Takhisis, great queen, mistress of the dark, the time has come to fully open the portal! The time has come to let your full power flow from your domain into this one!’

The staff of Magius was temporarily forgotten. Huma watched in horror as the wall behind the sphere began to warp and twist, as some mad dreamscape. Then, slowly, that part of the building seemed to completely fall away.

It was not the mountains, though, that stood revealed by the spell. Rather, it was a dark and chaotic landscape that seemed to spill into a gaping, endless pit from which no light could escape.

Even as Huma watched, the landscape changed again. It was wooded now, but the trees were either dead or dying, and they were as black as night.

Next, it became a burning desert from which the bones of forgotten travelers protruded. Within moments, it was a veritable sea of bones.

“What is it?” Huma thought he knew, but he hoped that the mage would deny it.

Galan Dracos turned from the maddening scene and stared through narrowed eyes at the knight. “That is the domain of my mistress – that is the Abyss.”

“It keeps changing.”

“It is your mind that is perceiving changes. The Abyss is based on one’s experiences. In this case, yours. I have learned to control such unconscious thoughts.”

Galan Dracos stepped down from the platform and approached Huma, who struggled vainly. The citadel shook again, but Dracos seemed still unaware of it. He reached up a taloned hand to the knight’s forehead.

“You needn’t worry.” The renegade’s tone was patronizing. “I have neither the time nor the power to spend on you. I’m simply going to block your thoughts from the Abyss. Like putting up a wall.”

Huma’s head was knocked back by a percussive force. For a brief moment, all thought vanished. Soon, Dracos was atop the platform again. He tapped his ivory staff twice and began muttering in some magical tongue. The emerald sphere gleamed like a miniature sun. The castle shook again.

“The bond with the Abyss is secure!” the renegade shouted out triumphantly. Something glimmered within the globe. Dracos caused his staff to vanish and put both hands on the glowing artifact. He stared into it, oblivious to the near-blinding light. The muttering renewed.

Huma summoned the staff by thought.

He could not say whether the thought was his own or, as he half-believed, that of the vengeful spirit of Magius. He only knew that he had to concentrate on calling the staff of the dead mage, and he had to do it now.

So simple – now that he knew. One minute his hands were empty, the next his left held the compacted version of the staff. His eyes suddenly widened as he felt a quiver in the palm that clutched the magic item. As if moving with a life of its own, it turned in his hand and tapped the stone claw that held his wrist.

The gargoyle released his wrist.

Galan Dracos was still facing the sphere. His hands were outstretched as if imploring some private god.

Huma freed his right wrist.

Dracos shouted incomprehensibly. The glow from the globe had spread to encompass the mage. He was taller now. Huma stared at the sphere. Energy seemed to swirl chaotically within it. The citadel shook violently this time.

“No!” This time, Dracos seemed to be talking to someone else. “The flow is too great! I need to draw more power or the energy will overwhelm me!”

Huma did not understand the words, but he knew he had to break the link between the planes. If Takhisis was drawing on that power —

This time, the tremor was so violent that several gargoyles tipped forward and smashed on the floor. Galan Dracos’s expression did not change when he saw that Huma was free; he only muttered something under his breath and then immediately returned his attention to his spell.

The moment Huma was free, the staff, as if alive, began to stretch and widen. It was growing as it had before.

Gargoyles were suddenly stepping from their niches, creating a hodgepodge collection of monstrosities that all had one thing in mind – the death of Huma.

Having been trained in the quarterstaff, Huma found the mage’s staff effective as such a weapon. Each touch sent sparks flying, and the gargoyles might as well have been made of butter for the way it cut through them. Still, a severed limb or decapitation was not sufficient to stop even one of the creatures. They came at him from all directions, and Huma knew the renegade would never run out of unliving servants. Nevertheless, he fought with all his determination and faith in Paladine.

Huma knew he needed only one good swing at Dracos, but the gargoyles were pressing him in from all sides and the staff was virtually useless at such close quarters. Unless something happened, he had only seconds left before the crush of stone creatures brought him down.

“Huuuuummaaa!”

The voice came from above, shouting down even the reverberations of the citadel. What was Dracos doing? Did he need to bring down the mountains themselves?

“Huuuummaaa!”

Huma could see her now.

“Gwyneth!”

She spied him and spiraled down even as a gargoyle knocked the staff from Huma’s hand. The silver dragon roared and struck out at the nearest of the stone creatures. They shattered into sand. She flew up, around, and then back down to attack once more. Several of the gargoyles were turning away from Huma to attack this new foe. Gwyneth found herself being dragged down by the combined weight of four of the animals who had attached themselves to her underside. Roaring more from annoyance than pain, she whirled as best she could in the wide chamber in an attempt to throw the gargoyles from her. They clung tight, though, and she was forced to fly upward and out of the room in order to shake them off.

Even so, the silver dragon had bought Huma time. He grabbed the staff of Magius and whirled again, eliminating the nearest attacker with his first swing. The others attempted to close once more.

Several figures came rushing toward the room. Black Guard. The ebony-armored figures paused in the archway and gaped at what they saw.

Huma glimpsed the mad gaze of Dracos as he briefly turned toward his soldiers. A light much like the glow of the emerald sphere glittered in his eyes. He spoke a single word, the strain of even that causing him to flinch.

A thin, deadly bolt of green energy originating from the globe whipped toward the unsuspecting warriors with frightening speed. It split into two and then into four separate bolts before it was halfway to them. Belatedly, the guardsmen realized their plight and turned to run. Four did not even have time to move. They were harpooned like fish by the bolts of energy and dragged into the chamber. Huma shivered. The spell seemed to be as much in control of Galan Dracos as he was of the spell. The knight doubted the renegade really even knew what he had done. All that mattered to Dracos now was the power.

The other guardsmen fled. From his vantage, Huma watched helplessly as another bolt issued forth, this time at him.

It slammed into his chest, the very force of it spilling over to strike a host of the gargoyles. At first, Huma felt his energy literally being drained from him. Then something repelled the parasitic bolt and sent it writhing back into the emerald globe. Huma felt his chest and discovered the medallion given to him by Avondale. A medallion for a cleric of Paladine.

“Huma! The castle is breaking up!”

A gargoyle fell to its knees. Another simply collapsed. Huma turned to find himself facing Galan Dracos. The renegade had a crazed look on his already inhuman face.

“I – I will bend – bend it to my will! I am Dracos, greatest mage ever to live!”

The mage revealed his staff again and tapped it on the platform three times. “Shurak! Gestay Shurak Kaok!”

The gargoyles had lost all semblance of life. As they collapsed around Huma, the silver dragon materialized again and flew to him. Dracos made no move toward them, did not even see them. Instead, he was grinning at the heavens. His form coursed with energy.

“I have done it, mistress! The power is mine!”

So caught up in his apparent triumph, the renegade did not see the image that formed in the emerald sphere. A mocking face, an inhuman face. Even as Huma watched, the face within the globe split and became two. Then three. The faces twisted, became reptilian. Dragons. Five heads at least. All mocking.

“Huma, we must leave!”

“I cannot!” Huma stared at the Dragonlances that Gwyneth carried. They were too awkward for his purposes. Even the footman’s lance was unwieldy. Then his eyes came to rest on the staff of Magius. An impulse came to him.

He hefted the staff. Words he could not understand flowed from his mouth, and the staff was suddenly luminous. He threw it with all his might.

The staff missed Galan Dracos, but neither was he the target. Instead, the staff, so much like a spear, flew with perfect accuracy at the very center of the glowing sphere. It seemed to hesitate when the tip made contact with the artifact, but then it continued through, shattering all resistance.

“Don’t look!” Huma cried to Gwyneth.

The emerald sphere exploded with a roar.

The citadel shook – and the chamber tipped – as the castle felt the impact of the artifact’s destruction.

“Huma!” The silver dragon nudged him. “We must flee! Hurry!”

He regained his footing, partially clutching one of her wings. A quick glance showed him that the platform was being engulfed in a greenish inferno that seemed to cover the entire wall.

From without, something roared.

“Paladine!” he whispered. It could not be! Huma could imagine only one creature that could emit such a deafening, earth-shaking cry. A dragon. A giant dragon. A titan with five heads, he suspected. Takhisis.

“Yyyyoooouuu!”

Huma forgot the roar and whirled back to the blaze where this new cry had originated.

Something slowly emerged from the emerald fire. It blazed but did not burn. It walked on two legs but was no longer human in any way. It raised a taloned claw that had once been a hand. A demonic face with twisted features, like some distorted serpent, was evident under the torn and tattered remains of a hood.

“Hhhuuuuummmaaaaa!”

Galan Dracos stumbled forward.

“I will see you dead!”

Something with tendrils shot out toward him – and was daunted by what momentarily seemed a silver shield. Galan Dracos took a step back.

“You have your – your patron as well! Pity it is too late for Krynn!” The face twisted.

Huma took a step forward. Gwyneth began to protest, but the knight stared her into silence. Then he slowly began to walk toward the mad mage.

“Too many people have perished because of you, Galan Dracos. As Paladine as my witness, I cannot allow you to remain free. It must end here.”

When Dracos finally spoke, his voice was under control. He stared off into the distance.

“Yes. It will end here. With the victorious – with my treachery unmasked. I have gambled and I have lost.” Dracos turned back to Huma and then seemed to shrug.

The renegade stumbled back to the edge of the inferno. His legs could barely walk anymore. He relied more and more on his staff.

Huma came purposefully toward him. “I cannot let you go.”

The deformed mage laughed, a laugh that seemed to go on much too long. The eyes of Galan Dracos were narrow slits that gleamed. “I’ll not wait for the Queen’s justice. I prefer oblivion to that. She shall not have my damned spirit to toy with for eternity.”

Galan Dracos, master mage, renegade, spoke a single word.

The emerald flames engulfed him. Whatever immunity he had was discarded. Huma covered his eyes as the fire flickered more brightly. When he looked again, there was nothing remaining of the mage.

“He burned himself.”

“No.” The silver dragon shook her head. “He’s ceased to exist. It was that last spell he unleashed. It’s as if he never was. Before long, those who ever knew him will never remember – save his former mistress, I think.” She frowned. “He’s actually escaped from the Dragonqueen. Amazing.”

The citadel began to shift downward again.

“Huma!” Her momentary fascination faded immediately as Gwyneth realized the danger.

“Yes!” He began to climb atop her, then stopped. “No! The staff of Magius! I have to see —”

“Is that the small rod on your belt?”

He looked down. On his right side, stuck securely through his pouch belt, was a familiar, foot-long stick. “How —”

Gwyneth finally grew exasperated. “I will explain to you about magic some other day! Huma, as Paladine is my witness, I love you! I will not see you die here if I can help it!”

At those words, he scrambled clumsily aboard. Each moment she stayed risked her own existence – and for what? His hesitations, his fears.

Yet she loved him.

The silver dragon rose swiftly into the air.

“Lie flat against me – and hold the Dragonlance straight!” she cried.

The citadel continued to shift as it slid downward. The gargoyles were tossed like rags. Parts of the chamber began to break off. A portion of the upper passage collapsed. Now the silver dragon would not be able to escape through its narrow funnel.

Huma heard her shout something in one of the magical tongues. He heard masonry shatter, and then bits of rock flew by his head.

“Steady! This is it!’

He felt the Dragonlance as it cut into the thick, stone wall, enlarging the gap. Gwyneth’s wings folded back, and she glided up like an arrow shot from a bow. Huma knew she was shielding him with her own body as much as possible.

Then they were out. Huma realized he had been holding his breath, and exhaled. The silver dragon spiraled upward. From above, they could see that a green blaze now engulfed much of the castle.

What remained standing of the mage’s tower stood perched momentarily over the precipice. It weaved there, then slowly began to tip over. First the tower went, a great shaft that tipped forward and then plummeted over.

Huma turned his eyes up to the heavens. “Paladine!”

A new and greater darkness had come suddenly.

“Huma …” The silver dragon’s voice was unsteady.

He followed her gaze to the very top of the same peak that the citadel of Galan Dracos had fallen from. Something huge, multi-headed, and radiating evil gazed their direction.

Huma – Champion of Paladine. Come to me. Come to my embrace.

Takhisis.

Chapter 31

The near-hypnotic quality of the Dragonqueen’s call was broken by a familiar voice.

“Huma! Thank the gods! We were afraid you had fallen with the citadel!”

He turned in the saddle. Bennett and Kaz rode near him. Kaz quickly explained, “We sent the others to seek aid. Only, Sargas! – what is that?”

Bennett’s voice was drained of emotion. “It is the Dragonqueen, is it not?”

Huma only nodded. He stared up at the shadowy monstrosity above them. The portal through which the Dark Queen had come was expanding, and she seemed to be growing more solid, more real.

A thought struck the knight. He reached down to his side for the compacted staff of Magius and handed it to Bennett. “Take this back to Vingaard Keep. It must be turned over to the Conclave. As ruling mages, they’ll know what to do with it. It belonged to Magius, and I fear that it won’t be of much use to me anymore.”

Kaz and Bennett looked at one another.

Huma fixed each of them with a gaze. “It must be told that Dracos is no more. I also need you to organize the lancers. Bennett, you are the son of one Grand Master and the nephew of another. You were born to lead.

“I will draw the Dark Queen’s ire for as long as I can, but a mass attack remains our only true chance. There must be at least a hundred lances left. Then, Paladine willing, we will be able to count for something.”

Bennett shook his head. “Huma, this is a goddess! We are less than a single breath to her!”

“But we are Knights of Solamnia,” Huma responded, “a knighthood forged by the holy Triumvirate of which Paladine is senior. Our mission has been to keep the justice and see that evil never holds sway over Krynn. This is our ultimate test. This is where we truly test ourselves against the Oath and the Measure.”

The other knight could think of no response. Bennett’s face had reddened slightly.

“I have no time to argue. Return, Bennett. Kaz, go with him,” Huma said.

The minotaur looked down at his mount, then back at Huma. “I agree that one of us should return, and it is right that it be Bennett. But I will stay. I swore an oath, too, and I have not yet proved myself. And Bolt thinks as I do.”

Huma sighed. “Kaz, I cannot stop you. Bennett, do your duty.”

Bennett gritted his teeth, but nodded. At a signal, his silver dragon turned – but not before meeting the gaze of Gwyneth. Some message passed between them, and Huma remembered that here was kin of his own dragon. Parting was no easier for them.

When Bennett was gone, Huma turned to the minotaur. “Now.”

The two dragons rose higher and higher. Above them, Takhisis’s five-headed dragon form seemed to waver. The entire mountain, and even the heavens above, were being warped by a vast hole in the fabric of the sky itself. The gateway from which the Dragonqueen had materialized in this world. The portal through which she had drawn her absolute power with the help of the unlamented Galan Dracos. Her full power was cut off from her because Huma had shattered the emerald sphere, but the gateway remained. And Takhisis already had the power she had drawn earlier. Never in her invasions of the mortal plane had she ever been so strong.

Enchanting. Even more interesting than your constant need to argue with one another over hopeless causes.

The cold, cruel thoughts buffeted Huma’s mind.

I will have to gather a few such as you and study this amusing, transitory thing called love. It seems so … wasteful.

At least Huma had some satisfaction in that he knew Takhisis could never experience any of the emotions he felt. They would ever be a mystery to one such as her. In that, she was less than any mortal.

Teach me, then.

Though he knew her dragon form still perched atop the mountain, he also saw the graceful, enticing figure of a raven-haired enchantress, clad in the thinnest of dark silks. When she smiled, it was as if for the first time anyone had truly done so.

I could be whatever you desire me to be. You could show me this love you think so much of. I would be a very willing student.

In his mind, the seductive form turned to the side slightly, revealing new and provocative poses. Huma found it impossible to concentrate. She was beautiful beyond compare, and she was willing to learn what it meant to love, to be a mortal. If he could show her what it meant, then Krynn might never again have to know evil or suffering.

There was added – and it weighed heavily – the interesting aspects that would surely be involved in teaching her.

She smiled and seemed to hold out a slim, perfectly sculpted hand.

Huma felt a warmth on his chest. Involuntarily, he clutched at it. A familiar object seemed to fall into his hand.

“No!” he shouted on impulse. “I will not fall to your dark charms! You cannot ever know love or life and I want no part of you. My love is for another!”

He felt a jolt beneath him, as if Gwyneth had caught herself. He had no more time to think of her, because the Dragonqueen once again clutched his thoughts.

You might have known joy such as no man has ever known. You might have commanded my armies, for no warrior has proved more resourceful, more adaptable, and more determined than you. You could have been second only to me, and I would have rewarded you beyond your expectations.

A horrible wind rose up. The silver dragon was nearly swept against the mountainside, and Bolt and Kaz fell behind. Huma gripped the Dragonlance with one hand and fingered the medallion of Paladine with the other. With both of them, he was able to maintain hope.

Very well! You have rejected me. You have opened the doorway to your own destruction – and that of the one you love.

Unable to know love, the Dark Queen was all too familiar with hate.

“Huuummmaaa!”

The knight turned back briefly and saw Bolt being forced to land on a rocky ledge. Kaz was clutching the saddle, desperately.

This is between us now, oh, so mortal Knight of Solamnia! You will beg for forgiveness for all you have done! You will plead with me for an end to the agony, but it will not be until the end of eternity that I may even consider granting it.

Huma recalled the choice made by Galan Dracos: oblivion of body and soul rather than the tender “justice” of the Queen of Darkness. This from one who had no compassion, who had cruelly tortured Magius, and who had sent thousands to their needless deaths. In the end, there had been only fear for Dracos, fear at the thought of being at the mercy of his mistress.

First will I batter your physical form to jelly – but you will not die. Then I will take your mind and reveal to it the full dark beauty of my domain. Madness will not save you. I will not allow it. Then I will take your love and treat her to only the finest of my – entertainments – while you helplessly watch.

Huma had seen wonders and terrors that few men had faced, and only his belief in Paladine and the justice and good the god represented had saved him. Each time, that belief had strengthened him. Huma had come to love Krynn as much as Paladine, and he was willing to sacrifice all for the sake of the world if it meant the defeat of darkness.

Rather than urge Gwyneth back, Huma pressed her on.

The silver dragon obeyed. She would not abandon him.

You are fools. Bigger fools than Dracos, who believed he could become a god. His escape to oblivion saved him from my tender mercy. What will save you?

It was as if a curtain had suddenly been drawn away. The Dragonqueen stood watching, her beauty breathtaking and terrible at the same time.

Each head of the gigantic dragon mocked him. Five in all, and each one representing one of her children. Cunning and cruel green. Tenacious white. Powerfully destructive red. Unpredictable black. Dominating blue.

They swerved sinuously back and forth, as if weaving a hypnotic spell. Never did their eyes leave Huma. Never did a single head pause in its movements.

The Dark Queen was well over sixty feet of pure power. Each movement was grace and strength incarnate. In each movement, no matter how subtle, she revealed the foolishness of daring to forestall her will.

Now you see. Now you know.

The quick, tinier white dragon suddenly exhaled in his direction. Huma barely saw the cone of intense frost projected at him, but Gwyneth swerved easily and flew out of range.

The Dragon of Many Colors and of None – the ancient name came back to Huma – laughed scathingly. The attack had been no more than play to the goddess, as a cat plays with a mouse before eating it whole.

Wind continued to whip around, and the silver dragon veered perilously close to the side of the mountain. The heads of the Dragonqueen laughed in amusement.

There was a slight hesitation in the actions of the godly leviathan as Huma’s mind shifted. She also was mocking him no longer. The focus of each pair of eyes was more intense, as if she studied him anew. The massive wings spread in what Huma might have termed the anxiousness of a normal dragon.

Huma signaled to Gwyneth. She turned, gave herself plenty of space from the terrible form of the Dragonqueen, and turned to face the goddess. Huma’s hand steadied the Dragonlance. The five heads froze in position.

The knight signaled again.

The tempest unleashed by the Dragonqueen increased tenfold, forcing both Kaz and Bolt to seek safety at the innermost part of the ledge. They had only a brief glimpse as the silver dragon defied the ripping winds and the sudden torrential downpour, and continued forward with ever-increasing speed. Then knight and dragon vanished as they neared the top of the peak.

Kaz muttered a prayer to every god of Paladine’s house that his hazy memory could recall. He saved his last and longest for the Platinum Dragon – the god known to humans as Paladine.

Chilling frost. Quick, deadly lightning. A hissing stream of poisonous gas. Bright flame. Sputtering and splattering acid.

Each head unleashed its power against the two. Gwyneth turned and dodged, dodged and turned, then spiraled as she sought to escape one hideous attack after another. Sometimes even her skill was not enough. Acid burned a multitude of tiny holes in her wings. Flames singed her back. Huma maintained his grip on the Dragonlance despite all.

As yet, they had made no strike against the Dragonqueen. That she had not struck them down with all her powers was of vital interest. It meant that the Queen of Darkness had but a fragile hold on her increased strength. She was seeking to do much, spreading her power too thin, extending too many disparate spells.

Gwyneth unleashed a cone of frost at the green head of the goddess, who shook it off as one might shake a leaf.

Jaws snapped dangerously close. Huma glimpsed the head of a red dragon as Gwyneth flew out of reach.

When she turned toward the Dragonqueen one more time, Huma saw that the great creature was at last rising from the peak. No longer did the Dark Lady believe her victory assured. She was taking the battle to Huma, determined to prolong this fight no more than necessary.

Seen in the air, the Dragonqueen was at least ten times larger than the silver dragon. Her wingspan covered the sky. Each of her foreclaws could have taken the head of Huma’s companion and crushed it easily.

I am bored with games. You flutter like a butterfly.

The silver dragon started, and Huma realized that this was the fist time Takhisis had spoken to Gwyneth.

The black head of Takhisis shouted something in a magical tongue. Knight and dragon were suddenly plunged into darkness.

A roar.

Claws raked the air above Huma. The silver dragon dropped at the last instant. The Dragonlance still glowed, the only illumination in the sky.

Light? You cannot have light!

Even Huma had not noticed it at first, but it was true. The darkness became shadow, and the shadow became light again. Takhisis hovered, infuriated by the power of the Dragonlance.

Paladine cannot protect you forever!

“Huma” the silver dragon called to him, her breath painfully short, “I cannot evade her much longer.”

Huma touched the medallion hanging on the center of his chest. He nodded. “It is time we met her.”

Come to me, then. Meet my embrace.

“I offer you the same chance I gave to Galan Dracos, Dark Queen. I offer you the chance to surrender.”

You jest in the time of your destruction, mortal Huma. I find your humor interesting. I shall have an eternity to amuse myself.

Huma steadied the Dragonlance so that it pointed directly toward the center of the Dragonqueen’s great form.

“See if I am jesting. This is the power of Paladine. No mortal weapon can strike you down – but the Dragonlance is no mortal weapon.”

You are mortal, though, Knight of Solamnia.

Huma dipped his head in acknowledgment.

“I am a Knight of Solamnia. I am the hand of Paladine, of Kiri-Jolith, and of Habbakuk on this world. You are on Krynn. You are mine, Queen of Darkness.”

He kicked Gwyneth in the sides, and she burst forward with new energy. The Dragonlance shone brightly.

A strange thing happened.

It seemed to Huma that the armor he wore became brighter, felt different. To the look and touch it appeared as platinum. Gone were the dents and tears he had accumulated. His gauntleted hand seemed to glow with the same brilliance as the lance. He recalled then the vision he had had and the sculpture from which he had taken the first of the lances.

Below him, Gwyneth was also transformed. She was longer, sleeker, and far more beautiful. She was a gleaming white charger, a platinum dragon, a majestic kingfisher.

All he saw might have been illusion – but did the Dragonqueen see the same thing?

He could not be sure. Huma only knew that the huge chromatic beast hesitated again. This time, dragon met dragon. Claws and teeth struck out. The Dragonlance was only momentarily impeded. Huma braced himself for contact.

The Dragonqueen had not counted on her own momentum to such an extreme. Her body tipped forward and the Dragonlance suddenly found the unprotected neck of the centermost head.

Ichor splattered Huma. Some of it burned his injured leg, momentarily startling him from his almost trancelike state. Huma forced the thought of pain from his mind.

Takhisis shuddered uncontrollably as pain coursed through her.

Her scream literally shook the mountains and was heard over miles. Four heads turned blindly to the source of that pain. The fifth, the blue one, dangled awkwardly, useless now. Takhisis clawed wildly. In vain, she tried to pry the Dragonlance from its bind, but the silver dragon would not back off. The four remaining heads snapped at the silver dragon, at Gwyneth.

The Queen of Darkness had never felt pain before, Huma realized.

Takhisis clawed and bit at them in her agony. Huma signaled Gwyneth to retreat. To his horror, he discovered that the lance would not come loose. The silver dragon was beginning to bleed heavily, and Huma saw that she was covered with a vast number of ragged, dripping cuts. Her tattered wings flapped slowly and her breathing became more shallow.

The Dragonqueen continued screaming and her wings thrashed back and forth. The mounting for the Dragonlance bent considerably. Huma tried in vain to steady the lance. The back end of the weapon suddenly shot upward, striking him soundly in the side of the head. Huma fell back, dazed and bleeding.

He heard something snap.

With gargantuan effort, he pulled himself forward – and found only splinters remained of the mounting. Takhisis had stripped him of the lance.

Where was she?

“Hu – uma.”

“Gwyneth!” He leaned forward. She was breathing irregularly and each movement of her mouth dripped with blood.

“She – I – down there. I – cannot —”

Her wings froze in midmotion.

They began plummeting toward the mountainside. He screamed her name once before they hit. Then he felt his body thrown from the saddle, and all was night.

When he awoke, the world was red. Blood. Blood and pain. For hours, it seemed, he just lay there. His eyes were stinging red and his vision was bleary. All he could really see were shapes. The winds still howled.

There was nothing he could do about the pain. It coursed through his body. His wounded leg was numb.

With great effort, Huma raised himself to a sitting position.

Huma attempted to rise then, but he only fell over, face first, into the cool earth of the mountainside. His mind again blazed with pain.

He crawled now. He saw no sign of Gwyneth or the Dragonqueen. The knight managed to pull himself along, inch by inch.

As he struggled, something near the top of the mountain caught his attention.

A hand. A human hand.

He was not quite sure where the reserves of energy came from, but Huma succeeded in pulling himself up toward the figure lying near an outcropping.

“Gwyneth.”

She had shifted to her human form. The wounds that covered her natural form were no less terrible. One arm lay twisted beneath her. Her face was now as pale as her silvery hair. Her breath came in short, rasping shudders. Time and again, she twitched uncontrollably and small sounds of pain, akin to what an animal might make, escaped her cracked and bleeding lips. There were bleeding cuts and dark bruises all over her body. It was a marvel that she lived.

His mouth open in a soundless cry, Huma dragged himself to her side, ignoring his raw, bloody hands and the agony that jolted him continuously from within.

When he reached her, he finally noticed that, with her good arm, she clutched the footman’s Dragonlance as if it were life itself. Even as torn and battered as she was, Gwyneth had saved the smaller Dragonlance, knowing that it was the only weapon that could save them if the Dragonqueen returned.

He repeated Gwyneth’s name.

Something roared. Gwyneth’s eyes opened wide and she stared straight up.

“Huma?”

“Rest. Kaz or someone will come.”

“No!” Her eyes teared. “Takhisis! You mustn’t let her go free!”

The knight looked up. Something thrashed beyond the rise. Something huge and in terrible pain. The roar came again.

“She —” Gwyneth coughed up blood. “Sooner or later, she will overcome the Dragonlance. You have to do – do something before she does.”

“What can I do?” Huma could barely prop himself up.

“Take this.” She indicated the smaller Dragonlance. “I – I managed to save it.” Gwyneth suddenly clutched at him. “Are you hurt badly? Let me help you!”

“Forget me. Forget the Dragonqueen. What is happening to you? Why are you human? Are you healing yourself?”

“It – it doesn’t matter. The fall only – hastened the damage. I only thank Paladine that y – you are still alive.”

“Don’t talk anymore.”

She couldn’t be dying, Huma thought in horror.

I – I can save her, mortal!

The wind suddenly seemed frigid. Huma stood silently as the words sank in. How? he thought.

Sh – sh – the pain! She is not beyond me yet! Release me fro – from this agony and I will gladly restore you both! I swear it by – by the beyond! I swear it, highgod!

Huma looked down to see Gwyneth looking up at him intently. Her breathing was faint.

“What is it?”

“She offers us – you – life.”

“In return for what?”

He hesitated. “Her release.”

“Hu —” Gwyneth coughed uncontrollably. She closed her eyes. For a moment, the knight was afraid she was gone. She opened her eyes again, though, and fixed her gaze on him. “You cannot kill her – that is not possible. But you cannot release her, either. All Krynn will suffer for her torment. My life is not – not worth that.” She paused. The strain of speaking was using up what little strength she had left.

Huma draped her with his body so that the harsh wind did not strike her full force. “I won’t let you die.”

“You don’t have any choice.” She smiled faintly.

“You can’t,” Huma stammered, then finally spoke the words he had long ago admitted to himself. “I love you. I am ashamed I could not say it before. I will not lose you.”

Her face became radiant despite the fearsome wounds.

“I want – want – you to remember me as I am now – now, for this is truly me. I first truly lived as a human.” She took a deep breath. “I loved as a human.”

Her hand slipped from him. “I will die as a human – knowing at last that you —” Gwyneth closed her eyes as pain wracked her. Huma held her as she quivered. “— you —”

The shaking subsided. The knight loosened his hold. Gwyneth’s eyes were closed and in her deathly visage there was now an odd serenity.

“Gwyneth?”

Moortaal! It isss not too late!

Huma lowered her head.

A tail flickered briefly in sight and then vanished again behind the rise. The sky was dark once more. The portal, Takhisis’s gateway to and from the Abyss, had dwindled to a mere shadow of its former sinister majesty – yet it was still there.

Seizing hold of the Dragonlance, Huma began to drag himself toward the rise. His actions were involuntary; his mind contained only vague thoughts about what might have been. He no longer existed in the present. He was not even aware that he had reached the rise until he found himself looking at the Dragonqueen.

She lay some distance below in a crater shaped by her fall.

Huma lay there for a long time. Breath came hard to him now, and he realized that his ribs must be broken. The scene faded in and out, again and again.

Somehow, he managed to pull the Dragonlance up to the top of the ridge and force it over, point first. The chill wind no longer bothered him. It only served to clear his mind for the purpose at hand.

What – are you doing?

The Dragonqueen’s thoughts suddenly flickered into his head. He was so startled, he nearly dropped the lance over the side. Pulling it back, he used it to bring himself to a wobbly standing position.

The Dragonlance readied like a spear, Huma stared down at the thrashing goddess.

She lay on her back, her wings folded awkwardly behind her. The four remaining heads snapped wildly at the severed Dragonlance still embedded in her form. The weapon sparked each time the heads came near, and again and again they pulled away in pain.

“Hear me,” said Huma.

At first, there was only the thrashing and the horrible cries of pain and fury.

“Hear me,” he repeated.

Mortal … what is it you want?

The huge dragon attempted to rise. And failed.

“You are beaten, Takhisis, Dragonqueen.”

I am not! I cannot be!

“Your armies are being routed. Your renegades are dead or scattered. The Conclave will hunt them down. Such will be watched more closely in the future. There will never again be another Galan Dracos.”

More time passed. The Dragonqueen was visibly struggling for control.

What do you want, mortal?

“The balance must be maintained. Without good, evil cannot grow. Without evil, good stagnates. I know I cannot kill you.”

Release me, then!

Huma stumbled back at the intensity of the moment. The Dragonlance almost slipped from his grasp.

“First, you must surrender.”

The wind had ceased. The sky was strangely clear. Sunlight warmed Huma’s body.

The portal was nearly nonexistent.

The form of the Dragonqueen had become very still. She almost seemed – dead. Huma pulled the lance away from the edge and leaned over.

A dragon’s head, emerald green, shot up. Huma pulled back too late.

A thick, hissing stream of noxious, green gas shot forth, enveloping him before he could even think. He fell forward and this time his grip on the lance loosened completely. It clattered down the ridge. The hapless knight also fell, toward the Dragonqueen.

He screamed with each bounce against the rock-strewn side of the crater.

If he had been in pain before, now he learned the meaning of agony. He screamed and screamed, but he did not die.

You still live! What does it take to kill you? You are only mortal!

Despite the pain, then, he laughed.

“I belong to Paladine. I belong to Gwyneth. Neither will ever let you have me.”

Huma pulled himself upward. He coughed and his hands shook. He had inhaled too much of the gas. The fall had wracked his body and it was all Huma could do to keep himself sitting up, so violently did his head swim. He knew that despite his words, he did not have much time left.

“They are coming, Takhisis.”

Who?

“The other Dragonlances. More than a hundred. A hundred times the pain and agony. I offered you a chance. They will not be so willing. You know that.”

They cannot kill me!

“They can give you eternal suffering.”

They cannot! The balance! You spoke of it!

“What do they care about the balance? So much better to have peace; that is what they will say.”

A long pause. Huma started to close his eyes, then fought to open them yet one more time.

“You will never free yourself before they arrive. Even if I die, they will still have you. A goddess at the mercy of mortals.”

What do you want?

It was evidently a strain for her to continue. Only one head still stared in Huma’s direction. The other three wavered uncontrollably.

“Withdraw from Krynn.”

I —

“Withdraw now!”

Very well

“Withdraw your dragons as well. Never again must they come to Krynn. Take them with you.”

A long pause.

“Swear to it,” he added.

She hesitated.

I do.

“I want to hear you swear by that you hold most holy.”

Both witnessed the single dragon flying overhead and heard the call of its rider, a voice familiar to Huma.

Kaz. His voice was shaky and the dragon was visibly weary, but they circled above, ready to close.

“Your time is short, Queen.”

I swear that I shall withdr – withdraw – she writhed in pain and for one moment Huma thought he might be crushed beneath her form – withdraw from Krynn along with my children for so long as the world is whole. So do I swear by —

She said it. By the beyond. By the highgod.

Bolt had landed nearby, vigilant. Kaz, disregarding the looming presence of the foul Dragonqueen, raced to Huma’s side.

“You’ve won! You’ve defeated her!” Kaz stopped abruptly, and his expression became serious. “As I am your witness, Huma. I – I will remember as I remember my ancestors.”

Huma silenced him with a look. “Kaz, you must pull the Dragonlance from her body.”

“What?” Kaz rose and stared at Huma as if the knight was bereft of his senses. “Release her? She will wreak havoc all over! We will die – if we are lucky!”

Huma shook his head. “No. She. Swore. I can – promise you that she will —” He wanted to shut his eyes. “— she will depart.”

“I cannot!”

“Kaz.” Huma grimaced. “I promised her. It – it is a question of my honor. You understand honor. We say – say ‘Est Sularis Oth Mithas’ in the old tongue. ‘My Honor is My Life.’”

The minotaur looked from the knight to the goddess, silent now, shuddering with pain.

“Hurry. The lance. My honor. The others – they won’t let you”

Reluctantly, the minotaur moved. “My honor —” he said, half to himself, his eyes riveted on the task. “— is my life.”

The heads of the Dragonqueen swerved his way, but only one, treacherous green, remained fixed on Kaz. The others merely weaved back and forth, as if all control had been lost.

The lance was lodged deeply at the base of the neck of the blue head. With great distaste and more than a little trepidation, Kaz climbed atop Takhisis, the Dark Queen.

The green dragon head eyed him intently.

In an act of mad bravado, the huge warrior snorted with disdain. He flinched when it looked as if the head were about to strike, but then the head turned to gaze grimly at the source of the Queen’s agony.

“Gods,” muttered Kaz, then clamped his mouth shut when he thought about the oath. He had reached the Dragonlance. Getting a solid grip on it, the minotaur heaved.

The Dragonlance slid free without the slightest resistance. Kaz lost his footing and went tumbling off the gargantuan form, the lance still in his hands.

A horrible, mind-numbing laugh filled the air.

Kaz came to a stop, turned over, and stared – up.

She was there in all her infernal glory. Wings spread, enveloping the sky. All five heads looked up to the heavens and laughed. The pain, the wounds – it was as if they had never been.

Five terrible dragon heads looked down at the helpless and battered knight, then at the minotaur who had freed her. Each draconian visage wore a malevolent smile.

The sky burst into flames and Kaz was forced to cover his eyes.

When he opened them again, the sky was clear of clouds, and the sun – the long forgotten sun – was shining majestically – triumphantly.

The sun gleamed brightly now. Huma no longer felt cold, though he did not really feel warm, either. Sleepy. That was how he felt.

He discovered the medallion from Lord Avondale in his open hand. Paladine’s face shone brilliantly in the sunlight. The glare was too much. Huma closed his eyes. He could not close his grip on the talisman. That was all right. When the sun began to shift, he would like to look at it again.

His thoughts turned to Gwyneth and what they would do, now that the war was over at last.

Chapter 32

“A temple. They’re building you a kender-cursed temple when all you wanted was a place to rest.”

Kaz turned his horse away from the magnificent tomb. Lord Oswal shared the minotaur’s distaste for the elaborate trappings Huma had never cared for in life, but there had been other things to consider.

“The people need a hero,” the Grand Master had explained with a somewhat dubious expression on his aged face, “and the knighthood needs a standard to grow by. Huma has provided both.”

Kaz wondered then how long it would take the people to forget Huma, or to think of him as they did other legends – as just one more story. Humans, dwarves, kender, and elves – they all had a tendency to forget or gloss over truth as time went on. Even minotaurs were guilty of that.

He studied the path ahead. Bennett said he believed the plains could be back to pre-war conditions within five or six years. Kaz estimated nine or ten. Still, the road was serviceable and that was what counted. He wanted to be far away before the knights discovered him missing. There was so much that one of his kind had never seen before. Qualinesti sounded interesting. The elves might offer an experience.

The day was bright and warm, something Kaz was unaccustomed to. He was thankful he had packed plenty of waterskins. Until he was more familiar with the land, he would have to be careful to conserve.

The massive warhorse Lord Oswal had given him moved swiftly along the trail. There were many dips in the ravaged path and much of his equipment was jostled around. The belt pouch slapping against his right side became such a nuisance that he finally pulled it off. Metal clanked against metal from within.

Kaz pulled his steed to a halt and reached into the pouch. He pulled out two objects. The first was a seal bearing the sign of the knighthood on one side. The reverse side had the minotaur’s name chiseled in it, as well as the fact that he was indeed a minotaur. A mark above his name indicated he was under the protection of the Knights of Solamnia. Kaz had scoffed at first, but the Grand Master was quick to point out that few people had anything good to say about minotaurs. The tales of Huma that had already circulated made no mention of Kaz. Many of the knights still could not reconcile the legendary knight’s friendship with a being that most people considered a beast.

Kaz carefully replaced the seal in the pouch and eyed the second item. It was the medallion of Paladine that the knight’s lifeless hand had released when Kaz had lifted him up to Bolt’s back. The minotaur had stuffed it into the pouch for safekeeping and until now he had forgotten it.

Sunlight gleamed off the medallion and Kaz looked up at the sky again. Things were changing. The dark dragons were gone, but so were the metallic ones. Bolt had departed without comment after they had brought back the bodies. No one had seen a dragon since.

He kicked the warhorse lightly in the sides. As Kaz rode, he continued to finger the medallion. It had occurred to him to keep it, so that he would always have a token of his encounter with Huma. But now he was not so sure that it was, by rights, his.

The medallion was halfway back into the pouch when he came upon the lone tree on the right side of his path. The others near it either lay uprooted or were dead. Only this one held any life – a few branches sprouting new green.

On impulse, Kaz reached over and, when he was even with the tree, hung the talisman by its chain on a branch that overlooked a part of the trail.

“Est Sularis Oth Mithas,” the minotaur muttered.

Turning his gaze back to the trail before him, Kaz suddenly urged his mount to great speed. He would not slow the horse until the tree and the tomb were long out of view.

Silver And Steel

(1020 PC)

It had finally come to this. A summer-long campaign that had seen the Dark Queen pushed until the remnants of her tattered army were grouped around her at the base of a massive obsidian obelisk. A few thousand ragged warriors and their tired, dirty families, waiting for the Queen to do something before the final attack.

Huma, his army spread out on the hills overlooking the black tower, climbed from the back of the silver dragon he rode and studied the scene below him, looking for the trap he knew to be there. The Queen’s line of retreat had been straight, as if this had been her destination.

Glancing to his right, he could see the movement of his men, the knights on horseback, and the bowmen in front of them but behind the pikemen, as they formed just below the crest of the hills. Long, straight lines, marked by colored flags. The movement of their feet, the pawing of the horses, stirred the dry soil, creating a choking cloud of dust that engulfed them like a thick, morning fog. Slowly, their equipment rattling as the metal pieces struck one another, they fell into a strict military formation. They were a silent group, tense and strained, waiting for Huma to order them forward to the attack.

The scene to the left looked much the same. The men were moving forward. Their weapons, held at the ready, flashed in the afternoon sun. The women and children stayed at the rear of the battle line, setting up their camp and preparing bandages and splints, preparing to clean up the battlefield after the fighting.

The support vehicles, ox carts and wagons, the support men – those who made the weapons, the squires who aspired to be knights, the grooms, and the drivers – stood in the rear, sweating in the hot sun and watching everything, wishing that they could somehow get into the battle.

Near them was the makeshift band. Pipes and drums and flutes that could stir the men with their melodies and inspire them to greater efforts. They choked on the dust that stuck in their throats. Wiped the sweat from their faces as they waited for someone to do something. Waited for Huma to order them forward.

The silver dragon that Huma rode was gone suddenly, and standing next to him was a tall, slender woman with a mane of silver hair. She wore a breastplate of green armor, molded to her, a short, leather skirt, and shin guards that matched the green of her breastplate. In her right hand – a delicate, thin-boned hand with long, slender fingers – she held the hilt of a jeweled broadsword, the silver tip stuck in the dust at her feet. There was a look of grim determination on her face, because she knew what this event meant. She knew what the outcome of the battle had to be, and knew the cost to her and to Huma.

She turned to look at Huma, a huge man with a big, flaming mustache and long/black hair that brushed his shoulders. He wore armor of silver, a helmet with a plume of crimson on his head, and he held the dragonlance that was nearly twelve feet long. The barbed tip was of pure silver, and the shaft was of polished wood. It was a special weapon, forged by the dwarves with the Hammer of Kharas. The weapon that could destroy the Queen and her army maybe the only weapon in the whole world that could do the job.

Huma stepped to his right and touched the woman’s shoulder, as if assuring himself that she was real flesh and blood and not a mirage created by the enemy. She reached up and took his hand in hers, turning her face, framed by her silver hair, so that she could smile at him.

“We have her trapped now,” said the woman, her voice quiet, almost soothing.

“Yes,” Huma agreed. “There is nowhere for the Dark Queen to go now. Still …” He didn’t finish the sentence, feeling an anxiety that he couldn’t place. It was almost as if evil were radiating from the obelisk … as if the Dark Queen had led them to the spot to be destroyed.

“It will soon be over,” she said, quietly, as if speaking to herself. “All over.” She stared at Huma, her heart pounding in her chest. Slowly, she reached out and touched his bearded cheek with the tips of her fingers.

“None too soon,” he responded gruffly. Yet, he, too, felt a hollowness inside him because he knew what the end of this battle would mean for them personally: a few years of happiness at the very most and then a permanent separation, but that was the price they must pay for the destruction of the Dark Queen.

“You don’t regret our decision, do you?” she asked him quietly.

“Daily. Hourly. Every time I think of what we could have had, I regret it. But it is beyond us. There’s nothing we can do about it.” He turned to face her, drinking in her beauty, a fine, light beauty, created by illusion, but a perfect illusion that could be preserved for all time if they would pay the price. But they could not.

She nodded, afraid to speak. Afraid of the pain that would creep into her words. She turned away and looked at the army of tired men who sensed that the end was near. Tired, dirty men who had never lost their belief that Huma would lead them to victory. Men who knew Huma would not betray them, and who believed that – one way or another – this day would see the end of the terrible war.

“I wish …” she started and found that she was unable to finish the thought. What could she say? She knew from the beginning what the rules were. She knew what it meant for her to take human form, and she knew what the ultimate cost would be for her. And yet, she hadn’t realized that it would be as high as it was. And now it was too late.

Huma took her hand, holding it in his own; he squeezed it tightly so that she could not get away from him. There were a hundred things that he wanted to say to her. A thousand, but he didn’t have the words. In his heart, he knew that they had made the right decision, but that didn’t make it any easier. Rather than telling her that their time together, however short, was worth the sacrifice, he said nothing to her. He knew that she knew, and that was all that was important. The words didn’t have to be spoken aloud to be heard.

A silence descended over the valley and the hills around it. The clouds of dust drifting on the light breeze did little to break the heat of the afternoon. The eerie quiet spread outward, as if everybody held their breath, waiting for someone else to take command. Huma pulled the woman closer to him but could not feel her body press his because of the heavy armor he wore. A sweat born of the heat and the anxiety of the moment dripped down his face and ran down his sides; he didn’t like the way the Dark Queen had fled to the obelisk. He didn’t like the way her army had halted at its base, as if finding protection in its shadow. It smacked of a trap, and that frightened him because he hadn’t expected it.

For a moment everything remained static, the two forces separated by one-hundred yards of open, dry, flat ground. No one moved; the only sounds were the flapping of the knight’s pennants in the hot breeze and a quiet rattling of the metallic and leather equipment. And then the woman vanished. A shimmering of light that looked like the heat rising from the plains near him and she was gone. Huma mounted the silver dragon that appeared next to him, holding the dragonlance in his left hand, the butt resting on his thigh. He saw the commanders of his army, the captains of the pikemen, the bowmen, and the knights, watching him, waiting for his orders. He saw the Dark Queen and her army and knew that the wait was over.

Huma leaned forward, his mouth near an ear of the silver dragon, and said, “It’s time.”

The massive head of the dragon nodded once, and a tear dropped from its left eye.

Huma raised his lance high over his head, then lowered it with a snap of his wrist. At his command, there was shouting in his lines and the bowmen drew the strings of their weapons back. As one, they let their arrows fly, a black cloud of death that arced at the Queen’s waiting men, slamming into their ranks. As the second volley was fired, the pikemen began a slow advance on the enemy, their shields held in front of them, the tips of their pikes pointed at the Queen’s soldiers.

A shout seemed to rise from one-hundred-thousand throats, a roar that came from both armies. The Dark Queen, a beautiful woman dressed in black armor and mounted on a black horse, waved her men forward. They came on, running across the no-man’s land of dried, dead grass, raising a cloud of dust that obscured them and the obsidian obelisk behind them.

Like the sound of the sea smashing onto a beach, the two armies collided. There was the ringing of metal against metal and a grunting of effort as the men of both sides fought with one another. Huma’s men momentarily retreated under the heavy onslaught of the Dark Queen’s men, but their line finally stabilized.

From his position on the hillside, Huma, astride the silver dragon, could watch the fight. His men waded into the conflict, their swords swinging, chopping at the enemy. Men fell, wounded, screaming in pain and fright. Others dropped, dead before they hit the ground. A few broke and ran, but no one paid attention to them. Even as far from the battle as he was, Huma could see the blood beginning to flow. Puddles of it under the bodies. Streams of it began to form rivers. The dust, churning under the feet of the men, was suddenly wet with blood.

Huma’s men forced those of the Queen to retreat. As their line collapsed and her men died, fresh soldiers forced their way into the front ranks. Some, armed with maces, tried to crush the skulls of the attackers. Others, using spears and pikes, thrust into Huma’s forces, killing and wounding.

The sight of the battle was almost too much for Huma to bear. It had turned into the bloodiest, goriest affair he’d ever been witness to, as the men killed and were killed. Huma tore his eyes away, unable to stand the sight, but he could still hear the sound of it. He could hear the grunts and cries of the fighting men. Hear the ringing of the metal of their weapons as they slammed into each other. Hear the screams of agony of the wounded and the shrieks of pain from the dying. He realized that there was no glory in war. There was only the bloody and cruel deaths of brave fighting men.

Huma had not been cut out to be a leader. He hated sitting safely on the hillside, watching the battle while his men fought and died on the plain below him. But, from his position, he could see all of it, could see how the Queen was deploying her army and could counter it with his. He could spot his weaknesses and strengthen them, and he could spot hers to exploit them. Flanking him were the knights, the flower of his army, waiting for their orders to attack.

It should have been a quick, easy victory. The Queen had little left in the way of an army. Huma had pursued her all summer, gaining strength as she lost it. He had pushed her, he thought, across the dried plains until her back was against the ominous obsidian obelisk. She lost men in every skirmish. More men than Huma.

And with each loss, her supporters deserted her. Sometimes, using her magic, or that of the black-robed magic-users, she created illusions to frighten Huma’s men. Once, believing they were being attacked by a race of tall, raven-haired female warriors who didn’t know fear, Huma’s men had turned and fled, leaving him alone astride his silver dragon.

Huma had ridden forward, head bowed like a man in a high wind, the dragonlance held point down. He had ridden into the hordes of women, ridden unharmed through the illusion of their arrows and the illusion of their swords. He had ignored all that, attacking into the ranks of the black-robed men behind them, scattering some and killing others. He’d chopped them down so that they could never use their powers for evil again. As the magic-users ran, or died, the illusions they had created vanished.

His army had stopped running then, turning to look at the empty plain. A few men, killed by their own fear or trampled under the feet of their friends, lay dead. Huma and a beautiful woman with silver hair stood alone, the Queen and her army having escaped the onslaught because of the illusions.

Now Huma sat behind his army, watching them pressing the Queen’s men, killing them in large numbers. Hacking them to pieces. Pushing the enemy back toward the obsidian obelisk and the Queen.

There came a crack of thunder. Clouds began boiling overhead, coalescing from the clear blue. Crimson clouds that turned brown and black before shooting into yellows and oranges. Lightning flashed as the thunder boomed. Splinters of it struck the top of the obelisk so that it began to glow an iridescent yellow. Sparks flew from the top of it as the wind picked up, swirling down around the shaft of the obelisk, whipping at the clothing, the robes, and the pennants of the Queen’s army. The booming grew until it sounded like the dirge of a giant base drum. A crashing sound that rocked the ground, sending vibrations through it.

Suddenly, a formation of soldiers appeared at the base of the obelisk. Each was dressed in glowing black armor matching that worn by the Dark Queen, and each soldier carried a silver broadsword as he fanned outward. Ignoring the coming storm, they hacked their way into Huma’s army, killing his troops quickly, forcing them back to retreat.

Around them, the Queen’s soldiers who had been killed earlier seemed to come to life again. Dead men trailing blood, missing limbs, stood, raised their weapons high, and attacked again. Gory horrors on their feet, shrieking with inhuman voices, waving their weapons over their heads. Attacking. Chopping. Killing.

With a cry of rage, of despair, Huma lowered his dragonlance and the silver beast under him leaped forward. With a roar of anger, the knights joined him, urging their horses onward. The line of men, nearly a hundred yards long, swept past their own soldiers to strike the reinforcements issuing from the obelisk and the ground around it.

Now in the thick of the battle, surrounded by his own men, Huma leaped to the ground. He jammed the base of the dragonlance into the dirt, determined that he would not retreat beyond that point. He drew his sword, the blade held upright in front of him, flashing in the bright sunlight as it peeked through the seething clouds over the battlefield; he waited as the black soldiers of the Queen advanced on him.

Beside him, the silver dragon vanished in a shimmering of light. The woman stood on his right, in the place of honor in the battleline. She shook her head, the waves of her silver hair flipping across her shoulders as she drew her own weapon. She lifted it skyward, stepped forward with her right foot, and then she, too, waited for the enemy. There was a smile on her lips as if she knew something that eluded the others.

Huma felt a sudden surge of love for the woman. She had stood beside him in everything – through the bad times when it seemed that the enemy would win momentarily, and through the good, when it seemed he would win easily. She had been there on the dark nights, holding him when he blamed himself for bringing sorrow to hundreds of families. To thousands of families. And she had been there to share in the celebration when the battles went well and the Dark Queen was driven from the field of battle after suffering heavy losses.

He wanted to say all that to her because he felt that time for them was short. The Dark Queen had too much left, had too many soldiers and too much power, and he had too little. In one horrible moment he knew that he would never be able to tell this silver-haired woman anything again.

For a moment, no one moved. The battle had slowed and stopped during the aerial display. Both sides regrouped. Now, without a command from their Queen, the black soldiers advanced, slowly at first, their weapons thrust out before them, forming a deadly steel wall. Huma, forcing the thoughts of his love from his mind, grinned at them in defiance, and his army spread out all around him, waiting.

One man leaped forward, landing directly in front of Huma. The man swung his sword in a wide arc, trying to lop Huma’s head from his shoulders. Huma countered by shifting his weight and his sword, blocking the blow. As he did, he twisted his weapon down, forcing the point of the enemy’s blade to the ground. When it hit the dirt, Huma stomped on it, shattering the blade like glass. He then swung upward, his weapon knifing through his enemy’s breastplate easily, slicing into the soft flesh beneath it with the sound of ripping silk.

The man dropped his sword and grabbed at his stomach, shrieking with pain as he tried to keep his entrails from spilling to the bloody ground. He fell to his knees, his eyes on Huma as he pawed at his intestines, futilely trying to stuff them back into the gaping wound. Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed on the steaming mass with a whimper.

Almost as if the man’s gory death signaled the beginning of a new battle, the black soldiers surged forward, engaging Huma’s troops. The ringing of the metal rose again, along with the shouts and grunts and curses of fighting men. The noise increased until it was a din, overpowering all other sound.

Huma pushed his way forward, swinging with his own weapon, cutting into the Queen’s forces. Slashing at them, hacking at them, he pressed on, the woman with the silver hair at his side. A huge soldier, his black breastplate slick with the blood of others, thrust a sword at Huma. Using his own weapon, Huma blocked the blow, leaped back, and waited. The soldier advanced, swinging his blade, grunting with the effort. Huma ducked under the blow and, holding his sword in both hands, ripped upward.

The enemy danced to the right, away from the thrust, and came back with one of his own. Huma parried, forcing the blade away from him, and stepped in. With his elbow, he smashed the soldier’s jaw with a splintering of bone and teeth. Blood splashed down the front of his armor, but the man ignored it, fighting to keep his balance. He threw an arm out as Huma struck again, severing the limb at the shoulder. A gout of blood washed to the ground. The man roared in pain and fear and anger, but he held onto his weapon with his remaining hand.

Huma stared into the soldier’s eyes, seeing the fear clouded in them. The man wanted to retreat but could not. Instead, he attacked with renewed fury, swearing at the top of his voice. But the attack was short as the man, weakened by the loss of blood, almost fell, tripping on his own feet.

Huma dodged to his right, almost colliding with the woman. He turned as the enemy soldier slipped and fell on his side, shrieking with pain. The soldier lost his grip on the sword. With his remaining hand, he clawed at the muddy, bloody ground. Rolling to his back, he stripped the helmet from his head, tossing it to the side. Huma was shocked by the youth in that face. His opponent was a young man who couldn’t even grow a beard or a proper moustache; he’d had no chance to live. Now his skin was waxy and unnatural-looking, as the last of his blood pumped itself onto the ground. The young man died, a scream bubbling on his crimson-stained lips.

All around Huma the battle continued to rage. Men hammered each other to the ground, caving in heads and hacking limbs from bodies. Men shouted and screamed and fought. Even the reinforcements the Queen had found in the obelisk were not enough to save her. Slowly, her army shrank as her soldiers died.

And then, again, the sky closed over, the clouds boiled, and the heavens flashed with their anger. Another new army sprang from the remains of the old. Fresh men leaped to fight the exhausted men that Huma had led to this spot. A dozen, two, and then one-hundred more came at them, rising from the bloody ground strewn with the bodies of the slain. The Queen could call on this army, reinforcing it until all of Huma’s men were dead.

These new soldiers moved forward with a fury that was impossible to stop. They chopped their way through the ranks of the pikemen, lopping heads from bodies and crushing skulls with the detachment of men clearing vines from a forest trail. The ground was slick with blood and jellied brains.

Huma, seeing his army disintegrating around him, stood his ground. His armor was slimy with the blood of those he had killed. There were patches of splattered gray from the brains of his victims. Sweat from the effort of the fight soaked his underclothes. His feet were wet from standing ankle-deep in the blood of those who had died in the battle.

But there was no more retreat. If the Queen won now, she won for good because too much had happened. Too many had already died. Their bodies were piled around him. These were the men who had trusted him.

The Queen’s soldiers came at them with a renewed vengeance. Huma held his ground for a moment, fighting them. Slowly, as more of his men died, he was forced to retreat, selling the bloody ground to the Queen at the high price of the deaths of her own soldiers.

And then he was at the dragonlance, his back against it. There was nowhere for him to go, nowhere for him to retreat to. It was time to make his last stand, because to do less would be a betrayal of the men who had ridden with him. Arms shaking with fatigue, he swung his sword, dripping with gore, and held the enemy at bay.

Two of the enemy came at him, one feinting to the left and moving to the right. That man struck at the woman who was busy fighting another adversary. Huma, sensing the attack on her, dived between her and the man. The enemy’s blade slammed into Huma’s armor near the shoulder, cleaving it easily. Huma felt white-hot pain wash down his side and into his chest as his blood spilled.

Huma held onto his sword with a superhuman effort, and swung it, catching the man in the side. There was a crunch as the metal of the enemy’s armor caved in. Drawing on all of his strength, Huma twisted his blade free. But the force caused him to stumble. He went to one knee and began toppling forward. His hand shot out and held him up. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his opponent raising his sword above his head like an axe. Huma didn’t wait for the deadly blade to fall; he rolled to his right, onto his wounded shoulder, screaming in agony. At that same instant, he thrust his own weapon upward into the stomach of the Queen’s soldier.

The enemy took a staggering step forward and then dropped his own blade behind his back. He reached with both hands, touching the sword that extended from his stomach. Clumsily, he sat down as blood dripped from his mouth. He tried to grin, his teeth stained crimson, and then toppled to his side with a bubbling croak.

Huma felt cool hands on him and turned. The woman was crouched next to him, her silver hair splattered with blood, her armor covered with it. She had removed her helmet so that he could see her face. Without a word, she helped Huma to his feet. He staggered back a step and reached out, grabbing the dragonlance to steady himself. He leaned on it, using it for support.

Around him were the tattered remains of his army. They had trusted his judgment, and he had led them to annihilation. They had followed him blindly, and he had brought them to destruction. He was sick with the horror that was unfolding around him. But he was powerless to change it. Powerless to stop the carnage. He leaned on the lance and stared at the battlefield. Stared at the dead men lying on it and at the soldiers who still fought on it. The sun, touching the horizon, threw a blood-red glow over the plain that seemed fitting.

Pockets of fighting surrounded the obelisk, but it was clear that the Queen had the upper hand now. Around Huma were the hacked-up bodies of his own dead soldiers. Bodies missing hands and arms and feet and legs. There were bodies without heads and bodies that were little more than chopped-up trunks. Under them, the ground was covered with a thick layer of bloody mud.

The din of battle had dropped off as Huma’s men died. He could hear the shouting of his knights, calling encouragement to one another as the Queen’s soldiers slowly cut them to ribbons. They were brave men dying bravely in a losing cause. Brave men who wouldn’t give up until they were all dead. Brave men who believed that Huma would still, somehow, lead them to victory. Brave men who believed that their loss was their own fault. They hadn’t given enough of themselves to win the battle or the war. They believed their sacrifice was somehow less than worthy, so they were not destined to win.

Huma felt the frustration and rage burn through him. It was he who was the failure. If he had been smart enough or strong enough, they would have won. If they failed, it was his fault because his men gave all that they had in them. He stood upright, the pain in his shoulder and chest almost forgotten. He stared at the obelisk. An evil black tower forty feet tall, the top glowing with a golden, malevolent light. At the base, the Queen, the second most beautiful woman he had ever seen, was astride her horse, watching the destruction of Huma’s army. She had taken off her helmet and held it tucked under her arm as she studied the progress of the battle. She was grinning because Huma had fallen into her trap.

He could stand the agony of losing no longer. The rage burned in him like a blazing forest because there was nothing more he could do. The battle was lost. The war was lost. And his men had all died in vain. In desperation he jerked the dragonlance free of the ground and aimed it at the tower in a final gesture of defiance. No longer could he beat the Queen. She had drawn him into the battle so that she could destroy his army. She had won the battle, and with the battle … the war.

With the strength that remained in him, Huma hurled the lance at the tower. The motion dropped him to his knees, shooting pain through his body. When he looked up, he saw that the lance had buried itself in the obsidian of the obelisk above the Queen’s head. The lance, forged over the fires of dwarves, forged with the Hammer of Kharas by dwarves, was more than an ordinary weapon. It had a strength of its own. Designed to kill dragons, it held an internal power that was now directed against the obelisk. A power that could destroy the largest of monsters. A power that was stronger than that of the Dark Queen.

Huma grinned then and saw that the glow had faded from the top of the obelisk. There was a rumbling in the ground, as if the tower were trying to shake the lance from its side like an animal chewing at an arrow in its flank. Cracks, bathed in a cold, blue light appeared, radiating outward from the point where the lance was buried in the obsidian surface. There was a roaring, like a gale through trees, as the cracks expanded up and down the side of the obelisk from the top to the bottom.

The Queen turned, saw the damage, and knew what it meant. She knew that the source of her sudden power, of her impossible victory, was being destroyed. She screamed, “No! NO! It’s too late!”

But even as she shouted, the cracks widened and chunks of the obsidian broke loose, falling in slow motion. A rumbling, like all the thunder ever heard, washed over the soldiers of both armies, as bigger pieces of the tower fell; the top of the obelisk collapsed inward with a demonic roar.

Huma, unsure of what he had done, struggled to his feet. He was lightheaded, dizzy. He was sick to his stomach and thought that he would pass out. The wound he had suffered pained him greatly, and he felt his blood pumping from his body and dripping down his side. But he ignored the sensation, watching as the obelisk seemed to die before him.

The Queen kicked at the flanks of her horse. It leaped from the base of the structure, but then she turned. She waved her arms, shouting, her words lost in the rumbling, thundering destruction of the ominous black tower. Lightning flashed from it, lancing upward into the clouds that were boiling angrily above them.

A glowing ball of red appeared in front of her, trailing sparks. It flashed upward toward the dragonlance and exploded around it. For a moment, she believed that she had destroyed the dragonlance and that her power would return. But, when the glow had faded, the lance was still there, embedded in the obelisk like an arrow through the heart of a warrior. An arrow through the heart of her power.

The Queen turned her horse again and rode to the foot of the giant black tower. She tried to seize the dragonlance, but her fingers fell far short. Carefully, she slipped her feet under her so that she could stand on the horse’s back, but even then she could not reach the lance. Shaking with frustration and rage, she leaped. For a moment, her fingers curled around the shaft of the lance. Suddenly, she screamed in pain and fell to the trembling ground.

As she fell, her horse bolted from her, fleeing from the field, trampling the bodies of the dead. The Queen got to her feet, holding her hands in front of her as if they had been badly burned. She turned and stared into the deepening of the night, her hatred stabbing out toward Huma like a beacon at the edge of the ocean. She stepped back so that she was leaning against the smooth surface of the obelisk, trying to draw power from it.

Wind now swirled around the obelisk as the internal rumbling of it built until the ground vibrated. For a moment, nothing happened, and it seemed that the tower had healed itself. Some of the cracks started to disappear and the icy blue light that wrapped the structure began to fade.

Strangely, abruptly, the rumbling started again, and the cracks reappeared and widened. The obelisk seemed to shrink in on itself and tremble as if fighting with itself. Then suddenly, it exploded, blowing apart in a blinding flash of blue-white light.

The force of the concussion knocked Huma, and those with him, from their feet. Tiny bits of obsidian rained down on them, kicking up dust on the distant hills like the first drops of rain after a summer drought. Stunned by all he had seen, Huma lay staring at the clearing sky as the clouds overhead melted away until he was staring into the deepening of the heavens, studded with thousands of stars.

The Dark Queen, like the obsidian obelisk, was gone. There were bits of the tower scattered all over the plain, but nothing was left of the Queen. She had been banished when the obelisk had exploded in fire and light.

With the silver-haired woman’s help, Huma sat up. Before him was a smoking crater where the obelisk had been. Around it were the bodies of his men killed by the Queen’s army, but her soldiers, living and dead, were all gone, washed away in the flash of light and smoke and fire that had destroyed the obelisk and the Dark Queen’s evil power.

Slowly, those of Huma’s men who still lived got to their feet. They were a tired, bloodstained and mud-splattered lot who stared at the crater. One or two of them started forward slowly, as if they didn’t believe what they had seen, as if they couldn’t believe that the tower had destroyed itself trying to free itself from the dragonlance.

Huma found that he could no longer move. His hands and feet were cold, as if he had spent the day on a winter outing. Breathing hurt him; his lungs ached as he held his breath, inhaling only when the pain became too much for him.

The woman cradled his head in her arms, her eyes heavy with tears.

“We have won,” he told her, the joy in his voice unmistakable.

“Yes,” she agreed, her voice hushed. “In the end, it was you who saved the day.” She tried to smile and failed. “You saved the day just as your men knew you would.”

He tried to nod but found the motion made him sick, made his head swim. His eyesight was failing, and he was no longer sure what was going on around him. He tried to smile and asked, “What happened?”

“It was the dragonlance,” she said, blinking rapidly. She looked upward, away from his pale face and added, “It cut to the heart of her power and destroyed it. Destroyed it and her army at once.”

“I didn’t know,” said Huma.

“No way you could,” she told him.

“My men? How are my men?”

She looked at the field around her. The womenfolk had lighted fires on the surrounding hills. Many of them, looking for husbands, brothers, and sons, slipped among the dead, searching.

“Your men are fine,” she lied to him. “Most have survived.” Most had died, killed before the obelisk had been destroyed, but she couldn’t tell him that.

Almost as if the words soothed him, he relaxed. “That’s good,” he told her. “Very good. Now that it’s over, I can go to sleep. I’m so tired.”

She wanted to scream at him. Wanted to order him not to give in to death so easily now, but knew it would do no good. In the fading light, she could see that he looked peaceful. At ease for the first time since she’d known him, now that the war was over and the Dark Queen finally beaten.

She felt him shudder once and realized that he was gone. Gently, she laid him down and then walked to the edge of the crater to retrieve the dragonlance. She wanted it to mark his grave. For a long time she stood looking at him, silently remembering their sacrifice.

They could have had a few fleeting years together as husband and wife, but the cost to the world would have been too great. They had agreed to forego their pleasure so that others could find happiness.

As the tears filled her eyes again, she realized that they had been cheated. She had expected them to have more time together, but that had been cruelly snatched from them.

Without thinking about it, she began to shimmer and glow.

When the remainder of Huma’s army finally found him, he lay at the feet of a silver dragon. The beast had stood over him, guarding his body until he could be properly buried.

The Kagonesti

PART II

Ashtaway

1019 PC (Third Dragon War)

Woodlands of Central Ansalon

CHAPTER 9

FOREST OF FIRE AND FURY

The dappled pattern of black ink on bronze skin rippled through shadowy underbrush. A very keen observer might have discerned the shape there, but only after careful scrutiny – and in the time needed for such an inspection, the stealthy figure would have vanished, moving smoothly on.

Ashtaway glided through the roughly wooded countryside. The Kagonesti looked upward, hazel eyes sweeping the surrounding crests of tree-lined bluffs and broken, rocky cliffs of granite bracketing these lower valleys. His skin, patterned in dark tattoos, blended with the underbrush even as he moved – he was an intrinsic part of the forest. Yet, for three days he’d been on the hunting trail, and it galled him now that he was still empty-handed as his steps carried him back toward the village.

Indeed, these valleys showed not the slightest promise of game – no tracks in the muddy trails, no padded bower where a doe and her fawn had bedded down, or even any sign of grazing on the supple spring shoots that began to green the woodlands. Shaking his head in frustration, Ash decided to climb, hoping that the increased vistas along the rippling bluff line might give him the chance to see something, anything, that could offer a suggestion as to the whereabouts of game.

The rocky heights, in the foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, had been the hunting grounds of his tribe since the time, more than two thousand years ago, when the Kagonesti had split from the elves of Silvanesti in the Great Sundering. The warriors of the wild elves tattooed their skin in black ink, as a sign of their permanent removal from the ranks of their civilized kinfolk. Ash bore a vivid imprint of an oak leaf enclosing his left eye, while on his chest was emblazoned the wide-winged silhouette of a hawk. He carried several weapons, including the strung bow in his hands, with a quiver of arrows and a long-hafted axe slung over his shoulder.

The wild elf reached the mouth of a scree-filled ravine and turned upward, grasping branches with his wiry hands, unerringly finding with his moccasins those rocks set securely in the midst of the loose gravel. Breathing easily, his longbow and quiver resting on his back, Ashtaway glided toward the ridge with the same fluidity of movement that had carried him through the forest shadows.

A wall of rock, perhaps thirty feet high, blocked the crest of the gully, and here the elf’s progress slowed – but only slightly. Without halting, Ash started up the sheer face, picking his route as he went, seizing with his fingertips narrow holds, or perching his toes on outcrops barely a fraction of an inch wide.

Reaching the top, he jogged through open woodland, but despite the increasing vistas surrounding him, he saw no indication of any game worth his sleek, steel-tipped arrows. He passed through a sun-speckled meadow, barren of deer or wild pig. No elk grazed in the marshy saddle between two crests, nor did he hear or see sign of the great flocks of geese that were overdue to make their springtime migration.

Ashtaway thought of Hammana and felt a sense of urgency – he would love to impress the elfwoman with fresh game, to see her eyes shining at him during the celebration feast, while Iydaway Pathfinder played his horn in joyous affirmation of the kill. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would consent to walk with him beside the lake – nothing in his knowledge could be finer than a few uninterrupted hours with the serene, gentle elfmaid.

Though she was younger than Ashtaway by several decades, Hammana had already proven herself to be a healer of great skill, renowned among the four tribes. Her father, Wallaki, was the shaman of the Bluelake Kagonesti, and he had shared his priestly arts with his daughter. Hammana had used her natural talents to ease the sufferings of countless wild elves afflicted by illness or injury. Despite her youth, Hammana possessed maturity and inherent grace in measures far beyond the other women of the tribe, and Ashtaway’s heart pounded faster at the memory of her soft, impeccable beauty.

Hammana would indeed be proud if he brought back a fine deer or pig, but would it be more than pride that gave her eyes that alluring light? In the corner of his mind, Ashtaway hoped that another emotion dwelled there as well – and, slowly, over the course of the past few seasons, he had begun to believe that it did. The feeling between them was a truth pressing with increasing force toward the surface of his and, hopefully, her awareness.

Abruptly a shiver of alarm rippled along Ashtaway’s shoulders and, for the first time in several hours, he froze.

He looked around at the steep bluffs rising in leonine majesty from the surrounding woods. Something unseen, but powerfully menacing, threatened to trouble this pastoral place. He thought he knew the nature of the threat, and he was afraid.

Ashtaway stood atop the summit of one of the granite precipices, concealed by lush undergrowth and a few large boulders. The place was familiar to him – indeed, the bluff’s top had been one of his favorite overlooks since he had discovered it as an exploring youth nearly a hundred years before. Crouching, he examined the valley floor, and almost immediately the glint of sunlight on metal caught his eye. Expressionless, he watched a file of armored riders pass along a lowland trail, moving at an easy walk. Often the treetops concealed the horsemen from his view, but occasionally they passed through a meadow or along the shore of a rock-bordered lake, giving him ample time to study the interlopers.

He was very interested in the humans, but as he remembered his ripple of apprehension, he knew that they were not the thing whose presence had troubled the forest itself. Yet they still deserved watching. All of them were cloaked in metal clothes and rode steeds much larger than the other horses the Kagonesti had seen. The man in the lead carried a pennant bearing an insignia of a red rose.

Ashtaway suspected that the men might be Knights of Solamnia. During his rare contacts with the Qualinesti elves he had heard of the knights, surprised that even the haughty, long-lived House Elves spoke of them in not uncomplimentary terms. Tales of knightly discipline, bravery, and loyalty to an altruistic cause had impressed the young Kagonesti warrior, and now, given the chance to watch the mounted, armored warriors, he seized the opportunity with all of his woodland skill.

Of course, humans in general were the traditional enemies of his tribe. Ash had never personally battled them, but for centuries the older warriors had ceaselessly driven men from the forests whenever they had tried to build their towns or to cut their long, unnatural roadways. Many men had fallen to Kagonesti arrows, and not a few braves had felt the cut of human steel.

Ashtaway wondered about the purpose of this company’s presence here. The column numbered several dozen men, each mounted on a horse the size of a bull elk. Clad all in metal, except for visors raised to expose their faces, the knights must have been stiflingly hot. Yet none seemed to object, and indeed they held to that steady walk.

Again the Kagonesti felt a shiver of alarm, and now the menace had a familiar taste. Ashtaway looked skyward, let his eyes sweep toward the distant horizons.

The first tangible sign of approaching danger was the shade flickering across the ground, dappling the sun-speckled waters of a lake where only a cloud shadow should be. Looking farther upward, Ashtaway saw a pair of young red dragons – not as massive as the hugest of their kind, but still terrifying. The wyrms searched for the knights, he sensed, and flew on a course that would take them directly over their enemies.

Ashtaway watched, fascinated, as the dragons swept closer. The knights had not observed the danger yet – a fact that could only test their mettle to the limit when battle was ultimately, suddenly, joined. As the file of riders entered a broad, wet clearing, the Kagonesti knew that the mutual discovery would soon occur.

The wild elf had experienced the awesome horror of dragons, and he fully expected the knights, when they saw the serpents, to tumble from their saddles and writhe in abject horror as the crimson wyrms dove toward them.

Of course, if the targets of the ambush had been Kagonesti, Ashtaway would have warned them of the danger. He could have shouted, tumbled free some large rocks, or flashed the silver-steel head of his axe in the sun.

Since these riders were only humans, however, the elven warrior decided to watch and see what would happen. True to his suspicions, the dragons and the knights quickly spotted each other. With a shrill screech of triumph, the two reds tucked their wings, racing downward in an awe-inspiring dive.

Expectantly Ashtaway turned back to the knights, wondering if they would topple from their horses in panic or simply flee headlong through the woods. Surprisingly, they did neither. The first of the men shouted a harsh command, audible even to the distant elf – indeed, Ash was impressed by the lack of hysteria in the sound.

Immediately the knights scattered, individual riders racing toward the scant shelter of nearby trees. As the lead dragon, still shrieking, plunged landward, silver shafts sparkled in the sun. Some of the knights had crossbows, and they released their missiles with uncanny speed and accuracy. The serpent’s cries took on a shrill, painful note, and the broad wings shifted to carry it off to the side. Flying awkwardly, the wyrm settled with a splash of muddy water to the marshy ground in the center of the clearing.

The second dragon, even larger than its mate, cried out in fury. Huge jaws gaped, and Ashtaway felt a tremor of sympathy as he saw a great fireball explode outward, sweeping around several tree trunks – and consuming the horses and riders who sought shelter there.

Ignoring the death screams of their comrades, a dozen knights charged with leveled lances toward the dragon as the serpent landed in an open space between several trees. The wyrm reached out, crushing one rider with its great claws, then incinerating several more with another firestorm. At the same time, sharp steel lance heads pierced the dragon’s flanks, drawing a shrill cry of pain. The serpent struggled to break free, flapping its wings frantically as the knights plunged their long-shafted weapons deeper.

Several men drew huge swords and chopped into the monster’s flesh as it flailed. Ash was deeply impressed by the force behind these blows. He watched the steel weapons plunge deep through the monster’s scaly skin. Blood flowed from the wounds as the dragon bellowed, pivoting through the midst of nearly a score of dead knights.

The dragon tried to raise its head, jaws gaping, for another explosive breath, but now the surviving knights drove in, chopping and hacking at the exposed neck. One man in particular, bearing a two-handed sword with a golden hilt, threw all caution to the wind as he stood before the writhing wyrm. With a mighty, shuddering stab, he thrust the weapon through the red-scaled breast, all the way into the serpent’s corrupt, seething heart. The beast reared and then, serpentine body shivering with tremors, collapsed forward in one dying lunge. The monster’s death shriek turned to a gurgle as it convulsed and died, fully burying the courageous knight beneath the crimson bulk of its body.

The first dragon, during the death fight of its companion, struggled through the sticky muck, flapping and clawing desperately. Many arrows, which to Ashtaway looked like tiny darts in the distance, glittered from its right wing. Apparently the knights had been trained to concentrate their shots, and to good effect – obviously the beast had been too badly injured to fly. The Kagonesti reflected, grimly impressed, that crippling one wing of a flying creature was every bit as effective as injuring them both.

But the crimson monster could still breathe, and when its companion fell, fatally pierced, the survivor erupted with a screech of pure hatred. Fire exploded once, twice, and again from those widespread jaws, incinerating the remaining knights even as the humans turned to meet the new threat. Even in the face of certain death, the men remained steadfast – not one threw down his weapon or turned in a useless attempt at flight.

Ashtaway continued to watch, awestruck, as the wounded dragon crawled away from the bloody battle. Dragging its useless wing in the dirt, it disappeared into the forest. The Kagonesti warrior remained immobile and silent for several minutes after the last scarlet scales on the serpent’s tail had vanished into the shadows.

Finally he moved, though he didn’t take the trail back to the village. Avoiding the scene of the battle, Ash worked his way along the high crests. All the while, the moves of the combat replayed in his head like the steps of an elaborate dance. The battle offered by the knights had been the greatest act of courage he had ever witnessed. Furthermore, the fact that the heroes had been humans now forced him to reexamine a number of previously held beliefs and assumptions – obviously, short lives did not equate to a craven existence.

A sound reached his ears and sent a jolt of alertness through Ashtaway’s body – a tingling sense of delight that took him completely by surprise. The noise was repeated, and the wild elf recognized the distant blaring of a horn, its music impossibly sweet, delightful.

He was reminded of the three-spiraled Ram’s Horn that his uncle, Iydaway Pathfinder, played on important or ceremonial occasions. The sound of this distant music was similar, yet even more grand – fuller of body, more resonant in tone. And despite its distance, something told the elf that this horn played a song for him, and for him alone.

Even as he wondered about the sound, he began to run, not consciously aware that he had been summoned.

CHAPTER 10

LECTRAL

Ashtaway ran tirelessly, coasting down from his lofty vantage, sprinting along flowered meadows and down shaded forest trails. Like a deer he flew over shallow streams, darting around thickets, speeding dizzily when the undergrowth thinned. He raced for hours, unaware of time or distance, knowing only a joyous sense of anticipation.

Finally his footsteps faltered. The wild elf’s forest senses suddenly signaled an alarm. He slowed to a trot along a narrow deer trail, then stopped altogether, listening.

Other footsteps thudded quietly through the woods, but not silently, like the running of a Kagonesti brave. Crouching, Ash melted into the brush beside the path. Someone else came along the same trail – and ran with a great deal of grace and speed, to judge from the sounds.

Abruptly she came into sight around a bend, and when he recognized Hammana, Ashtaway’s heart trilled with delight. The elfwoman’s slender body was garbed in a gown of soft doeskin, her black hair braided into a single, lush plait that usually lay over her shoulder – though now it trailed behind, flying from the speed of her run. Her beaded moccasins glided lightly, making little sound – for the Kagonesti women were nearly as adept in stealth and woodcraft as were the men.

She was a healer, not a warrior, and she did not have the warrior’s constant alertness. Her bright, hazel eyes were downcast, her face wrinkled in concentration as she raced closer to Ashtaway.

When she was still a dozen paces away, he stepped into the trail and called her name, wanting very much not to frighten her. She gasped slightly and pressed her fingers to her mouth as she suddenly stopped, but Ash thrilled to the realization that she concealed a sudden, secret smile. She was not displeased to see him!

“Greetings, Warrior Ashtaway,” she said formally. Then she frowned. “Did you hear it as well?”

“The horn? I am on my way to find its source.”

“I heard it calling, and I had to do the same. But what do you think it is?”

Hammana came closer, and Ash was once again struck by her beauty and serene grace. Since childhood she had possessed that sense of self-assurance he found so refreshing and impressive. Perhaps because she was blessed with her unusual skill, she lacked the self-effacing shyness that characterized so many young Kagonesti women. Often Ashtaway had watched her in the village, and sometimes had even gone into the woods to spy on her as she wove nets by the marshy edge of the Bluelake. The few times they had walked that shoreline together were experiences burned indelibly into the young warrior’s memory.

Now fate had drawn them both to this compelling sound, and this fact excited and disturbed him. Surely that was a portent of destiny – that the two of them were meant to be together. Only as these thoughts filtered through his mind did he remember her question.

“It – it sounds like the Ram’s Horn, or a bigger version of it,” he suggested. “I’ve heard my uncle play it many times.”

“I, too,” she reminded him. “Though this did not sound like the signal of our Pathfinder.”

They fell into step side by side, jogging along quickly – though not so fast that they couldn’t converse. “Where were you when you heard it?” he asked.

“At the lake shore,” she said. “There were fishers there, too, but none of them noticed the sound – I asked them.”

“Only you … and me,” he said, his tone serious, the significance of the fact not lost on either of them.

She started to ask something and then, as they came around another bend in the trail, halted with a gasp of breath.

Ashtaway protectively took another step before he, too, ceased moving. The woods opened into a wide clearing, with a cliff of black rock rising steeply beyond. He could only stare in awe at the creature that lay, coiled, in the center of the open space.

Silver scales rippled in the sun, though in many places the argent surface was broken by cruel cuts and ugly, bleeding gashes. One leathery wing, also silver, was half-spread onto the grass, while the other was twisted awkwardly at the great creature’s side. The serpentine neck curled through a full circle, and the broad snout was turned to face them – though both silver eyelids remained close.

The dragon was big – larger than the two reds Ashtaway had seen before – but terribly rended by battle. At first the elf thought it was dead, until he noticed the slow, rhythmic pulsing of one wounded flank.

“Look!” Hammana whispered, her voice taut – but with excitement, not fear. “There, held in the forepaw.”

Carefully Ashtaway stepped forward, looking down to get a clear look at the object held by the dragon.

“It’s the Ram’s Horn!” he replied. “Or one very much like it.”

“Yes – but it’s not the tribe’s horn. Look, it curls in the opposite direction … as if it came from the same ram, but from the other side of its head!”

They looked at each other, awestruck. The legend of the second Ram’s Horn was a part of Kagonesti lore, familiar to them both. At the time Darlantan bestowed the powerful talisman upon Father Kagonesti, he had claimed that the second horn would be held by the silver dragons, a symbol of the bond between wild elf and those mighty serpents. Yet it had never been heard in the dozens of centuries since, so the Kagonesti had come to view the story as a mystical legend.

“The second Ram’s Horn. The tales are true,” Hammana breathed, taking Ash’s hand as she stepped to his side. He welcomed the touch, feeling this as a moment of wonder, not danger. “Is it dead?”

“Not yet, thank you.” The words rumbled from the great mouth, though the jaws barely moved. With a grunt of effort, the silver dragon lifted its huge head from the ground and blinked with a pair of luminous yellow eyes.

Hammana rushed forward, kneeling before the great head as Ashtaway stepped more deliberately behind. “You called us, and we have come! How can we help you?” she asked, gently placing her hands to either side of the mighty jaws.

“Who are you?” asked the Kagonesti warrior, squatting before the silver dragon’s head.

“I am called Lectral among my people, and it would please me to be called that by you as well.” The dragon dipped his head, formally polite. “And you are of the wild elves?”

“I’m Hammana, and this is Ashtaway, a mighty warrior!”

“A mighty warrior of the Kagonesti. I am indeed honored.”

“My friend is overly kind,” Ashtaway declared, shaking his head in embarrassment. “I have only recently spiraled my tatoos, and my prowess is far from legendary.” In fact, while Ash had accompanied war parties against humans and House Elves, his only kills had occurred in a few fights against the scaly, lizardlike bakali – evil creatures that sometimes penetrated the Kagonesti woodlands and were slaughtered by the wild elves whenever they were encountered. While he had fought well, there were many other braves in the tribe who had earned higher battle honors.

“Perhaps not legendary yet, but you will be.” The dragon said this with a shrug, as if it were a statement of fact, not conjecture. Ashtaway felt a shiver of apprehension tinged with profound wonder.

“Who hurt you?” the warrior asked protectively, as if he himself was ready to avenge the attack.

“Four red dragons fell upon me, just two days since. I killed two, but I’m afraid the other two got the best of the fight. They must have been in something of a hurry, though – they left me wounded, when they could have finished the job.”

“Are you badly hurt? The cuts look deep,” Hammana observed.

“It will be long before I fly again.” The dragon wriggled his mangled right wing, but the leathery membrane barely twitched weakly. “And some of these bites, I fear, may begin to fester.”

“Hammana is a healer of much skill,” the warrior said hurriedly. He turned to the woman. “Can you help him?”

“I need mud, for poultices – and bring me strands from the inner bark of young pines. I saw some mushrooms beside the trail that I’ll fetch, and I think I noticed the smell of lilyweal. I’ll gather some of that as well.”

Leaving the dragon, who seemed not the least bit concerned by his grievous wounds, the pair scoured the woods for a time, gathering the items Hammana needed. While he searched, Ash located a deep, dry cave in the base of the sheer obsidian cliff. He returned to Lectral, who was intrigued by this suggestion of shelter and limped after the warrior to the foot of the black stone wall.

“This will do quite nicely,” the silver dragon admitted.

Hammana, bearing an armful of herbs, roots, and tubers, found them at the cave. Ash built a small fire – for roasting some of the herbs – while the woman began applying poultices of mud and leaves to the worst of the dragon’s hurts.

“That feels much better,” Lectral allowed, stretching his neck around to let her swab a wound in his shoulder. “Now, if only you had a deer, perhaps, or a wild pig?”

Ashtaway shook his head, shameful. “This has been a hard time for hunting. I had stalked for three days when I heard your horn, and had not even seen the spoor of game.”

“It is the war,” Lectral said with a shrug. “With dragons in the air, the forest creatures must resort to extreme caution – those who survive, that is.”

“Aye. And the dragons fly closer than ever,” Ash noted. He described the encounter he had witnessed, carefully relating every detail of the red dragon attack and the heroic defense of the knights. “You told me of battling four, killing two. Perhaps they were the survivors.” Lectral listened in silence until the tale was fully told.

“This is both bad and good,” the great silver serpent declared sagely when Ash had concluded.

“I understand the bad – but how can it be good as well?” wondered the Kagonesti.

“The sending of her scouts this far to the south is a sign that the Dark Queen grows desperate. For too long her armies have been held in bloody stalemate on the Plain of Solamnia, at the brink of the Kharolis Mountains, and perhaps she begins to fear that victory may yet elude her. She must strike at the forces of Paladine in Palanthas, and until she breaches that range she cannot bring her army to bear.”

“I have heard of these mountains – but they are terribly far away, beyond the broad plain of Vingaard,” Ash said skeptically. “What importance can those battles have to these southern forests?”

“There has come a warrior, a knight called Huma. It is said that through him the forces of Paladine may yet find a way to defeat Takhisis, and to reclaim the plains they call Solamnia. The Queen of Darkness must have heard these tales as well – and she is frightened. Since her armies are held at bay, she no doubt seeks another way to strike at the knights in Palanthas.”

“But surely she will not find such a route through these southern forests? Only Silvanesti lies beyond.”

“Perhaps it is not attack, but defense, that is now on her mind,” Lectral suggested.

“Defense from what? We Kagonesti? Or does she fear that the arrogant House Elves of Silvanesti will take notice of her war and march forth to do battle?” The scorn in Ashtaway’s voice clearly showed his own estimation of that likelihood.

“I doubt she fears the elves. Surely Takhisis knows that if she leaves them alone they will not interfere with her plans for the human realms. Still, as her armies and arms are depleted, she must take steps to guard her base of power and supply in Sanction.”

“I have seen Sanction from the mountain heights. It is a smoky, miserable place – why must she guard it so carefully?”

The silver dragon was silent for several minutes, gathering his thoughts. Ash waited patiently until his companion once again spoke.

“For two reasons. Sanction holds the great forges where all of the dark army’s steel is smelted, and is the place where weapons that carry the war forward are forged. Her losses have been heavy, and it is known that her slaves are driven hard to hammer new steel, to forge weapons to replace those broken and abandoned on the fields. Sanction is where all this labor occurs. Great mounds of coal are stored there, as well as fields of iron and nickel from which that steel is forged. If she were to lose Sanction, her armies would be left without the lifeline of their power – the materials that allow her to wage this war.

“And second, the city is the site of countless huge storage barns – the food that will keep her army in the field through the upcoming year. Were those to be destroyed, much of the evil strength would be dispersed by the need to forage.”

“Cannot the knights attack the city and destroy these forges?” Ashtaway wondered.

“I am certain that they would like to, but the city is guarded by walls and armies against attack from the west. Any attacking force would have to penetrate many barriers in the face of much resistance. Though they might desire to do so, I doubt that even the bravest warriors could succeed.”

“What does this have to do with dragons flying over the forest?”

“Just this, I suspect: As I stated, Sanction is secure against attack from the west. But as her situation grows more perilous, perhaps Takhisis worries about attack from some other quarter. True, Sanction is guarded by mountains to the north, east, and south, but the Dark Queen is fearful, and no doubt seeks to reassure herself that these avenues, too, are protected.”

“This knight called Huma must be a great man,” Ashtaway suggested, “for his presence to cause the Queen of Darkness such concern.”

“I am told that he is,” Lectral agreed. “And, no doubt, if there was any way through the mountains, the knights would make every effort to strike at Sanction. I suspect her fears on that score are groundless, but she will nevertheless make effort to patrol these forests, just to make sure.”

“I wonder what it is that brought the knights into the woodland. The force was too small for a battle such as you describe. This is far from their domain, as well,” the elven warrior mused.

Lectral shrugged a great shoulder. “Humans think that all Krynn is their domain – but who can guess why they ride where they will?”

“My fellow warriors have slain many humans. When they fight us, they seem crude and vicious, not at all courageous. Though I admit that these knights were different —”

“Isn’t this enough talk of war?” Hammana interrupted. She looked at Ashtaway pointedly. “Can you find some food?”

“Perhaps you might look along the valley below here, just to the north of my cave,” Lectral suggested. “I caught the scent of deer only yesterday. It may be that you will find food for your village – and, perhaps, a haunch that you could spare for your silver friend.”

“I go there immediately,” Ash declared, rising to his feet with dignity. “And if I meet with fortune, know that I will soon return.”

“Splendid,” Lectral said, pleasantly blinking his large yellow eyes, allowing Hammana to massage a blend of herbs into a raw patch between his nostrils. “I shall take a nap while you hunt, and dream of awakening to the smell of venison.”

With a deep, reverent bow, Ashtaway stepped to the mouth of the cave. By the time he started down the trail, the crippled dragon had already drifted off to sleep. Hammana, however, looked after him – and in her eyes he saw the glow of pride … or something more.

CHAPTER 11

SMOKE ON THE BLUELAKE

True to Lectral’s word. Ash found deer in the marshy vale. The warrior stalked during a long, moonless night, bringing down two plump does with a single arrow apiece. In the dawnlit hours he left one whole carcass before the cave in repayment for Lectral’s suggestion. Hammana announced that she would stay with the dragon for a few days, and Ash promised to carry word of her decision to her father, Wallaki.

Pledging to return soon, Ashtaway hoisted the other deer to his back and started toward the village. The gutted doe was heavy, but the weight felt good on the wild elf’s shoulders – and even under the load he maintained a steady, loping jog along the forest floor. The village beside the Bluelake was close, barely a dozen miles away, and he looked forward to returning there by midafternoon. His arrival, he knew, would be greeted with great happiness among all the villagers – it had been many months since a Kagonesti warrior had returned to the village with such a prize.

Ashtaway’s supple moccasins glided softly across the carpet of pine needles, moss, and soft loam. He drew his breaths in long, rhythmic inhalation – once for each four steps – and then exhaled in the same measured pattern. Sweat slicked his bronzed, tattooed skin, but the cool wind of his movement evaporated it quickly, bringing welcome relief from the oppressive summer heat.

He ran with trancelike concentration on his silent, measured progress, yet at the same time his mind remained alert to the forest all around. He listened for the cry of the hawk, or the cawing of angry crows – for any of the usual sounds of woodland life. As he drew nearer the Bluelake, with the morning’s mist burned away by the climbing sun, he grew mildly concerned by the extent of the silence around him.

One possibility, he knew, was that the creatures sensed him, and in their fear they held close to their dens and nests. But Ashtaway knew a great deal about the sensory capabilities of his fellow forest-dwellers, and he felt fairly sure that most of them were not aware of his stealthy passage. After all, he ran facing into the little breeze there was, ensuring that his scent did not precede him. Too, his footsteps were as silent as a stalking cat’s, such that even animals who might be cowering nearby would not hear him go past.

His conclusions did not cause him an overwhelming sense of concern, though they did serve to heighten his alertness. After all, the scarcity of game had not been the only effect of the war. Perhaps another flight of dragons had soared overhead during the night. If the creatures had flown over this stretch of forest, the lingering awe of their presence might be enough to hold the lesser creatures trembling in their nests for a day or more – even lesser creatures like elves or humans, Ashtaway reflected wryly.

The warrior was grateful that his village, though spacious and open on the ground, was screened from the sky by its verdant canopy of vallenwoods. The elves were careful to leave no sign of their presence along the shore, where the Bluelake sparkled at the foot of the steep bluff. Even alert dragons, flying slowly, would be unable to spot the Kagonesti community from the air.

Now, as he jogged beneath the fine weight of venison and diligently probed his surroundings with eyes, ears, and nose, another part of his mind reflected on the battle between the knights and the red dragons. It remained much on his mind, and not just because of the valor displayed by the doomed Knights of Solamnia. There was also the indication, by the presence of both the human and dragon combatants, that the scourge of war might be drawing nearer to the Kagonesti wilds than ever before.

He recalled Lectral’s words about Sanction. That smoldering city, nestled in the valley between three rumbling volcanoes, had seemed to him a hellish place on the lone occasion when he had observed it. At that time Ashtaway had discovered a winding, narrow valley leading up to the saddle between two of the smoking mountains. The finding of paths had long been a skill of his people, and Ash had initially been pleased in his discovery, for the mountainous trail was apparently known to no other. His disappointment had been keen when he learned that it led to such a useless place.

The miles passed beneath his leather soles, half a dozen, then ten, and soon he knew that the village was near. His heart lightened, anticipating the joy that his burden would bring to his villagemates. His uncle Iydaway, Pathfinder of the tribe, had grown too old for the hunt himself – but Iyda would no doubt compose a song for the occasion, probably to play on the Ram’s Horn around the feast fire tonight. Old Iydaway had been a great hunter and warrior in his prime, and now the venerable Pathfinder took great pride in the accomplishments of his elder nephew, even going so far as to give Ash his keen steel axe blade upon the young warrior’s initiation to manhood.

Now, the Kagonesti hunter thought with a thrill of pleasure, his uncle would be very pleased —

Abruptly Ashtaway froze, his reveries interrupted by an acidic, reptilian smell. Bakali! The lizardlike humanoids served the Dark Queen with ruthless loyalty in her war, and twice before Ashtaway had fought – and slain – individual bakali who had wandered too far from their tribes. In each of those occasions he had been repelled by the characteristic stench now wafting through the woods before him.

Yet the scent reaching his nose was far more powerful than he had felt even when in the clasp of a bakali’s slime-coated limbs. There must be a large number of the lizardmen – a war party – that even now could be encircling the Kagonesti village.

Ashtaway lowered the deer to the ground and shrugged his bow off his shoulder in one smooth, soundless gesture. Nocking an arrow, he resumed his advance as soundlessly as before. Still he moved with fluid grace, but the sinew of his muscle rippled through his skin, as taut as his bowstring. Even as he took each step with precise care, his eyes flashed constantly to the left and right. His nostrils twitched, desperately sampling the air for further information about the menace.

He moved along the gradually descending floor of a narrow valley, with two hilltops rolling irregularly to the left and right. Less than two miles ahead the valley emptied into a lush vallenwood grove along the shore of a pristine lake – the site of Ashtaway’s village for the last century. Since the lingering stench was carried only by the air – there was no spoor of the bakali on the trail or underbrush – the Kagonesti suspected that the lizardmen had crept into the valley at some point ahead of him.

The tribe always kept a warrior on lookout in these hills, but they had never been menaced by attack here before, so the sentry duty tended to be casual. Still, if the elven warrior – whoever he might be on this day – happened to be alert, there was a good chance that the village could be warned.

Ashtaway tensed, instinctively drawing back the bow as another alarming scent came to him. His nostrils sampled the air, found the fresh smell of blood – elven blood.

In another dozen steps the wild elf made a gruesome discovery. Though the corpse’s scalp had been torn away and the body horribly mutilated – by talon and fang, it looked like – he recognized his tribemate Warrican. The youngster had earned his first tattoos just the previous winter and took his duties as a warrior very seriously. Yet he had not been prepared for the stealth, the savagery, of the bakali.

And now there was none to warn the village of danger.

Running again, Ashtaway risked minimal noise as he raced along the winding trail. Still he probed the surroundings, wondering if the bakali might have left a sentry to watch their rear. At least Ash could hear no sounds of disturbance – and if the attack had begun, he would certainly have heard it from here.

The stink of the lizardmen grew stronger, and finally the Kagonesti warrior turned from the valley floor, gliding smoothly between the trees of the forested hillside, climbing toward the rounded crest. He darted from tree to tree, staying low, seeking those frequent vantages where curves in the hilltop gave him a look at the valley below.

The lake came into sight, immaculate, blue, sparkling like millions of gemstones in the sunlight. The lofty vallenwoods screened his view of the near shore, but then the featureless expanse of water swept away to a distant, tree-lined fringe.

Ash saw movement around the bases of the nearest trees. At the foot of the slope before him, scaly humanoid shapes slipped through the shadows under the leafy canopy. The lizardmen crept forward, intent on the lodges that stood, still unseen, within the grove. Greenish brown, the monsters blended well with the underbrush. They crept on all fours into an expanding arc around the Kagonesti settlement. The bakali bore crude weapons of stone and bronze, but each of the brutes was much larger than an elf, and was naturally armed with powerful, fang-studded jaws and nimble forepaws tipped with sharp, hooked talons.

Pressing forward, over the rim of the hill, Ashtaway suddenly came upon three bakali crouched in a dip on the descending slope. One of the lizardmen was bedecked in feathers and bore a stout staff topped with a crystal totem in the image of a grotesque beast. The wild elf guessed immediately that this was the chief. The two other lizardmen were garbed as typical warriors, belts of skin supporting loops for their weapons, decorated by one or two dangling osprey feathers. The two spearmen looked to each side while their leader examined the developing ambush below.

In the instant of discovery Ashtaway knelt and drew his bow to full tautness, aiming at the base of the bakali chieftain’s neck. One of the bodyguards turned his snakelike face upward, spotted the elf, and hissed a warning – but not before the Kagonesti had released his missile.

The shaft flew straight, the steel arrowhead plunging through the gristly mane of the hulking lizardman, razor-edges cutting the creature’s throat before it even knew that it had been shot. As his first target fell, Ashtaway drew another arrow. He shot one bodyguard through the heart, dispatching the second immediately afterward.

Only then did Ashtaway throw back his head and utter the alarm – the sharp, keening cry of the hunting eagle, repeated three times. Several voices rose from the village in answering cries: the warning had been received.

The bakali ambushers below whirled toward the hilltop, their attention drawn by the sudden sounds. Ashtaway stood there in full view, and when he had the attention of the lizardmen, he raised his arms over his head, shook his bow and arrows, and whooped jeeringly.

Many of the brutish reptiles charged the lone warrior, while others vanished into the vallenwood trunks, grunting and barking aggressively. Ashtaway heard screams from the village, but the sounds of clashing metal weapons were also audible and he knew that the Kagonesti had not been taken completely by surprise.

But now he was faced with immediate problems of his own. Ashtaway had a dozen arrows left, and twice that many lizardmen rushed toward him, leaping and springing over the ground with shocking speed. Catlike, racing on all fours, a few of the bakali scampered ahead of their fellows up the steep hillside.

Slowing his breathing to the rhythmic pace of perfect concentration, Ashtaway drew back another arrow and let fly, dropping the leading lizardman with a clean shot to the neck. He shot again and again, each missile claiming another one of the attackers – and by always killing the one closest to him, he gained the time to shoot until his feathered shafts were all expended.

Throwing down his bow – he would return to get it later if he was still alive – Ashtaway pulled the long-hafted axe from his belt and raised the gleaming, steel-headed weapon over his head. Though the shaft had been made by Ash himself, Iydaway had told him that the axe head was a venerable artifact. The Pathfinder claimed that the weapon had been in the tribe for generations – legends held that it was handed down from Father Kagonesti himself. Whatever the weapon’s past, Ashtaway suspected that the keen steel blade was no stranger to bakali blood.

A lizardman rushed up the hillside, leaping over the bodies of the chieftain and bodyguards. The creature sprang at the elf, jaws gaping like a crocodile’s. With a single downward swing of the axe, the Kagonesti split the monster’s skull, using the creature’s reckless momentum to amplify the force of the blow. Slain instantly, the beast fell atop the corpses of its comrades.

Ashtaway surprised the next bakali by rushing forward, swinging the axe in a dazzling array of slashes. The first two chops nicked the lizardman’s arms, sending it skidding into retreat. With a nimble leap, the Kagonesti swung again, wielding the axe as if he assaulted an ancient vallenwood trunk.

But the pale white skin of a bakali’s belly was no equal to that legendary hardwood. Ash’s blade slashed halfway through the monster’s torso, sending it tumbling backward in a writhing mass of gore. The following lizardmen slowed their pace, suddenly alarmed by this deadly elf.

The Kagonesti did not give the bakali time to consider a revised plan. He rushed first at one, crippling it with a downward slash of the axe, then followed up against another, driving it to the ground and then killing it.

More than a dozen of the lizardmen swarmed to the hilltop. Ash risked a quick glance into the grove – he still couldn’t see any of the village, but several ominous wisps of smoke emerged from the upper levels of the leaves. All he could hope was that his desperate warning had given most of the villagers time to escape. He knew that every adult, male or female, who could wield a weapon would be covering the flight of the children and the infirm.

He could do nothing for his people by dying on this hilltop. Instead, he spun and raced along the crest of the twisting ridge, darting through the trees with the grace of a deer, flying like a bird over the far side of the slope, diving toward the denser woods at the bottom. He paused in the shadows of a fallen vallenwood, where a cluster of roots extended overhead like a miniature cave. Far behind, still near the top of the hill, he saw several lizardmen cautiously advancing. The creatures darted back and forth, checking behind every tree trunk. Ashtaway smiled grimly – obviously he had taught them great respect for his fighting prowess.

Moving with caution and utter stealth, he worked his way along the foot of the ridge, steering clear of the bakali who had fanned into a long line to pursue their search. The lizardmen at the downhill end of the rank came within a dozen paces of Ashtaway, never suspecting that the patch of darkness beside the base of a great fir tree was anything other than afternoon shadow.

The searchers safely past, Ash sprinted along the forest floor. The smell of smoke was strong in his nostrils. The picture of the sturdy lodges – leather-bound houses that each sheltered a wild elf family – ravaged by the invading bakali nearly blinded him with fury.

Then he was in the midst of the vallenwoods, the great trees rising like pillars from the soft, brush-free ground. Each trunk was larger around than a chieftain’s lodge, the upper branches so dense and so far above that they filtered the bright sunlight into a kind of vague and perpetual twilight. Ashtaway ran like a ghost along pathways that yesterday had chuckled to the tread of children’s feet but now festered under the lingering stench of bakali.

Even before he emerged into the encampment, the smoke began to sting his eyes, and when he burst from between the last vallenwoods he could not stifle the wail of despair that rose from his lips. The lodges, the huts, the drying-racks for hides and jerky, everything was in flames. Lizardmen ran to and fro, forked tongues flicking menacingly from their jaws.

Yet, as the creatures piled more and more of the tribe’s possessions onto the bonfires, Ashtaway sensed a frustration, a bitter sense of failure in the monsters’ demeanor. Heart pounding, the Kagonesti warrior looked around, realizing with a glimmer of hope that there were no bodies! The villagers, most of them at least, must have escaped.

At the moment of his realization, one of the bakali warriors spotted Ash and uttered a shrill warning bark. Immediately several reptilian warriors converged.

But this was the grove where Ashtaway had spent the greater portion of his life. He didn’t need to look overhead as he thrust the axe haft through his belt and leapt, strong hands closing around the limb he remembered. Nimbly swinging upward, Ash rose to his feet on the sturdy bough, some ten feet above the ground. One of the lizardmen prodded upward with a spear, and Ashtaway reached down with lightning quickness, snatching the weapon away.

Standing again, he raised the shaft to his shoulder and threw it at its original wielder. The crude flint spearhead gouged a painful wound in the monster’s side and sent the other bakali scrambling backward.

With another upward leap, Ashtaway seized a second branch, scampering along this one until he reached the deep shadows near the tree trunk. The lizardmen scrambled toward the bole of the mighty vallenwood, jabbing upward with their spears.

A few of the monsters leapt, grasped the lower branches with their clawed hands, then scrambled up toward the waiting elf. Ashtaway met the first of these with a slashing blow of his axe, chopping off a forepaw that reached too far upward. Another bakali tumbled backward, bleeding, and the rest of the monsters paused.

Ash cawed at them like a taunting crow, dancing rudely back and forth on the limb, just out of reach of the lizardmen’s crude weapons. He watched the slitted yellow eyes narrow hatefully, saw the tongues flicking in and out of the scaly jaws as more of the monsters raced to the tree.

When a large crowd of the brutes had gathered, Ashtaway leapt upward again, pulling up to the next limb, then bounding still farther above. Soon dark shadows cloaked him as the branches pressed closer, and he knew he was fully masked from below. At the same time he heard the snapping of branches, and the muttered cursing of his enemies – obviously the mud-dwelling bakali had entered the foreign realm of the treetops in their search for the vexsome Kagonesti.

Balancing with easy grace, Ash stepped away from the thick tree trunk along a slender but sturdy limb. Pacing his steps carefully, he was able to move without causing the rustling sounds that accompanied each lizardman’s presence. The branch began to sag as he neared the end, but from here he could see the stout limb of a neighboring tree, extending to within a dozen feet of his position.

Hurling himself into space, Ash felt the stinging passage of branches whipping across his skin. For a brief moment he flew between the trees, and then his hands unerringly seized the supple branches of the next vallenwood. As the limb bent downward, the Kagonesti swung into the concealment of enclosing branches. In a few seconds, he dashed all the way to the tree trunk, where, once again concealed by shadows, he stealthily worked his way upward.

Shouts and barks rose from the ground. Ash knew that his leap had been observed, but the lizardmen would have trouble catching him no matter which tree protected him, and sooner or later the elf would find an escape route concealed from below.

High in the sheltered boughs, Ashtaway threw himself flat on a broad limb – a branch that had been one of his favorite vantages since the village had been here. Crawling outward like a snake, keeping his body atop the thick branch, he remained invisible to the watchers below. The sturdy wood bent only slightly from his weight, and soon he emerged from the thicket to get a good view of the clearing on the lake shore.

The heavy cloak of leaves concealed any glimpse of the sky overhead. So dense was the foliage that the smoke had begun to collect underneath it, just as a smoldering cook fire obscured the ceiling of a lodge. The edge of the bluff dropped toward the lake beyond the far line of trees. The lone pathway to the water followed the floor of a narrow, steep-sided ravine descending from the edge of the village clearing. Two Kagonesti warriors lay, cruelly hacked, at the mouth of this ravine. Obviously they had been a rear guard, holding so that the rest of the villagers could escape.

Ashtaway saw no sign of the rest of his villagemates, which he took as good news. It seemed that most of the Kagonesti had escaped. His heart burned with hatred as he watched the lizardmen ransack and destroy the village. Yet everything, from houses to drying racks to the furs, pots, and spices that were the possessions of each family, was replaceable. It was the lives of his people for which he felt the most fear.

Peering into the grass choking the upper end of the ravine, Ashtaway saw a telltale bending of the long-bladed plants. Someone – several people, actually – concealed themselves there, where they, too, could watch the destruction of the village. Some of his fellow warriors, he suspected, had returned to spy on their enemies. The Kagonesti braves should be safe, since the minor waving of the reeds was not likely to attract the attention of the brutish bakali.

Then Ash’s heart almost stopped beating as he saw a tall, proud figure stand among the long-bladed grass. He recognized the hawklike features, the feathered ceremonial cape of the Pathfinder – but why would Iydaway expose himself? Other Kagonesti – a half dozen young warriors – rose behind Iydaway. Resolutely, the small band of elves started from the ravine into the smoky clearing. They had not yet been observed by the plundering lizardmen, but Ash knew they would inevitably be seen – probably in a matter of seconds.

Ashtaway released his grip on the branch, rolled to the side, and plunged downward with dizzying speed. Shouts of triumph rose from below, bringing a grim smile to the falling elf. With precise timing he seized a lower limb, arresting his fall and swinging himself back into the concealment of the vallenwood greenery.

Again he raised his head and taunted his enemies with the cawing of a crow – the most insulting sound in the long list of Kagonesti malignery. As if they sensed his scorn, the bakali grew frantic, howling and snapping ferociously. Several of them threw spears into the tree. One of the weapons thunked into the bark near Ashtaway, and the elf quickly pulled it free, hurling it firmly toward the chest of its caster.

But now whoops and shrieks rose from across the clearing, and Ash knew that Iydaway’s small band had been discovered. “Why?” he groaned aloud. Why did his uncle risk his life like this?

Dropping lower, Ash got a look at the courageous, futile charge – six Kagonesti warriors and an old man, brandishing a mixture of swords, axes, and spears, charging into a camp occupied by perhaps a hundred savage lizardmen. Howling madly, the elves attacked with such valor that, at first the bakali scrambled to get out of the path of these mad fighters.

Iydaway was not as quick as he had been three centuries before, but the Pathfinder still flew over the ground with grace and balance. The old elf feinted a charge directly across the camp, then turned and led his small party toward the smoldering wreckage of a large, ceremonial hut.

The bakali closed in, and two of the younger warriors halted, meeting the charging lizardmen with steel swords, holding them at bay while Iydaway and the other warriors raced toward the ruined hut. Reaching the smoldering wreckage, the venerable elf plunged into the hot coals, kicking his feet through the ashes on what had once been the floor of his home.

Ashtaway cried out in fury as he saw the pair of rear warriors fall, rended savagely beneath the talons and fangs of the bakali. Dropping to the ground in the midst of his enemies, Ash struck this way and that with his axe, carving painful wounds into several of the lizardmen before he again leapt upward and pulled himself to the minimal safety of a tree branch.

But now, at least, he had begun to guess at his uncle’s motives. There was only one possession of the tribe that was truly irreplaceable, a treasure that would always be passed from generation to generation. It had been entrusted to Iydaway before Ash had been born, and often the young warrior had watched as his uncle made music or ritual with the celebrated artifact.

Now, the young warrior knew that Iydaway had gone to retrieve the Ram’s Horn.

One of the Kagonesti protecting Iyda fell, pierced by a bakali spear, while the three who remained fought desperately to screen the elder. None of the lizardmen seemed willing to brave the heat of the coals in pursuit. They would wait for the old warrior to burn, or to emerge from the ruins into range of their weapons. One, then another of the warriors fell, cruelly slashed. Many more bakali had gathered in a ring around the base of Ash’s tree, fully encircling even the vast sweep of the vallenwood’s branches.

Ashtaway moved with the speed of thought, flying like an arrow from the limb, driving his head into a lizardman’s back. The creature went down, its spine shattered, and the Kagonesti rolled away from the body, bouncing to his feet beyond the enclosing ring of bakali.

Racing toward the ruins of his uncle’s lodge, Ash chopped down the only reptilian warrior who tried to stand in his path. He saw the last warrior of the Pathfinder’s escort die, pierced by a stone-tipped spear. Iydaway, a blackened shape in his hand, abruptly threw his hatchet, dropping one of the lizardmen standing warily beyond the coals. Ash shrieked like a hunting hawk, racing at the other two, madly brandishing his bloodied axe. A crowd of howling lizardmen pursued the fleet Kagonesti.

The elder warrior snatched up his weapon and leapt into step beside his nephew, sprinting for the largest of the village vallenwoods. Ash didn’t risk a glance backward, but as he slowed his pace to match Iydaway’s he knew that the enraged bakali had begun to close the gap.

Their pounding feet carried them across the empty ceremonial circle at the center of the village. Since a mighty vallenwood stood beside this circle, steps had been pegged into the trunk and a platform of branches had been erected some twenty feet off the ground. It was one of the few Kagonesti sites that had not yet felt the scorching flames of plunder.

At the foot of the tree, Ash whirled, crouching with his axe upraised. He heard Iydaway scramble up the wooden steps as the young elf slashed his weapon through the air, so fast that the steel edge vanished in a blur. The bakali had learned to respect that razorlike surface. In one mass, the pursuing warriors skidded to a halt, the mob expanding to encircle the tree and try to rush at Ash from the flanks.

Ashtaway gave his uncle two heartbeats to get up the steps, knowing that a moment longer would give dozens of lizardmen time to overwhelm him. Springing upward and back, still slashing with his long-shafted axe, the warrior retreated up the steps. The wooden pegs were too narrow to support more than one foot at a time, but he held his balance long enough to reach the first of several handy branches.

A bakali leapt at the elf’s foot, but tumbled back with a bloody gash in its forepaw. Others barked and howled at the rear of the mob before turning about and racing to a nearby lodge. Drawing partially burned sticks from the blaze, the lizardmen waved them through the air until yellow flames crackled and trails of smoke dwindled in the air. Bearing their makeshift torches, the creatures hastened back to the tree.

By this time Ash had joined his uncle on the ceremonial platform. Above them the bole of the tree rose into the limitless heights, challenging the clouds and leading through innumerable pathways into a dozen neighboring trees. Still clutching the blackened horn, Iydaway started upward. His nephew followed, waiting only long enough to cut the lashing of the platform and drop the heavy wooden structure onto the dozen or so bakali foolish enough to stand directly underneath.

CHAPTER 12

THE PATHFINDER

“Your warning gave us time to flee the village,” Iydaway explained. “We made many of the lizardmen pay for their cruelty, but brave elves gave their lives in that cause.”

“I found Warrican at his post, slain by surprise attack,” Ashtaway said.

“Palqua and Thyll held at the mouth of the ravine for a long time. They gave the rest of the villagers time to reach the foot of the bluff and make their way along the shore.”

The two Kagonesti padded silently along the forest floor, a mile from the ruined village. They made their way toward a grotto in the heart of the vallenwood forest. Years ago it had been selected as the tribe’s gathering point in the event of disaster.

“And more died to regain the Ram’s Horn,” Ashtaway noted. “Is it so precious, Uncle, that six warriors should perish to save it?”

Iydaway sighed and shook his head. The spiraling tattoos on his cheeks and chin masked his grief, but Ash knew that the question had hurt the elder warrior, and with that knowledge came regret that he had asked it. But his uncle held up a hand as if to dissuade the younger elf’s guilt. The leafy pattern inked onto Iyda’s palm had a soothing effect on Ash, and again he breathed deeply as he awaited a reply.

“It is not, in truth, worth the sacrifice of a single life – at least, not that we can say with certainty,” Iydaway declared, his voice rhythmic, almost songlike. “But in the same truth it may be worth the saving of a hundred lives, of the whole tribe. And then who knows? If I had known that those young braves would die – or that I would live – would my decision have been the same?”

Ash waited, knowing that this was not a question he could answer.

“In truth, I had to go and get the horn. As long as I live, it is not a thing I can abandon. Were you to throw it into the deepest sea, I should be compelled to dive in after it, drowning in the attempt to plunge the depths. Should you cast it into the fiery crater of one of the Lords of Doom, I must need pursue it, walking through fire as long as blood flowed in my veins. I am the Pathfinder, and such is my destiny and my fate – a destiny that I willingly bear.”

Iydaway paused, shaking his head sadly. Ash was surprised to see tears in his eyes. When the old elf spoke, his voice had returned to its natural tone.

“To answer your question, if I had known that my protectors would perish in the attempt, I would have ordered them to remain behind.”

“And perished by yourself,” Ash confirmed.

“And the horn would still be lost to the tribe,” agreed the elder.

Ashtaway took the sooty spiral and tried to wipe it clean with his hands, succeeding only partially. Still, the shine of the smoothly curled horn seemed to gleam through the dirt, as bright as sunlight in the shadowed forest depths.

“Is it truly made from the horn of a great ram?” Ash asked skeptically. Though he had enjoyed the music of the horn at village ceremonies and knew that his uncle cherished it above any other object, the young warrior realized that he knew very little about the treasured item. At the same time, with a shiver of portent, he remembered that he had to tell the Pathfinder about Lectral.

Iydaway shrugged. “That is what Callista Pathfinder, my granduncle, told me, and his predecessor – the Pathfinder Barcalla – told him. The legend declares that, in the Age of Dreams, the Elderwild Kagonos carved it from the horn of the Grandfather Ram – the creature he met, as you know, among the highest peaks of the Khalkists.”

“Uncle, I heard the second Ram’s Horn.” Iydaway’s eyes widened, but he made no reply. With careful attention to detail, Ashtaway told the tale of his summons from Lectral, and the subsequent encounter with the wounded dragon. Iydaway nodded sagely, clearly unsurprised by the information – a fact which, in itself, surprised Ash a great deal.

“It is fitting that you were the one who heard,” Iyda said, smiling gently.

“Myself – and Hammana,” Ash noted.

“Yes, and Hammana. That part puzzles me.”

“Her healing has been a great help to Lectral – some of his wounds might otherwise have killed him.”

“Indeed.” Iydaway walked in silence for a time. When he spoke, his question took Ashtaway by surprise. “Does it seem as though the mantle of Pathfinder is a burdensome thing, Nephew?”

“No – well, perhaps yes. It is an important task, I know. And no wild elf should find it difficult to stay away from the House Elf cities. But for a man to go through life without taking a wife … that, it seems, might be a lonely choice.”

“The Pathfinders of the wild elves, from Father Kagonesti on, have been solitary elves, true. Perhaps, because of this, we have not felt that lack as much as another might.”

“I know that they have been great leaders, Uncle, and a strong bond to unite all the tribes.”

“Indeed, it was Father Kagonesti who gave birth to our freedom. Without our first Pathfinder, there would be no tribes today.”

“And you, Uncle, have shown the tribes the way to survive the Dragon War. Finding the paths deep in the forests, seeking these glades where the trees shield us from the sky … we owe you much.”

“Ah … but that is a sadness, that we must forever hide from the sky. At least we, at the Bluelake, have the best of the deep forest – for our shore gives us a glimpse of open waters and sky.”

“When the war ends, then perhaps we’ll seek the high valleys again, where the wild elves lived for hundreds of years,” Ash mused. He himself had always loved the heights and had spent much of his youth exploring the mountains within a fifty-mile radius of the Bluelake. Yet, despite these sojourns, Ash was not by nature a solitary elf and always rejoiced when he returned to the company of his villagemates.

“It will be the task of the Pathfinder to lead us there,” Iydaway agreed. “Though I have found the path may best be chosen through discussion among the people, perhaps spiced with a bit of persuasion by myself. In this, I am different from Callista or Barcalla. My predecessors – following the example of Father Kagonesti – would show the path and expect the tribe to follow. For me, it is better when we talk first, then move.”

Ashtaway nodded thoughtfully, curious that his uncle chose to explain this philosophy to him.

The two Kagonesti continued in silence, remaining alert for pursuit. Once they heard the hoot of an owl and looked up to see a tattooed warrior waving them on. A few minutes later, they joined the rest of the tribe in the shadowed depths of the vallenwood grove. A pool of still water reflected the darkening sky, and Ash’s heart broke at the sight of the many frightened faces peering out from behind the mighty trunks.

The elves would not risk many fires tonight, but they felt secure for the moment from bakali pursuit. A dozen warriors stood duty in the woods, posted in pairs and observing from the treetops fully a mile away from this secret grotto.

The rest of the tribe, save for the nine warriors who had fallen during the battle, now awaited the communal decision as to their next course of action.

Ashtaway quickly sought out Wallaki, Hammana’s father. The old shaman, a respected figure in the tribe, had been given a straw mat underneath a lush vallenwood, where he would be as comfortable as possible. Resting a small gourd over a patch of glowing coals, Wallaki mixed some kind of medicinal brew with herbs and water. The shaman raised his darkly tattooed face hopefully as Ash approached, though his eyes seemed to search beyond the warrior’s shoulder.

“I – I had hoped …” The shaman’s voice choked, and Ash was grateful that he could ease his fears.

“Hammana is safe, not near the village,” Ash said, explaining the summons that had drawn the two of them into the foothills. “Now she remains with Lectral, healing his wounds, which are many and deep.”

“Hammana tends a silver dragon?” The shaman nodded without surprise, studying the strong-smelling brew that bubbled over his fire. “That is a wondrous thing for anyone, and the highest honor of all to a Kagonesti healer! But are you sure she is safe?”

“Safer than beside the Bluelake,” Ash said wryly. “But, in truth, Lectral is a fine dragon, and grateful for her attentions. And though he cannot fly, he can certainly protect her from any other threats that might lurk in the woods.”

“That is very well, then,” Wallaki agreed, before turning back to his potion and beginning a mystical chant.

Ashtaway joined the warriors who gathered around the Pathfinder and his spiral Ram’s Horn. Iydaway played the instrument slowly, mournfully, the music cushioning and echoing the grieving of the tribe for its lost warriors. He ceased playing long enough to recount the story of Ashtaway’s attack, and other warriors – who had seen parts of the battle from distant treetops – chimed in with further praise. Ash sat tall and proud, deeply warmed by the praise of his comrades. Warrican’s father recounted a list of the dead, and after each name, the warriors chanted a pledge, promising that the deaths would be avenged.

Finally the Pathfinder lowered his horn. The other braves waited expectantly until he spoke. “Our homes are destroyed, and the hated enemy camps in the ruins of our lodges. Some of us have died, but many more still live. Now we must decide what to do.”

“Let us return to the lake shore during the night. We’ll kill the lizardmen and reclaim our village!” spat a young warrior, Ampruss, whose father had been one of the first warriors to fall.

“Already the bakali have given me cause to grieve,” argued Maggera, newly widowed mother of Ampruss. “Let us escape with those lives we have saved.”

“Perhaps we can muster other tribes to aid our attack,” suggested an older warrior. “The Whitetail village is but two days away, the Silvertrouts barely another day beyond. Shall we get them to help?”

“It would take too long,” Ash suggested. “These bakali came to raid our village. I don’t think they want to live there.”

“We should attack quickly! The lake shore has been our home for a full century,” stated Faltath, a veteran warrior and lifelong friend of Ashtaway. “Are we such cowards as to be driven away by a single attack?”

“It is not a matter of cowardice, but perhaps destiny,” Iydaway demurred. All the other arguments ceased as the Kagonesti waited for the honored Pathfinder to continue.

“We know that war has blackened the northern plains and extended far into the mountains and forest lands as well. The dragons of the Dark Queen fly ever farther, it seems, always seeking to extend the range of her deadly servants.

“Now we can go back to the village and kill many bakali,” Iydaway continued, the firm resolve in his voice indicating that he, personally, would derive great satisfaction from this bloodletting. Then his tone took on a sadder, more wistful sound. “But I fear we may not be so lucky when the lizardmen come again. If Ashtaway had not been returning from his hunt, we would be weeping for many more of our people tonight.”

“The bakali never came before! Why do you say that they will come again?” persisted Faltath, who had earlier counseled attack. He was a huge elf, nearly as big as a human, and had been Ashtaway’s main rival in the arts of the hunt and battle during his early years. Though they had become different as they matured, Ash still admired Faltath’s strength and his determination when faced with a course of action. The big warrior’s face was obscured by spiraling whorls of black ink, so that his eyes flashed from the middle of an apparently spinning vortex. Now they glowed with anger, an accusation against any brave unwilling to join his proposed attack.

“Because that is the way of wars,” Iydaway responded, “of all great wars, at least. And the war that plagues Ansalon now is such a war. This I know. It is a great monster whose reach has been sweeping ever closer, until today we were grazed by a single talon on the far fringes of its great body, well removed from its dark and bloody heart.

“Yet the talon has learned that it can reach us, and when next it strikes it will be with the full force of a paw, or a mighty leg. The next time perhaps the bakali will have time to surround us, or they may come with ogres, even dragons. Then the killing will fall upon us.”

“Dragons do not care about the forest floor,” argued Faltath, his fist clenching around the heavy hilt of his longsword.

“This is not true, not anymore,” Ashtaway declared. He told of the battle between the twin red dragons and the armored knights. His wonder at the knightly courage choked his voice, and for the first time he profoundly regretted his silence, knowing that he should have warned the humans of the impending attack. Understanding that the other braves regarded the presence of the knights to be as great a threat as the red dragons, he tried to reach them with his eyes, to show them that, somehow, these humans were different from the land-stealing men who had been the lifelong enemies of the tribe.

As he spoke, his listeners remained silent. “Not only were human riders patrolling this part of the forest, but the dragons who flew overhead were also searching the ground. If they had spotted the village, it is foolish to think that they would not attack, simply because they haven’t done so before.”

“But the lizardmen must be taught a lesson, just as we would slay the humans if we found them near the village!” Faltath argued furiously. “We know that Ashtaway fought and killed many bakali, while the rest of us fled! How can we let them think we run with our women and children at the first sight of an enemy, not daring to exact revenge?”

“We cannot let them think this,” Iydaway declared bluntly, momentarily silencing the belligerent warrior. Faltath eyed the Pathfinder carefully, waiting to hear his next suggestion.

“The lizardmen must be punished for their attack. But we, the Kagonesti of the Bluelake, must also find a new home. It is clear that the war will no longer leave us in peace – and it is equally clear that, though this is not our struggle, it has the power to sweep us into its grip and destroy us.”

“How will the bakali be punished?” demanded Faltath, as if he had not heard the rest of the elder’s pronouncement.

“We will make an attack, savage and unrelenting, that slays many and drives the rest from our village. They shall know it as a place of defeat and death – but even so, we shall no longer live there.”

“But … where do we go?” asked Ampruss.

“We shall move south, past even the village of the Silvertrout, into the heart of the woodlands between the two great mountain ranges of the world. There we shall find a new lake, and there we will make our new home.”

“It is decided, then,” said Faltath bluntly. “We march to the south, but not until we have slain many, many bakali.”

“Indeed,” Iydaway said. “And that is enough talking for me. I shall leave it to you warriors to plan the attack.”

CHAPTER 13

VENGEFUL ARROWS

Ashtaway looked to his right, across the space between the lofty vallenwood trees. Faltath, his tattooed face locked in a grimace of fury, signaled that he was ready. With a look to the left, Ash saw Balkas, a young archer with a patient and deadly eye. The bowman had an arrow drawn back to his cheek, and Ashtaway knew that his tribemate already had a bakali in his sights.

“The braves are almost ready,” Ash whispered to Iydaway, knowing that the warriors on the flanks were still moving into position.

The Pathfinder nodded. “Soon,” he replied, his words as soft as the night breeze.

Ash deeply regretted his uncle’s presence in the tree, with the battle so imminent. The Pathfinder had been a mighty warrior in his day, but Ashtaway would have been much happier if the old elf had consented to wait with the other elders, safe in the forest grotto, until the attack was over. He knew better than to argue with the stubborn Pathfinder, however – all he could do was resolve to keep an eye out for him as much as possible.

The ruined village sprawled below them. Lodges and huts still smoldered, but no trace of their wooden frameworks jutted from the soft ash. The central circle, beside the greatest vallenwood, was strewn with rubble and debris. In the fullness of the predawn dark, the shapeless bundles that were sleeping bakali lay haphazardly about the village, exhausted from their battle and its subsequent revelry. The lizardmen were not totally careless. They had posted several guards around the periphery of their captured glade, but these sentries had been no match for Kagonesti stealth. Now, each of those guards was dead, throat slit by an elven warrior.

More Kagonesti, about four dozen in all, still climbed into the trees that were out of sight to either side. Though elven eyes were keen in the darkness, even the Kagonesti could not see all the way across the darkened camp, so it was hard to know how many of these had taken up their positions.

Ashtaway knew that the bakali would have discovered the ravine to the lake shore. He had suggested that a small force try to block that escape route, but Iydaway and Faltath had both vetoed that idea, pointing out – justifiably – that the warriors in that party would have little chance of surviving the battle. The tribe would attack from the woods and hope to kill as many of the enemy as they could before the rest made their escape.

Faltath hooted softly, like a contented owl, but the sound carried obvious urgency to Ash’s ears. The Kagonesti were tightly wound, ready to fly against their enemies like the arrows that would signal the start of the attack. Yet Ashtaway still found himself vaguely reluctant to initiate the ambush, for reasons that he couldn’t understand. Certainly he had no hesitation about slaying bakali. Indeed, his sincere hope was that none of the scale-skinned humanoids would escape the killing ground of the former village.

Shaking his head, biting back an unbidden cough of anger, Ashtaway forced aside his indecision. Pursing his lips, he made ready to whistle the distinctive cry of the whippoorwill. The sound would not be unnatural in the summer dawn, though the birds themselves would not speak out for another hour or so. That minor inaccuracy was enough to conceal the code from the dimwitted lizardmen.

Before Ash could signal, a shaft flew from a nearby tree. A bakali shrieked as more arrows sliced into the lizardmen. But now the scaly defenders leapt to their feet, racing madly about the camp.

A heartbeat passed as four dozen bowstrings quivered under full tension, four dozen sleek-shafted arrows sighted upon their targets. The missiles flew, and immediately the bakali camp echoed with shrieks and yowls of pain. Many lizardmen thrashed madly, while others lay still – slain in their sleep, or the first few moments of wakefulness. A hundred or more of the reptilian invaders raced about, weapons raised, staring frantically into the enclosing forest.

Another volley of arrows sifted silently into the horde, and then another. Helpless against the attack, which came from three sides, the mob of bakali milled about, small groups rushing toward individual trees. Some lizardmen dropped to all fours and galloped toward the vallenwood occupied by Ashtaway. He shot one, his arrow joined by a volley from several surrounding trees. The small band of attackers, in unison, flopped to the ground and lay still.

Ash looked for another target. Some of the lizardmen had begun to back toward the ravine leading to the lake shore, and the others instinctively followed. Silver arrowheads shot from the woods around the ravine, but Ashtaway wasn’t certain the retreat could be stopped by arrows alone. Still, the tribe sought to attack without taking losses themselves, so the Pathfinder had urged the necessity to stand off and shoot for as long as possible. Thus far, it seemed no Kagonesti had been hurt, while numerous bakali lay still and bleeding on the soot-covered ground.

Abruptly the darkness was shattered by the cry of a diving hawk. Faltath, who, like Ashtaway, could no longer find a bakali in arrow range, leapt from the lower limbs of his vallenwood and started across the clearing, longsword upraised in his clenched fist. The warrior’s cries took on a fiercely triumphant sound as he sprinted toward the enemy.

Other elves echoed the bold shrieks – Ashtaway didn’t hear himself crying out until he noticed the tautness of his lips and mouth – and in one savage wave the tribe converged on the retreating lizardmen. Even Iydaway sprang like a young warrior, cawing wildly. The bakali pounced over each other in sudden panic, surging into the narrow ravine that seemed to offer the only possible escape.

Ash struck down a crocodile-faced warrior with his axe, and it seemed as though he had stepped directly from the earlier battle into this one. His weapon rose and fell like an intelligent thing, choosing its targets quickly and then striking with unerring accuracy. Part of Ashtaway’s attention remained on Iydaway as he sought, with limited success, to prevent the Pathfinder from throwing himself fully into the melee. Fortunately, so pervasive was the panic among the lizardmen that the elven warriors faced only a few hurried return blows.

Several of the scale-skinned creatures suddenly stopped their flight and barked furiously. They charged en masse, viciously hacking their swords into a Kagonesti warrior, slaying the wild elf as Faltath and Ashtaway leapt forward. The hulking warrior bore one of the monsters to earth, twisting its head in his hands, while Ash chopped savagely into first one, then the other bakali’s face. Groaning piteously, the two reptiles fell. Whooping Kagonesti warriors stabbed the writhing forms as Ash continued forward.

The ravine provided an easy route to the lake shore, and Ashtaway worried now that many bakali would escape. The creatures teemed onto the trail, crowding down the narrow gully. Still more of the lizardmen halted their flight, turning to meet the pursuing elves with their weapons, and the Kagonesti realized that something must be halting the enemy’s retreat.

He thrust at two monsters with one swinging slash, and they both cowered away. Whatever held up the flight, Ash knew that it wasn’t a sudden development of courage. Demoralized by surprise and the slaughter of so many of their fellows, the craven bakali sought only escape.

The ringing of steel clanged through the night, in a sound more brash than any light Kagonesti longsword. Puzzled, Ash stepped back from the melee, struggling to hear.

From somewhere up ahead, bakali screamed in panic, and their terror was mingled with many a dying gurgle. That steel blade rang again, and the mob of lizardmen actually surged back, toward the weapons of the waiting Kagonesti.

“By the Oath and the Measure!” came a cry from the darkness, in a language barely recognizable to Ashtaway.

But he recognized the heavy, nasal tone – a human! A human stood in that ravine, blocking the flight of the terrified lizardmen.

Bakali crowded into the gully, clawing at each other, trying to hack and prod through the press. Behind them the Kagonesti closed in, blades slashing.

Perhaps there would be no escape for the hateful creatures, Ash thought with grim satisfaction. But it was knowledge underlaid by a deep and substantial fear – a fear triggered by this inexplicable arrival of a human.

Trotting along the top of the ravine now, Ashtaway struggled to penetrate the darkness with his keen eyes. Below him, dozens of bakali squirmed and struggled, some trying to press down the floor of the ravine while others scrambled, with equal vigor, to get back to the clearing in the vallenwoods. None of the lizardmen so much as tried to climb the rough, crumbling walls, though any wild elf could have scampered up and down in a dozen places.

Ash stepped with care as he worked along the upper edge of the ravine, knowing that a misplaced foot could send him sliding into the midst of the bakali. At the same time, he hurried as quickly as he dared, trying to imagine what he would find.

The terror of the fleeing lizardmen was an almost palpable force, rising out of the narrow ravine like a stinking cloud. Ash again heard the human’s voice bellow amid the clanging of steel. The elf came around the bole of a large tree and saw him: a strapping fellow bearing a great sword in both hands, standing in the narrowest part of the ravine. Swinging the weapon through a dazzling series of slashes and parries, he completely blocked the escape route of the panicked lizardmen.

Now several of the bakali tried to scramble up the steep walls of the gorge, falling backward after they got a short distance above the ground. One made it far enough to snap at Ashtaway’s foot, but the Kagonesti chopped downward with his axe and sent the monster tumbling into the press of its comrades.

Even through the darkness a flash of recognition struck Ash – something about the human’s huge, golden-hafted sword seemed vaguely familiar. The man stood with unfaltering courage, shieldless, clutching the hilt of his weapon in white-knuckled fists. Sheer rock walls rose to the man’s right and left, and the sweeps of that mighty sword came within inches of each cliff. A lizardman dove to his belly and tried to squirm past the knight. The creature died quickly, its heart pierced by a blow from above. Two more of the scaly humanoids hurled themselves at the lone fighter, but the man cut them down so quickly that the two stabs seemed almost simultaneous to Ash’s astonished eyes.

Movement to the side caught the elf’s attention, and he turned to see Faltath following him. The elven brave’s longsword was streaked with bakali blood. Behind the inward spirals of his facial tattoos Faltath’s eyes were alight with the glory of battle. Every Kagonesti brave knew that heady rush of battlefield energy, but somehow the appearance was magnified by the intensity of the sword-wielder’s fury.

Ashtaway gestured silently as his villagemate joined him. The human swordsman continued to battle, though he stepped backward in the face of the lizardmen’s relentless pressure. The ravine widened gradually as he retreated, and even that long-bladed sword would not long be able to block the passage.

“A human … he dies well,” Faltath observed.

“Perhaps he shall not die,” Ash suggested, watching the other Kagonesti.

Faltath snorted contemptuously. “Even if he kills a hundred bakali, a single Kagonesti arrow will see that he does not return to the plains.”

Ashtaway nodded, not surprised by the reply. He was surprised, however, by a feeling within his own breast – an urge to help this human, to give him a chance to live. The notion was contradictory to everything in his life, and at first he couldn’t explain it. Then he remembered.

“The wyrm of fire!” he whispered, shaking his head in awe. “I saw this same man stand before a red dragon, facing the creature with that sword. I thought he perished in the fireball.”

There was no shred of doubt in his mind. The heavy sword had the same golden hilt, unique among the knights he’d seen, and this fellow fought with the same unbending stance, with identical fury and concentration. Ash vividly remembered the scene of the dragon attack, and tried to imagine how this man could have survived. Too, he felt his growing guilt over his failure to warn the knights of danger, and made a silent, grim promise that – for this man, at least – he would try to rectify that mistake.

“The dragon he killed – the beast fell on top of him before the other serpent breathed. Could it be that he was protected from the fire by that corpse? And that he then crawled free of the mire?”

Faltath’s laugh was bitter and cold. “If he did, then he has already lived longer than any man has a right. Let him be content with that.”

Suddenly Ashtaway needed to know more – what had the man done then? How had he come to the Bluelake? And why now did he risk his life in such a mad, pointless fight?

“He must not be killed!” he declared, ignoring the scowl of suspicion that darkened Faltath’s features. “I’m going to help him!”

The bakali pressed against the walls to either side of the gorge. The knight held at bay those monsters directly before him, but now he had a hard time fully blocking the ravine. He was forced to step back quickly in order to protect his flanks – but each retreat carried him farther along the ever-widening channel.

Ashtaway skirted the rim of the ravine until he had passed the valiant knight. Picking a smooth patch of dirt for his landing, the elf sprang lightly to the floor of the gorge. He landed almost soundlessly, the din of the panicked lizardmen surely swallowing any slight noise – but the knight nevertheless whirled, bringing his sword around to meet the threat he had somehow sensed behind him.

Ignoring the threatening parry, the Kagonesti sprang toward the bakali and swiftly killed two with sure-handed strikes of his axe. Smiling grimly, the knight pivoted back to meet the scaly warriors. For long, bloody minutes the pair stood firm, blocking the channel with their courage and skill.

The rest of the tribe closed in on the rear of the fleeing horde, with many elves advancing along the tops of the ravine. These showered the lizardmen with arrows, logs, rocks, and anything else that came to hand.

Finally, crouching and tense, Ashtaway dimly realized that there was no one left to fight. The elf and the human knight looked around in amazement until their eyes met in frank appraisal.

The human, impatient in the way of his race, spoke first. “Thank you. I think the buggers would have had me there if you hadn’t dropped in when you did.”

Ash nodded, squinting as he concentrated on the words. The dialect was thick to his ears, but discernible – it was similar to the Qualinesti trading tongue that he had learned early in his life.

“You fellas put up quite a fight,” the man continued, wiping his blade with a square of dirty cloth. He seemed uncomfortable by Ash’s silence, as if it would soothe him to have the night filled with sounds. “Do you understand a word I’m saying?” he finally demanded, exasperated.

“Yes. Come with me.” Ash started down the ravine, noting for the first time that dawn’s pale blossom had begun to spread across the sky. Shrugging, the knight fell into step behind him. They descended the stone steps near the end of the rocky cut, as the walls that had bracketed them gradually gave way to the rolling earth of the surrounding forest.

So effective had been their blocking maneuver that none of the lizardmen had escaped. Several braves probed through the gory mess in the ravine, chopping or stabbing wherever they found a sign of life. The others, Faltath in the lead, gathered on the lake shore at the mouth of the gully.

When Ash and the knight walked toward them, a grim silence fell across the warriors of the tribe. Hazel eyes glared, unblinking, and the Knight of Solamnia stood a little straighter, walked a little more firmly. Ashtaway noted the change in the man’s demeanor, not surprised to observe that the fellow had a strong underpinning of pride.

Faltath stepped forward, speaking rapidly to Ash in the tribal tongue of the wild elves. “It is bad enough that you do not slay this human. Why did you tell me that he should remain unharmed by the others of the tribe? Do you deny that he is a human?”

“He is a human.”

“Perhaps you have forgotten the tales of our fathers – of the humans who scoured the forest for our people? Who slew them without compunction, that they could torch the woodlands and create their abominable fields?”

“I remember the tales,” Ashtaway replied. “But I remember other, older stories as well – legends of another dragon war, when elves and knights fought together to bring evil to its knees. I am wondering if Krynn is not facing another such time. We know that a deadly war rages, and that we are no longer free from its reach.”

None of the Kagonesti replied. For several minutes, the braves scowled at the knight, who stood rigidly beside Ashtaway. The elven expressions remained unchanging, but Ash knew that they were considering his arguments. Finally he judged that enough time had passed for him to continue.

“This knight, in particular, slew many of our enemies. His actions in battle ensured that our victory would be complete – more complete than we could have hoped. I offer him my protection – it is the very minimum of the debt we owe him.”

Ashtaway said the words bluntly, and no physical reaction showed on the faces of the warriors. Still, he was somewhat surprised at his own temerity. His fellow braves, impassive though they were, must be shocked, Ash knew – by offering his protection, the elf had declared to his lifelong companions that they would have to kill him before they would be able to harm the human.

Another long silence followed. The human’s eyes flicked from Ash to the rest of the tribe, and the elf sensed the man shifting his weight from foot to foot – so gradually that the movement was practically imperceptible. The Kagonesti was grateful that the fellow had the good manners not to interrupt the meditative silence of the band.

“You, Ashtaway, have earned a great measure of this victory for our tribe. We should respect your words, and your wishes. But now tell us: Is there something about this human that leads you to extend him your protection?” Balkas, the eagle-eyed archer, scowled in concentration as he spoke to Ashtaway. Clearly the young warrior was puzzled, but Ash was gratified to see that he was also willing to listen and consider.

“In the forest camp I told you of the dragons I had seen, and their battle against human knights. This man was the leader of those knights, and though I thought I saw him perish in flames, he still lives. I would find out his story. And, too, it seems that a man who has faced dragons and countless bakali deserves a better death than an arrow in the back.”

“Shoot him from the front, then,” growled Faltath menacingly.

The knight understood the warrior’s hostility and stiffened reflexively. Yet he made no move to draw his weapon or to speak. Instead he waited with patience that, Ashtaway guessed, must require a great amount of effort from the human. After all, everyone knew that mankind’s world was a place of frantic pace and impatient activity. The Kagonesti had no regrets about his decision. With every passing moment, the feeling that this human was worth Ash’s protection grew stronger.

And even the angry Faltath, Ash knew, would not challenge the protection extended by his friend. Because of Ash’s simple statement, any aggression against the man would constitute a great taboo against the tribe’s traditions and customs.

“Let us return to the village,” Ash suggested. “There we can make a dawn fire and smoke the pipe of victory.”

“That is a good idea,” Balkas agreed, stepping forward and scrutinizing the man. The elf lapsed into the tongue of the traders. “I would like to know what it is about you that has caused my old friend to act like a madman.”

Chuckling easily, Ash felt the tension drain away. His step was light, relaxed, as he led his new companion back toward the woods.

CHAPTER 14

THE YOUNGER PATHFINDER

“I am called Ashtaway,” the warrior offered as he led the human toward the village clearing.

“Sir Kamford Willis, Knight of the Rose, at your service.”

“I recognized you from your sword, though, of course, I did not know your name.”

“Recognized me from where?” the human asked, puzzled.

“I witnessed your fight against the red dragons – you and the men who rode with you.” Ash described his vantage of that heroic, doomed skirmish. “When the dragon’s breath swept across you, I felt certain you must be dead. Perhaps I should have looked more closely.”

“It was the mud,” Sir Kamford explained, shaking his head in wonder. “I should have perished – all the men of my company did. But when I fell to the ground, that wyrm fell on top of me and pressed me right into that muck – it was quite wet in that clearing, after all. I had to squirm out before I suffocated, and I assure you that was no easy task. A small dragon it may have been, but plenty enough weight to trap a man for good! Then, by the time I emerged, the other dragon was gone.”

“How did you come to the Bluelake? And why did you stand against the bakali?”

“As to the first question, I was lost. The mountains kept forcing me south when I wanted to go west – traveling a lot slower than I would have liked, since I lost my horse. I was working my way along the shore, hoping I could swing westward past the tail of the lake. Then, yesterday, I saw the smoke from the burning village, and I got close enough to see the lizardmen – no friends to any knight. I found a good hiding place under the bank, right at the foot of the ravine. Naturally, I wanted to get an idea whether or not this force intended to move against Solamnia.” Sir Kamford continued to explain as they reached the edge of the vallenwood glade, where Kagonesti warriors halted their labor of removing bakali bodies to watch the human’s arrival with cold, impassive eyes.

“Then, when you launched your attack and took them by surprise, I saw the chance to trap the scaly fellows right here. But I did wonder why you didn’t send some of your braves to seal off the escape route.”

Ash shook his head, unwilling to admit that his own suggestion for that tactic had been vetoed. He could clearly imagine the mass bakali escape, however, if Sir Kamford had not arrived when he did.

“The aim of our attack was to drive them off. Thanks to your help, the victory is —”

Ash froze, paralyzed by a look of alarm on Ampruss’s face as the young brave dashed up to him. “It’s the Pathfinder! You must see him – before it’s too late!”

Panicked, the warrior raced to the ruins of his uncle’s lodge. Ampruss ran beside him. “It was a bakali – it came out of the woods when the battle was almost over. I … I killed it, but too late!” The young warrior’s voice choked, and Ashtaway sensed, with pain of his own, Ampruss’s grief and guilt.

Iydaway lay on a straw mat just outside his former front door. Ash knelt beside him, sickened to see a deep, bubbling wound in the Pathfinder’s frail chest.

The old elf’s lips gasped reflexively, but no sounds emerged. Ash leaned close as his uncle desperately tried to speak.

“Here … take …”

At first the warrior didn’t understand what Iydaway meant. The old elf’s hands trembled, seemed to flail meaninglessly. Or perhaps, Ashtaway didn’t want to understand.

“The Ram’s Horn, Pathfinder,” Iydaway gasped. “It is yours now – yours as long as the gods allow.”

“Don’t talk!” urged Ashtaway, desperately frightened by the old man’s weakness, and by his words as well.

“I … had hoped to teach you longer. But I have always suspected you would be the one – then, when you heard the second Ram’s Horn, I knew.”

“Please, Uncle —”

“Listen … no time … you are the Pathfinder. Go, now, speak to the tribe. …”

“But – what can I say? Why should they listen?”

“Use the horn … it will know … play the horn, and Father Kagonesti will show you. …”

For a time Iydaway was silent, and Ash feared he had died. Finally the wounded Pathfinder opened his eyes, inhaling a deep, bubbling breath.

“Take the tribe south … the central woodlands … find the path.”

With a gurgling exhalation, the elder Kagonesti shuddered and lay still. Tears stung Ash’s eyes, and he looked, with something like loathing, at the spiraled horn in his hands.

Then he thought of Hammana, of the potent force – he knew, now, too late, that it was love – growing between them. He truly hated the horn, hating even more the bonds of pledge and responsibility that were its potent companions.

But he could not ignore the command. Blindly he rose to his feet, stumbling away with a hand in front of his face – the hand that brandished the Ram’s Horn. Vaguely he became aware that many eyes were turned to him. He blinked, and forced himself to stand tall.

“You are the Pathfinder,” Faltath declared, his voice emerging from the mass of tattooed braves. Ashtaway didn’t see his old friend, but he wanted, desperately, to argue with his words.

Ashtaway thought: My uncle has made a mistake! The young warrior wanted to shout the news to the tribe, to hold out the spiraled horn for any who would take it. But he couldn’t do this any more than he could disobey Iydaway’s command.

“He gave it to me because I heard the second Ram’s Horn. Let us gather in the council circle, and I will tell the tale.”

The wild elves ringed the central fire pit of the village. They listened raptly as Ashtaway told of the summons from Lectral, of the silver dragon that Hammana still tended. His voice tightened reflexively as he spoke of the beautiful healer, of her tender ministrations toward the mighty serpent.

After a time, one of the older warriors produced a pipe, and for several minutes the braves smoked, passing the ritual bowl from one to another – waiting silently while the young Pathfinder suspended the telling for his turn to inhale the aged tobacco. Ashtaway gave it to Sir Kamford and admired the human’s fortitude as the knight drew in the harsh smoke and allowed it to breeze easily outward from his nostrils.

Pensively, Ash’s mind returned to Hammana. More than ever before, he wanted to see her, to talk to her. But he had other things to do now, and to say.

“The tribe must make ready to depart,” Ashtaway declared. “Such was my uncle’s last wish, and it shall be done.”

“You won the battle, and you’re still going to leave?” The knight spoke more bluntly and hastily than an elf, and Ashtaway paused, startled.

“The village has never been attacked here,” the Pathfinder explained shortly. “Now the bakali, and doubtlessly other minions of the Dark Queen, know that we are here. We fear for the lives of our elders and our children. Also, it seems that the war is creeping steadily closer.”

“Aye, my friend. Those are good fears, right and proper. But as to the war, if you find a place where it’s not encroaching, I wish you’d let me know. There’s people all over Ansalon wishing for the same thing, but not one that I know of’s been able to find it.”

“We will move south, into the heart of the forest lands that divide Silvanesti and Qualinesti.”

“Forests? Maybe in your granddaddy’s time, I’ll guess,” Sir Kamford disputed, with a wry chuckle that struck a dissonant note in the contemplative elves. “True, I’d heard tales going back to the time of Vinas Solamnus himself. Said that there used to be woodlands filling the whole gap between the Kharolis and Khalkist Ranges. Not anymore, I’m afraid. You’re talking of migrating into some prime farmland now.”

The Kagonesti warriors remained silent, but uneasy glances flickered among the tribe. None of them was prepared to believe the word of a savage human, but neither did any of the elves have personal knowledge of the southern forests. Not since the Kinslayer War had any of the wild elves dwelled there, and that was a thousand years in the past.

“It’s not a surprise, I guess, that the lizardmen should have found you down here.” The human rambled on with a garrulousness that rendered meditative discourse practically impossible. Ashtaway, however, was curious to hear what the man would say.

“The Dark Queen’s armies are starting a big push to the west this year. By high summer, there’ll be battles waged from here to Palanthas, if she has her way. It’s only natural that she send some of her lizards into the forest, looking for a way around the knights.”

“I first observed you with a small company of knights. Did you then seek to block this maneuver?” Ash asked. He began to wonder if, behind the knight’s undeniable courage, there lurked the mind of a mad fool. His force of two dozen men seemed far too small to accomplish such a bold mission.

“We were not here as an army, either of invasion or defense,” the knight assured him. “Our primary task was to explore the valleys in the foothills, to seek a route into the mountains.”

“Not to defend Palanthas?” Ashtaway tried to picture a reason for the human’s strategy.

“No, but, perhaps, to make the Queen’s attack against Palanthas less successful. Takhisis, you see, has sent practically all of her dragons with the strike force of her armies. They make a formidable force, and we know their target is, eventually, Palanthas.”

“Then the war may indeed be approaching its end,” declared Faltath. His tone made it clear that he viewed the defeat of the knights as a thing of precious little consequence to himself or the tribe.

Once again, Ash found himself disagreeing with his lifelong friend. The prospect of dragons soaring over the woodland, of bakali legions roaming and plundering wherever they wanted to go, seemed like a chilling legacy for the years of his children and grandchildren – and then, with a cold shiver, he again felt the weight of the Ram’s Horn. There would be no children for him.

“Don’t hold a victory celebration for the Dark Queen. Not yet!” snapped the knight, with appalling rudeness. Faltath flushed, but Sir Kamford continued speaking without a pause. “There’s hope for the knights in several straws, slender though they may be.”

“Do you speak of ways to defeat the Dark Queen and her dragons?” wondered Ashtaway. Often he had remembered the savagery of the dragons he’d seen. An army of the creatures seemed almost incomprehensibly powerful.

“It’s not so unthinkable,” the man replied. “There are, after all, dragons who fight as our allies. The golds and silvers make a formidable armada when they take to the skies, and thus the Dark Queen needs always to guard against a surprise attack against Sanction, where lies the root of her strength.”

The young Pathfinder remembered Lectral saying much the same thing. “Then why not strike at Sanction from the plains, where your army is?” Ashtaway asked.

“Because the queen’s armies – and her dragons – block our passage across those plains,” Sir Kamford said grimly. “We couldn’t attack from there until we defeat those armies. And unless we can burn the depots of Sanction she’ll be able to keep her army in the field for ten more years!”

“I have seen Sanction, from a distance,” the young Pathfinder noted. “There seemed ever to be a black, angry cloud about the place – it seems a fitting abode for the Queen of Darkness.”

The knight chuckled, and even Ashtaway was set aback by the man’s lack of manners. Suppressing his own temper, aware of the other warriors’ displeasure behind their stoic expressions, Ash forced himself to remember that Sir Kamford was a stranger to proper society – indeed, there seemed to be no rudeness intended in his expression of humor.

“She doesn’t actually live there, of course – nor anywhere else on Krynn. But it’s rumored that her serpents have their lairs in the volcanoes around the city, and that’s where she’s assembled the supply depots to run the war.”

Ashtaway was intrigued, remembering what the knight had said earlier. Lectral’s speculations in the cave, which had centered around the importance of Sanction to the Dark Queen, came vividly back to him. “And while her dragons are in the west, menacing Palanthas, you seek to find a way to strike at Sanction? To cripple her village while her warriors are out on the hunt?”

“In a manner of speaking.” There might have been a trace of amusement in Sir Kamford’s voice, but it seemed as though he was making a conscious effort, now, to mimic the serene expressions of the Kagonesti. “Of course, the central plains are too dangerous. Any party of knights caught by dragons, miles away from shelter, would be doomed. And if we tried to march directly, there’s no doubt that we would be caught.”

“So you were planning to attack along an indirect route?” Ashtaway surprised himself again, this time by speaking so abruptly on the tail of his companion’s words. He could sense Faltath staring at him in disbelief, but he was very curious – and a little awed – by the human’s audacity.

“The company you saw last week? No, we were just a scouting party. The Lord Knights won’t even consider launching an attack unless we could return with word of a route through the mountains.”

The elven warrior nodded.

“My party had been scouting since the snow melted in the lower valleys. Unfortunately, every time we found a promising path, we ended up in some box canyon or confronted by a ring of tall peaks. Places even a man couldn’t go, to say nothing of our horses.”

“You would take your horses to this battle?”

“A knight without his horse is like … is like one of you without his legs,” Sir Kamford said seriously. “Yes, we would ride our horses into battle. The Knights of Solamnia, in charge rank, are a force to make even ogres quail.”

The Kagonesti remembered the small company battling against the red dragons, and he had no doubt that Sir Kamford spoke the truth.

“Yet the charge against Sanction, it seems, will never be made,” the knight declared sadly. “Even if I live to return to Solanthus, I will not be able to offer the lords any hope. There was no route in the mountains, and across the plains lies only death.”

Ashtaway nodded solemnly, as if in sympathy with the human’s despair. It was a warrior’s tragedy: brave men on a desperate mission, slain by crimson death on wing. This lone survivor, a valiant knight to be sure, the only one left to carry the tale of failure.

At the same time, the elf’s mind churned with a knowledge that he suspected he would not be able to contain. Should he speak? There was really no choice involved.

“There is, possibly, another way,” Ashtaway said deliberately. “Perhaps … even a way that the tribe could remain beside the Bluelake, to live here in safety.”

Even the human remained silent, waiting for him to continue. Ash took a long time to think, collecting his thoughts before he spoke.

“There is a route through the Khalkists, leading up from the south. It is a narrow pass that winds high among the peaks, but I believe it would be passable even for horses.”

“A route that leads to Sanction?” asked Sir Kamford tautly, after a barely respectable pause.

“I have seen the Three Smoking Mountains from the crest of the pass, and looked down upon the city in the valley of fire beyond.”

“The Lords of Doom! So there is – there might be – a way! Tell me, where is this pass? How can I find it?”

“I doubt that you could,” Ashtaway said, without rancor. “I discovered the place myself only by accident, after many seasons of hunting in the high mountains.”

For a moment, the Kagonesti paused. He felt a sense of portent, and knew what he was about to say even before he articulated the words. At the same time, he realized that his tribemates would react with shock and dismay – yet Ashtaway could not, would not pull back from his decision.

“I will show you the pass,” he said quietly. “You must return to Solamnia and gather your force of knights. I will lead you through the mountains, so that you may strike at the Dark Queen’s village.”

“What treachery is this?” demanded Faltath, his face taut behind the whorls of his tattoos. “You would lead a force of humans through the heart of our woodlands?” The elf’s fist closed around the hilt of his sword, and for a moment Ash wondered if his old friend would draw his weapon and violate the protection extended to the human.

“We aren’t coming to invade!” declared Sir Kamford.

Faltath raised his hand from the hilt of his sword and crossed his arms firmly over his chest. “Do you mean that we should welcome humans into these forests?” he demanded, his tone edging on mockery.

“Perhaps you would prefer to welcome red dragons, or ogres, into the woodlands,” suggested Ashtaway tightly. He felt his own temper rising. Why couldn’t Faltath understand?

“That’s just the point!” Sir Kamford’s voice was full of persuasive enthusiasm, though it sounded harsh and strident to the elven ears. Still, their attention was bound by the force of his conviction. “I can’t promise that if we strike at Sanction, we’ll win the war. Indeed, I suspect the issue will be decided in the west, dragon against dragon, in the skies over Solamnia. But our attack can weaken the Dark Queen’s army just when it is most in need of strength!

“And make no mistake, my elven friends.” Now the knight’s tone dropped to an ominous timbre so portentous that none of the Kagonesti reacted to his categorization of them. “The victor in this war will have strong bearing on the future of Krynn – for all races, all peoples. It is an effect that will outlast the lifetime of even the most venerable elf.”

“I have seen the dragons,” Ashtaway noted. “If they return, the forests will not be safe for elf or man. Far better to cast our weight before the war is resolved, that the dragons of evil may be defeated.”

He looked at Sir Kamford, and his hazel eyes were flat and cold. “After this war,” he added meaningfully, “we can decide what to do about the humans.”

“Fair enough,” agreed the armored knight. “I offer my word – I shall describe your contribution to my lords, as well as your desire that we leave you alone. We pass through your realm only because it offers the best – the only – path against the Dark Queen’s bastion.”

Ashtaway felt a surge of apprehension. Was he doing the right thing?

If he made the wrong decision, and the village was attacked again, could they hope for a repeat of their recent good fortune? Or might they be attacked by dragons and ogres as well as by the dimwitted bakali? If so, Ash knew that it might mean the end of the tribe.

Yet if they left this place, they had no guarantee that they would find another site half as good – perhaps there would not even be woodlands, a range of pastoral forest in which to hunt and live. He knew how quickly humans bred and multiplied, about their insatiable thirst for land. It did not seem inconceivable that during the last thousand years they had claimed great sections of what had once been forest.

Finally Ashtaway sighed and opened his eyes, which he fixed upon the face of Sir Kamford Willis. “How long will it take you to reach Solamnia and return to the woodland with this army of knights?”

“Two weeks to walk home, a week to gather the force, and another week to return with riders – and myself back in a saddle. In four weeks, you could show us the way into Sanction.”

“I do not know these ‘weeks,’” replied the venerable Kagonesti. “What does this mean in the cycles of Krynn?”

Sir Kamford frowned in thought, then looked at the dawnlit sky. The sliver of Lunitari, barely past new, had just risen in the east. “When Lunitari grows to fullness, then fades, and then returns as a crescent such as it is now, I shall arrive with my knights.”

“Very well. I will tell you of a place we can meet, in the foothills north of here,” Iydaway agreed. “The tribe will remain beside the Bluelake for at least another season. By that time we should know if the menace of evil has been defeated or merely enraged such that we will need to flee.”

“Splendid!” declared the knight. “I depart at once!”

“First, you must stay and eat with us,” the young Pathfinder declared. “For it is bad fortune to start a journey on an empty stomach.”

CHAPTER 15

A CYCLE OF LUNITARI

The tribe remained at the Bluelake as the early summer advanced. The young Pathfinder suggested that they increase the number of warriors guarding the approaches to the village, and his tribemates welcomed the idea. The knowledge that he could help them pleased Ashtaway, but he missed his uncle greatly, seemingly more with each passing hour.

Geese had flocked to the shoreline marshes two days after the battle, winging from the south in great, cackling formations. Most of the tribe’s hunters went out in search of game, and it seemed that, for the present, lack of food would not be a problem.

Ashtaway did not accompany the archers on the great stalking. Assured that the tribe would eat well, he left the village, climbing away from the lake and into the wooded foothills. He departed with a strange reluctance, as if he neglected a responsibility. Though he knew that Iydaway – and the earlier Pathfinders – had often vanished into the wilderness for months, even seasons, at a time, Ash felt the spiral horn as a surprisingly heavy weight at his side, an anchor that seemed to hold him close to the tribe. He missed the smiles, the jokes, and the boasts of his fellow warriors. Yet he loped easily through the forest for hour after hour, as cool morning passed into sun-soaked afternoon.

His mind, freed from battles and choices, dwelled on Lectral – and Hammana. It would be very good to see the dragon again, he knew. As to the elfmaid, he desperately wanted to see her, but because of the horn at his side, he was terribly afraid.

He reached the glade where, by Lectral’s suggestion, he had earlier taken the deer, and was fortunate enough to bring down a young buck with barely an hour’s stalking. Slinging the gutted carcass over his shoulders, he continued on, climbing through the cut into the rocky crest, seeing the obsidian cliff rising beyond.

Shortly before dusk, he approached the sheltered cave where he had left Hammana and Lectral. Slowing to a walk, he followed the same trail on which he had met the elfwoman on their first visit to the silver dragon. Even before she came into sight, a waft of breeze carried Hammana’s scent to him, and Ash knew that she was in the woods – no doubt gathering more medicinal herbs for her huge patient.

He found her kneeling in a meadow of columbine and honeysuckle, digging at a stubborn root. So as not to startle her, he coughed gently from the edge of the clearing.

Hammana leapt to her feet, whirling to face him, looking at once frightened, embarrassed, a little angry, and far more beautiful than his imagination had remembered. Her face flushed as she wiped the dirt from her hands and smoothed the supple doeskin of her skirt.

“I’m glad to see you again,” Ash said, stepping toward her. For a moment, he was the young warrior again, carefree and confident – the Pathfinder’s job was a task for someone else, someone wise, like his uncle.

“I – um – Lectral will be happy that you’re back,” she stammered, still startled by his sudden appearance. He dared to hope that the blush rising across her cheeks was a sign that their meeting brought her as much joy as it did him.

“I told your father that you would stay here for a while. He was worried, but he trusts you.”

“Thank you. Lectral’s much better. I think the poultices have helped a lot.”

“There’s not another in all the tribes who could tend him so well,” Ash declared.

“And how fares the village?” she asked, allowing him to fall into step beside her as they started toward Lectral’s cave.

“There was trouble,” he admitted. He started to tell her about the bakali, but abruptly she froze, her eyes locked on the spiral horn at his side.

“No!” she gasped, her face numb with shock. “Iydaway Pathfinder …?”

“He was killed in the battle. Before he died, he passed on the Ram’s Horn —”

“To you.” Hammana completed his statement bluntly, though all the color had washed out of her face. “You are the new Pathfinder of the Kagonesti.”

For the first time since his moments of doubt on the night of Iydaway’s death, he wanted to deny the fact, to refuse the calling that had given him the Ram’s Horn. Hammana’s soft eyes, her serene, vibrant strength, suddenly seemed more precious to him than anything else could possibly be.

But already she had stiffened, withdrawing a half step from his side, restoring the formal reserve that was the norm between unmarried wild elves of opposite sexes.

“I am sorry about your uncle,” she said quietly.

He told her of the others who had perished, and of the great victory the tribe had won, thanks to the intervention of Sir Kamford Willis, the human knight. By this time, they had reached the cave, and the great silver head, supported by the serpentine neck, emerged to greet them.

“Welcome, Pathfinder,” Lectral said, his fangs glistening in a crocodilian smile. “I see that you bear the horn of the Grandfather Ram.”

“And dinner as well,” Ash said, dropping the buck’s carcass outside the cave.

“You are ever welcome here, but most especially when you come with meat,” the dragon noted.

Hammana sat silently beside a flat rock and began pounding her herbs with a stout stick. Ashtaway wanted to talk to her, but she avoided his eyes with fierce determination. Instead, the young Pathfinder described for Lectral the developments in the village by the Bluelake. He declared his intention to meet the Knights of Solamnia when Lunitari next waxed crescent – and when he said this, Hammana stiffened almost imperceptibly. Ash was heartened by this proof that she did not ignore him entirely.

“This is a proper and important thing you do,” Lectral agreed, nodding sagely. “The knights are good men – among the best – and this Sir Kamford seems to have proved his worth twice over. If you can aid them to strike at Takhisis, you will do a service for all of Ansalon.”

“It seems a strange way to make war,” the wild elf admitted. “But if the armies of the Dark Queen cannot subsist without their food and weapons, then it may be that by destroying those we can greatly weaken her troops.”

The silver dragon nodded, grunting contentedly as Hammana changed the dressing over several of his wounds. Ash noticed that the serpent’s scales gleamed much brighter now, and his yellow eyes reflected the waning daylight with a pleasant luster.

“She has helped me very much,” Lectral said, slowly. His hooded eyes shifted from the warrior to the woman, as if probing at the tension between them.

“I have done what I could. He is very strong,” she replied, intent on her work.

“Alas, I’m afraid this old flap is never going to lift me into the air again,” Lectral noted with a grunt of disgust. He twitched his left wing, showing that the leathery surface was pitted, scarred, and twisted. “Still, there are things other than flight to keep a dragon happy. Wyrmlings, for example. Did I ever tell you of Saytica, my daughter?”

Ash shook his head.

“She flies in the wing defending Palanthas. I have even heard that she bears a great captain of the knights on her back – one of the lords of the knightly orders.”

“It is a thing to make one proud,” Ash agreed, trying to picture the might of an armored knight mounted on one of these great serpents. How could the Dark Queen’s forces hope to destroy an army such as that?

“Alas, there are but few of us,” Lectral continued, answering the wild elf’s unspoken question. “The reds and whites alone outnumber us, and then there are the blues, the blacks, and the greens. It is a desperate struggle we wage.”

Ashtaway could only agree and silently pray that the dragons of silver could hang on long enough to prevail. He hoped that the strike at Sanction would make a difference.

But there was another thing on his mind.

“We each bear a Ram’s Horn,” he said after a respectful silence. “Can you tell me how you came to possess yours?” he asked. “There have long been legends among us of the second horn, but not since the time of Father Kagonesti has anyone seen it.”

“It was given to me by my sire, Callak, who got it from Darlantan himself.”

“Are you a Pathfinder of the silver dragons?”

Lectral chuckled. “We have no such title, really, but you might say that I am the Hornkeeper.”

The dragon drew a deep, pensive breath before he continued. “The silver dragon, Darlantan, is the father of our people, and in his wisdom he saw that even we dragons had weaknesses. He knew that, through the coming centuries, it was important that we have friends, allies, among the peoples of Krynn.

“Of course, the only of those peoples whose lifetime even begins to approach our own are the elves. Yet Darlantan could see that the House Elves – who have many fine qualities, though you raise your eyebrow in skepticism – would become a potent and aloof society, with little need of alliance. Too, the elves of Silvanesti are ever concerned with their own mastery and would have been difficult partners in any endeavor.”

“And so he came to Father Kagonesti, in the guise of the Grandfather Ram?” Ash wondered, knowing the answer as legend, but awed to hear it from Lectral as truth.

“Darlantan saw, in your first Pathfinder, that pride, that self-reliance that drew him to the wild elf first as a friend, then as an ally. He bade Kagonos to remain apart from the Silvanesti and laid a heavy mantle on that Elderwild’s shoulders. The twin horns of the Grandfather Ram would be the symbol of this bond, and of the Pathfinder’s burden.

“Kagonos bore that burden well, and when the First Dragon War raged across the land, he brought his Elderwild into the struggle and gave all the people of Krynn a hope for the future.

“Before Darlantan perished – at the end of that war – he gave the Ram’s Horn to his wyrmling, Callak, who protected it for thirteen centuries. It was during this time that the dwarves, with their infernal greed, dug up the magical dragongems and unwittingly released the evil serpents into the world. As an ancient wyrm, Callak passed it to me when I was but a fledgling flyer, and for ten centuries it has been my task to keep it safe. For most of those years, it was protected deep in our lair, among mountains inaccessible to any land-bound creature.”

“Yet you carried it from that lair …?” Ashtaway, mystified, reminded Lectral.

“Indeed. Now a cruel Dragon War rages again, and those who battle the Dark Queen have fared badly. Remembering that the Elderwild aided us to win the first war against evil dragonkind, I wondered if perhaps their children – the Kagonesti – could do so again. Thus, I winged toward these woodlands, on my way to seek your people, when the reds fell upon me, ending my flight here.”

“You sought our aid in the Dragon War?” Ash asked, surprised. “Surely you knew that we would never agree to enter such a …?” He trailed off as the realization dawned.

Darlantan smiled a crocodile grimace of sharp fangs. “It seems to me that, even without my beseeching, you already have agreed,” he remarked gently.

Pondering the irony of this fate, Ashtaway built a fire while Hammana sliced meat from the carcass of the buck. They ate, the two wild elves cooking their meat over the low blaze while Lectral contentedly gnawed at a haunch. Afterward, they slept, and Ashtaway woke with the first cool light of dawn. Hammana was already up, grinding at her herbs, brewing a thick tea in a gourd that sat on the banked coals of the fire.

At first he had thought that he might stay here for several days, but one look at the elfwoman’s rigid back, then the sound of her stiffly formal greeting when he bade her good morning, convinced him that his presence here – at least, for any longer – would be a mistake.

As soon as Lectral awakened, Ashtaway announced his intention to return to the village. He promised to return with game as soon as possible, though he warned this might not be until after he journeyed to Sanction and back.

“Good luck,” the dragon declared. “These knights can hurt Takhisis if only you show them the path.”

“I will do that.” Ashtaway paused, then drew a breath. “Hammana?”

“Yes?” She rose and accompanied him from the cave, though she did not meet his eyes.

“Is – is there anything I should tell your father? When will you return to the village?”

“I … I don’t know. I’ll stay here awhile. Lectral still needs me.” Was it his imagination, or did she emphasize the dragon’s name, pounding home the fact that a Pathfinder had no need of a woman, of anybody?

The Kagonesti wanted to tell her that it wasn’t true. He wanted to confess his own need, which he felt more strongly than ever before. He, Ashtaway, needed her at his side! Couldn’t she see – couldn’t everyone see – that a partner such as Hammana could only make him a better Pathfinder?

But then she raised her face, and when he saw the fierce anger in her eyes, he felt a strange catch in his own throat and could only hold his tongue.

At last, when the cool cloak of the forest surrounded him, the isolation came almost – but not quite – as a relief.

CHAPTER 16

MOUNTAINOUS MEETING

Ashtaway approached the rendezvous from the east, going many miles out of his way. He trusted Sir Kamford as much as it was possible to trust any non-Kagonesti, but his natural caution required that he take every measure to guard against betrayal. Thus he crossed two low, wooded ridges and traversed a shallow marsh just to ensure that his route could not be anticipated or intercepted. This legacy of caution seemed more important to him than ever before, perhaps because of the spiral horn he bore at his side.

Moving through the pine woods of the mountain valley, Ash scanned the skies, the ridgetops, and the surrounding slopes for any signs of danger. He saw a small herd of deer grazing near one of the crests. This was a good sign. The animals certainly would have sought shelter if they had sensed humans in the vicinity. Still, the elf did not relax even as he ascended back to the ridge and looked toward the deep, bowl-shaped valley where he had arranged to meet Sir Kamford and his force of knights.

The familiar basin sprawled before him in apparently pristine solitude. A wide fringe of flower-speckled meadow surrounded a grove of towering cedars, with another small meadow visible in the center of that grove. Though the dense needles of the upper limbs created a barrier to any observation from above, the wild elf knew that the floor of the grove was smooth and comfortable. No underbrush grew in the dense shadows, and the large trunks were well separated. Even a good-sized company of men and horses would be able to conceal themselves there, camping in relative comfort.

A spring bubbled from a stony embankment on the opposite side of the grove, providing plenty of fresh water. The encircling meadow bloomed with ample pasture for the horses, while the shallow outflow of water created a stream stocked with plump trout. On several occasions Ashtaway had eaten well here – simply by lying beside the narrow brook, carefully reaching in with his hand, and flipping out as many of the tasty fish as he desired.

Now the whole scene looked as peaceful and undisturbed as he remembered. Located far from any communities and from the eastern trade routes, the valley made an ideal rendezvous. Sanction lay forty or fifty miles to the north, with numerous sheer, sharp ridges rising throughout the intervening distance. Over the past six or seven decades, however, Ashtaway had discovered routes around the most precipitous of these heights, as well as the best routes of ascent and descent to the multitude of passes.

The sun had barely reached noon on the day of the meeting when the elf settled in to watch. Also near zenith, preceding the sun as if it lured the fiery orb across the sky, the sliver of the moon Lunitari gleamed against the pale blue background, as it had one cycle earlier when Ash and Sir Kamford had arranged this rendezvous.

Careful to remain below the crest of the ridge, the wild elf found a shaded, rocky niche, where he was fully concealed from observation above or below. With patience only another Kagonesti could have matched, he lay prone, peering outward between several low bushes, his hazel eyes flashing back and forth through the depression.

To the north he could see the rocky outlines of the pass leading to Sanction, and for a while he reflected on that which he was about to do. Though his intervention in a war of humans and dragons was a thing that would have astonished him if another elf had proposed it, or even if he had thought about doing it as recently as half a season before, now he had no regrets. The Dark Queen was an enemy far more deadly than all the teeming numbers of humankind, and there was no question in his mind that he should offer his knowledge to aid in striking a blow against her.

For a while he wondered about that great war. What was it like to see thousands of troops surging into battle? He tried to picture a sky filled with sweeping, wheeling dragons, and found that he couldn’t do it. Someday, perhaps, he would see for himself – though it was a thing he would neither seek nor hope to find.

The knights’ manner of waging war against this threat seemed curious and foreign to him, oddly removed from the vital fury of battle that lay behind every Kagonesti attack or defense. He could see the logic of an attack against foodstuffs, against coal and steel and corrals and forges, but as a purpose for attacking it did not ignite any martial fires in his breast. Yet if that was the way these humans wanted to wage war, so be it – he would hope that the Dark Queen could be sorely hurt by their sudden onslaught.

Late in the afternoon, he saw a sparkle of sunlight and knew that something metallic moved over the opposite rim of the valley. Squinting, frozen with concentration, he stared until he saw that the sun had winked off the silver bridle of a great warhorse. Ash winced unconsciously. Didn’t these humans know that shiny metal might make them visible to an observer many miles away? Immediately his musings were forgotten and he stared, rapt, at the human riders slowly coming into view. Similar in some ways to the wild elf’s own approach, these knights moved with caution. Ash watched a preliminary party of four cross the ridge and move downward toward the grove Ash had described to Sir Kamford.

From his vantage, the Kagonesti saw that another knight remained on the ridge, crouched among a cluster of thick brush – though he was quite conspicuous by wild elf standards. Still, Ash approved of his new ally’s caution and was also pleased to see the sentry adjust his position over the next few minutes until he had vanished into the ground cover almost as effectively as an elf.

The four knights of the advance party split up as they approached the valley floor, a pair riding slowly through the pine woods circling the base of the depression while the other two advanced straight toward the grove of tall cedars Ashtaway had described. A stag and two does burst from the near side of that clump, bounding toward the heights, and the Kagonesti welcomed this sign that all was well.

Still, the humans took their time, the two riders on the slopes making a full circle around the basin as they searched for danger. Below, the pair who had disappeared into the grove remained for nearly an hour before they emerged and waved to their fellows on the slopes.

Only then did the rest of the knights come into view, riding in single file through the narrow gap and following the beckoning waves of their scouts. Ashtaway was impressed in spite of himself as he counted nearly one hundred huge chargers, each mounted by an armored human warrior. He saw that the glint of sunlight that had first attracted his eye had been unusual. For the most part, the Knights of Solamnia had dulled their armor, many even attaching leaves to their helmets or obscuring metallic sword hilts with mud and clay. He was relieved that they had at least made an effort at elementary concealment. Ash would make sure, before they left the valley, that their efforts were rendered fully effective.

By the time the band of knights had entered the cedar grove, the sun had set and the sliver of Lunitari neared the western ridge. Ash waited a few more moments, watching the crescent slip from view. With the whole crest around and above him in full shadow, the Kagonesti emerged from his hiding place and carefully started down the slope.

He moved slowly, always advancing from one piece of cover to the next – slithering like a snake in those places where he was forced to cross open ground – and by the time he reached the floor of the valley, the stars had sparkled into life.

Still he moved with care, crouching low as he moved toward the grove. Near the edge of the clump of trees, he paused while a gust of wind swirled outward. He smelled humans, knew that at least two of them were very nearby, probably posted as sentries on this side of the grove. Good. Like himself, the humans knew the need for caution.

A tight smile creased his lips as he crawled under the canopy of the first pines. Although he was pleased with Sir Kamford’s alertness, it would please him even more to demonstrate wild elven proficiency and stealth. Ashtaway saw the boots of a knight no more than five paces away, but the man had not noticed him in the gathering darkness. Silently the Kagonesti moved from tree trunk to tree trunk, using his keen night vision to spot each of the pickets before the men had any idea that he lurked so closely among them.

A horse stamped nervously, and the elf froze, chagrined at his own carelessness. Rigidly he watched the beast’s clomping hooves, noting the shaggy fetlocks, the span of the legs. Though he had little experience with horses, he guessed with a fair degree of certainty that the steed before him was an unusually large specimen. Too, he should have guessed that the great beasts would possess a wild animal’s keen senses of smell and hearing. No doubt the steed had picked up his scent. Still, after that momentary restlessness the horse snorted several times and went back to placid grazing.

A few more minutes brought Ash to the brink of the grove’s central clearing, where most of the knights were preparing to bivouac for the night. Several staked out horses, while others sharpened weapons, mended saddles, or cleaned dust and mud from their boots. Again the elf was impressed – though the night was chill, the humans showed no inclination to build a fire. Neither did they make any unnecessary noise during their activities.

“D’you think he’ll show up?” The voice came from a group of knights gathered at a ring of boulders – a circular space Ash had used as a campsite on his previous visits to the grove.

“If he don’t, we’ve taken a hundred lances out of the lords’ army fer nothin’!” groused another knight.

“He’ll come.” Now Ash recognized Sir Kamford’s voice. The knight stood in the center of the circle, an undeniable figure of command. The other knights fell silent as he spoke. “There was something about him – a kind of wisdom that I’ve rarely encountered. He gave me his word —”

“And I have honored it,” concluded Ashtaway, stepping into the circle. He enjoyed the consternation of the knights as they scrambled to their feet or instinctively reached for weapons, held back by Sir Kamford’s chuckle of amusement. The knight bowed his head in a gesture of respect and appraised Ash for a moment before speaking.

“Welcome. Were my pickets sleeping on the job?” asked Sir Kamford with good-humored amazement.

Ash repeated the respectful bow, and he, too, paused to meet the other’s eyes before he spoke. “No, they are alert and would doubtless have discovered any human who sought to intrude – or an ogre or Silvanesti elf, for that matter.”

“I believe you,” Sir Kamford said with a nod. “It is good to see you again, my friend – and ally.”

“And you, human. I see that you bring many warriors.”

“You are the elf who will show us the road to Sanction?” inquired one of those knights, quite rudely, thought Ashtaway. Below his large nose this fellow had a curving red mustache. The human fixed the Kagonesti with a look of frank skepticism and not a little hostility.

“I would not call it a road,” he replied stiffly. “I made it clear that it is but a hunting path. It does, however, cross the lower slopes of the smoking mountains and leads to the valley you call Sanction. And I believe that your horses will be able to cross.”

“Believe? You don’t know?” demanded the red-faced warrior.

Ashtaway stiffened, forcibly holding his hand away from the hilt of his axe. This knight’s lack of manners offended him deeply, and for the first time he wondered if he was making a great mistake by coming here.

“How could I know?” he replied curtly. “We Kagonesti have no need of animal slaves in our efforts at war. We do well on our own feet.” Ashtaway sensed that his own words were inflammatory, but he found it impossible to hold his tongue. The blunt conversation with the red-faced man seemed to arouse an instinctive antipathy.

“Animal slaves?” The knight’s mustache quivered in indignation, and his fists clenched into firm knots. “These steeds are the boldest warriors on four legs! Never insult them – for to do so is to insult the men who ride them! To do that is to die.”

The words hit the Kagonesti with the piercing force of a hot lance. “If there have been insults uttered, it was not I who began the exchange,” Ash replied grimly, his own fingers curling inward. “I was led to believe that my services would be of some aid to the knights, and to my friend, Sir Kamford Willis. If that is not the case, I will go – or I will fight, whichever you choose.”

His hazel eyes, darkened in the night, remained unwaveringly on the face of the belligerent knight. A small voice grew louder within him, suggesting that perhaps his coming here was a mistake, that humans and wild elves could not work together.

“Patience, Sir Blayne.” It was Sir Kamford who cut through the tension with a soothing voice. “As I told you – and told the lords of the orders as well – Ashtaway has hunted over this trail on foot. But if he suspects that our horses will pass, I’m prepared to believe him.”

“He passed our pickets, all right. He must know a little something,” murmured another knight, not unkindly.

The one called Sir Blayne made a visible but only partially successful effort to relax. “Very well.” He addressed Ashtaway. “Your offer of help is not unwelcome. You should know, however, that these hundred knights could be very useful on the plains during this summer. If our mission here comes to naught, the loss could be catastrophic.”

“I cannot control the success or failure of your mission, but I can see that you will be able to approach Sanction from the southeast. The rest will be up to you.”

Ashtaway felt the flame of his anger slowly doused. As the hazy sense of instinctive rage faded, he wondered about its sudden force and fury, and he told himself that he would have to work hard to hold that tendency at bay.

“That is all we ask,” Sir Kamford declared, silencing Sir Blayne with a firm look. “Can you tell us what we will do from here?”

“In the morning, we leave this valley, crossing the north ridge. In four or five days, we should reach the summit of the pass, and from there you will be able to see your destination.”

“Up the north ridge of this valley?” Another knight spoke, faintly skeptical. “That didn’t look like any kind of slope for riders.”

Ashtaway shrugged. “If the little climb out of here is going to stop you, then I can say with certainty that your horses will never make it over the pass. I am sorry.”

“We can make it!” Sir Kamford snapped. “We’ll dismount and lead the horses on foot over the rough parts.”

“I still say we’d be more use forming a line of charge on the plains, fighting beside Lord Huma in the battle that will decide this war!” Sir Blayne, apparently, could not keep himself quiet.

“Why aren’t you there, then?” Ash asked in genuine confusion. “Are you not your own master?” He couldn’t understand why the man had joined this mission if he was so doubtful of a positive outcome. Certainly no Kagonesti would ever consent to such behavior.

“Orders,” growled the knight, as if begrudging the word. “I am a loyal knight who follows the commands of his lord.”

“But if you do not wish to attack Sanction, then don’t,” argued the brave. “I do not wish to lead any warriors where they are afraid to go.”

“How dare you – a painted savage – question my courage?” snarled Sir Blayne, and this time his fist closed around the hilt of his sword.

“Enough!” barked Sir Kamford, stepping between the elf and the angry knight. He fixed Ash with a level gaze. “There is none who may question the courage of any of my knights without questioning my own. And Sir Blayne is right. We will not tolerate such insinuations.”

Ash remained silent as the leader of the humans turned to his companion. “And I remind you, good Knight of the Crown, to remember your oath. It is unbecoming that we bicker thus in the presence of one who may help us to a spectacular victory. Neither should we make slander against his motivations or his noble people.”

Sir Blayne stood stiff and tall, and for several moments Ashtaway wondered if he would be able to control himself. Finally he exhaled and bowed his head stiffly. “You show us the way to Sanction, and our courage will be displayed before all.”

Ash accepted the reply. “I will go to the ridge crest to sleep tonight, and return with the dawn. You should be ready to walk, then, if haste is of importance.”

“It is,” Sir Kamford declared.

The Kagonesti turned and vanished into the night, seeking his high ledge for a night’s rest. He had a strong feeling that most of the knights were not disappointed to see him go.

CHAPTER 17

SANCTIONHEIGHT

“That’s the pass?” Sir Kamford was frankly dubious. he stood with Ashtaway on a promontory of rock, staring up at two sheer mountain faces. A narrow notch between them showed a gap of smoky sky, dark clouds roiling and seething in a fiery, unnatural manner.

“Beyond lies the place you call Sanction,” Ash confirmed. “The clouds you see are not born of the sky, but of the earth – they are belched from the three great mountains of fire.”

The elf looked up at the dark, heavy overcast, feeling as though the air itself oppressed him. This grim, omnipresent blackness was one reason, perhaps the strongest, that he had never liked this place.

Behind them, the file of knights waited in the shelter of a narrow canyon. For five days they had followed the paths of the Kagonesti, as Ashtaway had led them through the trackless heart of the Khalkists. Now, with the final barrier before them, the wild elf wondered how they would fare.

In truth, he had been favorably impressed by the knights. Of course, many were arrogant and rude, even hostile, but he was honest enough to realize that many Kagonesti were the same way. During the walk, he had remained separate from the bulk of the knights, though he spoke with Sir Kamford frequently, discussing possible routes and sharing some of his knowledge of these rugged mountains. He made particular effort to avoid Sir Blayne, for he sensed the sparking of anger within himself whenever their eyes so much as met.

The fact that all of these warriors obeyed the bidding of a single captain, Sir Kamford Willis, he found intriguing and, he had to admit, quite useful. To have an attack commence when all the fighters were ready, rather than when a single warrior could no longer contain his bloodthirsty enthusiasm, would be an effective tactic. He could see easily that human customs allowed an army to perform encirclements, traps, ambushes, and even retreats with an order and precision that the wild elves had never known.

Also, he had had a chance to examine the armor and weaponry of the knights, and found it to be remarkably impervious to harm, wear, or age. Of course, the keen head of Ash’s axe, too, was made of a strong, hard metal, and it had lasted through many generations of Kagonesti. Still, such weapons were rare among the wild elves, while every one of these knights had a great steel sword, as well as a lance, a dagger long enough to be called a short sword, and a sturdy shield. The elf suspected that, between his shield and plate mail armor, a knight would be virtually invulnerable to the attacks of a single warrior.

He wondered what the knights felt about these wild places through which he took them, and about the wild elf who showed them the path. Did they distrust him? Fear or admire him? He couldn’t know, naturally, and a voice within Ashtaway told him that he shouldn’t care. Certainly most Kagonesti – and every previous Pathfinder – would have been disinterested in the opinions of a human. Why should it matter to Ash? He couldn’t answer the “why,” but he knew that it did matter.

Of course, some of the humans – most notably Sir Blayne – had been sullen and hostile, but for the most part the riders had expressed wonder at the places to which he had taken them. They were a brave lot. Never had the humans showed any trepidation over the prospects of the upcoming attack.

Now, however, he would know for sure. Ashtaway started along the trail, hearing Sir Kamford fall in behind. In moments, the clopping of many hooves told him that the whole column of knights had begun to move along that narrow, steeply climbing route.

As they moved out of the fragrant pine woods onto the barren slopes of the steep mountain, they followed no trail to speak of. It remained for Ashtaway to select a path among the boulders and precipices, crossing back and forth on the slope to minimize the incline, working gradually upward instead of striking directly toward the pass.

Sir Kamford followed, though he moved slowly in order to give his horse time to place each hoof with care. The other knights came in file behind their captain, and as Ash worked his way carefully up the slope, he stopped frequently to give the horsemen time to keep their nervous steeds in a close order. The horses whinnied and kicked, but, with calm cajoling, the men kept them moving upward.

It occurred to the Kagonesti that if a single dragon were to fly overhead and discover the knights on the mountainside, the entire mission could be ended in the space of a few heartbeats. He shook the concern away, hoping that Sir Kamford’s belief – that the dragons had all flown westward for the decisive battle of the war – was correct. There was nothing they could do about it in any event, since the treacherous climb would have been quite impossible in the darkness.

Ash used his hands to cling to a rough outcrop of rock, but as he worked his way around the obstacle he saw quickly that the horses would never be able to follow in his immediate tracks. Instead, he released his grip and backed along the trail for several steps. A narrow chute led upward, allowing him to scramble up to the relatively flat surface of a shoulder, where there was space enough for a dozen horses to stand and rest. He lent a hand to Sir Kamford, and with a clattering of loose rocks, the knight persuaded his mount to scramble up after him.

The elf moved onward and up while the captain of knights caught his breath. One after another, the human knights and their jumpy horses clambered onto the broad surface. When the shoulder’s flat space became too crowded, Sir Kamford led his charger after the elven guide, with the next knights falling into file behind him. In this fashion, each of the humans and horses had a short chance to breathe, but then quickly rejoined the steady, upward progression of the march.

Soon afterward, Ash reached a section of loose rock. The pressure of his moccasin began a sliding, clattering cascade, and the elf sprang backward while a mini-avalanche of stones spilled down the smooth mountainside – fortunately to the side of the precariously balanced knights and horses below. Only when the tumbling had ceased did he again advance, this time finding the footing more secure.

He heard a shout of alarm and the panicked whinnying of a horse. Ashtaway looked down the slope and saw several knights hauling and straining on the lead of a great black charger. The animal’s hooves had slipped from beneath it and it lay on the rocks, kicking frantically at any human who came close. The Kagonesti was certain that the beast was lost, and he only hoped that the riders would have the good sense to abandon it before any of the other mounts, or even a man, slipped downward to join it.

To his frustration, the knights wasted precious minutes coaxing and soothing the animal, helping it to get its hooves underneath its belly. Ash couldn’t mask his surprise when the horse at last scrambled to its feet and once again resumed the climb, pounding upward as if anxious to make up for the delay.

The minutes dragged into hours, morning’s light swiftly waning into late afternoon, and still the file of dismounted horsemen crept up the mountainside. Slipping and staggering frequently, the men somehow continued without a dangerous fall. Progress was slow and careful, though the knights instinctively picked up the pace as they sensed that they would, indeed, make it to their objective.

Ash reached the notch of the pass with several hours of daylight remaining. Towering heights rose to each side, and smoky fog obscured much of the valley before him. He remembered that the descending trail curved around the slope of a great mountain, and that the city itself didn’t come into view until one walked some distance from the pass. Still, it was the perfect gathering place for the knights, since the geography and the air itself combined so effectively to screen them from observation.

As the wild elf looked at the winding column, which still extended nearly halfway to the bottom of the slope, he hoped that all the knights would reach the summit before nightfall rendered their task impossible. Still, as the file straggled into a long, sinuous formation, he wasn’t at all sure that they would.

The summit of the gap was a broad saddle between two towering mountains. Here, one by one, the knights gathered in the shelter offered by several overhanging rocks. The humans stroked and spoke to their nervous steeds, while the horses stared in wild-eyed fear at the barren landscape, at the specters of smoke and steam spewing from several of the nearby summits. The elf was impressed by the way in which each rider seemed to understand his own horse’s fears – the men clapped their steeds on the neck, or patted their muzzles and withers, soon able to restore their animals’ calm.

Though Sanction was not visible from the notch of the pass, the knights, like Ashtaway, saw that this fact worked to their advantage. Steadily the humans assembled, resting and grooming their mounts without having to worry about observation from below.

“Which way to the city?” asked Sir Kamford when several dozen knights had gathered in the pass.

Ashtaway pointed. “The trail down is wider and more gentle than the climbing route. If you move slowly and stay alert for sentries, you should be able to spy your target without being observed.”

“Very well.” Sir Kamford, accompanied by Sir Blayne and several other knights, left their horses with the others and went off to perform a reconnaissance on foot.

One by one, the rest of the knights made their way into the cold, bare shelter of the pass. Each human reacted differently – some with obvious relief, others with swaggering bravado, still others with a pause for reverent thanks to the gods of good. All of them looked at the tattooed figure of the wild elf, with wonder, respect, and perhaps a little bit of suspicion on their faces. Yet the men then looked past, staring into the smoldering valley below, as if reflecting with amazement that their mission was on the brink of decision.

Dozens of knights still remained on the mountainside when Sir Kamford returned. The knight’s mustache bobbed up and down, and his eyes flashed with enthusiasm as he joined Ashtaway beside the trail.

“It couldn’t be more perfect. The plateau on this side of the city is virtually unguarded. They assume any attacker would have to fight his way through Sanction to reach it!”

“And is this plateau worth attacking?” wondered the elf.

“Undeniably! I saw large wooden bins where they store the coal for their forges, and the great barns, with their doors open, were full of grain. Those stockpiles would keep the army in the field over the entire winter if they get delivered – and if we’re successful, they’ll burn for days once we give them the spark. And they’ve built huge depots for weapons – spears, arrows, and the like. Those, too, we’ll put to the torch! Then there are the corrals – huge things, really. They’ve got horses, mules, and oxen, a thousand of each if they have a pair. I don’t doubt for a moment that we’ll scatter the lot of them to the four winds!”

“I am glad the route might prove useful. Let us hope that the rest of your men can reach the crest by nightfall.”

Sir Kamford, with a worried frown, looked over the tail end of his column. “Let’s step up the pace there, lads!” he called. “Don’t want to get stuck down there in the dark, now do we?”

Grumbling, the knights who were within earshot pressed ahead, while the last few struggled as quickly as they dared to close up the gaps. Even so, the sun had set before the final knights reached the pass, though enough daylight remained for even these last humans to see the path barely a few feet in front of their faces.

“That’s the lot!” cried Sir Kamford when the full company of men and horses had gathered in the pass. The warrior’s elation had continued to grow with each new arrival, and now Ashtaway marveled at the keen energy that seemed to possess his human companion.

“You will attack tomorrow?” asked the elf.

“As soon as we can get down there – I want to start the descent before sunrise,” Sir Kamford asserted.

The human looked again at the sweeping mountainside they had ascended during the day, then turned to fix his dark eyes on the wild elf’s face. “I wasn’t at all sure we could do it, you know. When first you showed us the path, I thought we were doomed. Now here we are – and without losing a single horse on the climb!”

“Would that the battle be so kind,” Ash remarked.

Sir Kamford’s expression sobered. “It won’t be,” he acknowledged. “But, thanks to you, we’ll have the chance to strike a solid blow in the name of the Oath and the Measure.”

CHAPTER 18

RANK OF CHARGE

In misty purple light, an hour before damn, Ashtaway started down the smooth path toward Sanction. The knights were already active in the mountain camp, brushing and feeding the horses before cinching saddles and bridles into place. As if sensing the impending battle, the animals snorted softly and pawed the ground with barely contained tension. Still, secrecy was paramount. By the time the elf had moved fifty paces from the camp, he could hear no sounds of humans or horses.

Instead, he was bombarded by a sensory onslaught from the city that gradually came into view. Sanction expanded to fill the horizon as steady progress brought Ashtaway around the great bulk of the volcano. Even in the predawn darkness the city was alight, illuminated by glowing fissures in the bedrock. Flaming rivers of lava spewed heat and fire into the air, washing the entire, crowded valley in erratic pulses. Now, as dawn diffused the harsh, fiery illumination, Sanction promised to remain a place more of smoke and shadows than of daylight.

One of the Three Smoking Mountains – the peaks the knights called the Lords of Doom – belched forth a river of molten rock. This flowage blazed and hissed across the face on the opposite side of the valley, and Ash could see the course of the lava stream as it sputtered through the heart of the city.

Despite the destructive forces raging around the valley on the ground and in the air, to the wild elf the city of Sanction seemed an ancient, timeless place – a place where the works of nature ruled with far more authority than the audacious constructs of humankind.

Ashtaway got a clear view of the plateau, with its smooth eastern approach and the scattered clusters of buildings, corrals, and storage depots. As he moved farther, he saw the teeming slums come into sight, buildings sprouting like weeds on every patch of level ground and some places that were very steep as well. Narrow, twisting streets forced their way through these packed structures, and the wild elf could only wonder at the kind of desperation that would compel free creatures to dwell in such squalid, tightly packed surroundings.

Many towering edifices of stone rose among a tangle of lesser buildings, and wide avenues cut through the chaos to link numerous teeming alleys and lanes. The whole of the crowded metropolis blocked the valley between two huge volcanoes, with the broad expanse of the Solamnic Plain extending beyond. Where the city met the plain, the high wall of stone had been erected, and though it was pierced by numerous gates, Ash could see that it presented a daunting obstacle to anyone attempting to attack the city from the west.

Finally the mighty temples, grand structures that flanked the city on three sides, came into view. Even these left him cold. How could their grandeur hope to compare to the majesty of even the smallest mountain peak? Beyond the farthest temple stretched the high wall, studded with towers, bristling with parapets, screening Sanction against any army that dared to approach it from the plains. For the first time, Ashtaway began to see the true potential of Sir Kamford’s plan, suspecting that the knights might meet with bold success even though they attacked a place where, all told, they might be outnumbered by something greater than one hundred to one.

The mountain trail led down from the east, and from his vantage the elf got a better look at the broad clearing on this side of the city. Many corrals had been erected there, and though some were empty, others held large herds of horses or oxen. He could also see the tents and barns, lined in neat rows, where Sir Kamford had said they would find the accumulated weapons and stores of the Dark Queen’s reserve.

Ashtaway wondered briefly about his own presence here, on the fringes of a place that would soon become a savage battleground. On his previous visit to the pass, when he had discovered the trail, he had ventured only far enough through the saddle to get a look at the city. This was not a place he had any desire to explore. Yet even with that memory – and the same feeling now, only much stronger – he continued to creep toward Sanction’s festering and polluted fringes.

Certainly, the knights no longer needed the Kagonesti’s help to reach their battle. The trail down the mountain was smooth and wide, aided by the fact that the slope was far more gradual within Sanction valley than without. Still, Ashtaway never considered departing before the charge. He had been impressed by these serious warriors with their great steeds, and he was very interested in seeing their attack.

He knew that the column of horsemen must have started down the trail, though they remained out of sight behind him. Sir Kamford was determined to commence his attack with the earliest hours of full daylight, while sleep still dulled the senses and impeded the reactions of the snoring garrison troops.

Nearing the bottom of the slope, Ashtaway felt his scalp tingle with a sudden sense of alarm. He wondered, briefly, what might happen if the dragons came back. It did not take a great deal of imagination to see that, if Sir Kamford was wrong about the strength of Huma’s campaign and several of the serpents returned to Sanction to keep an eye on their precious reserves, a military disaster was inevitable.

Concealed by a knobby outcrop of rock beside the trail, Ash studied the smoke-screened skies. He saw no sign of anything flying there, not even a bird, and gradually convinced himself that his alarm had not been triggered by the arrival of evil dragons. It was probably just the pungent smell of this place, the elf told himself, as the bitter air stung his nostrils and wisps of sulphurous smoke brought tears to his eyes.

As he moved along the foot of the mountain, leaving the path to take advantage of the concealment offered by the rough ground at the base of the slope, he saw that the plateau of Sanction was terribly vulnerable to attack from the east. At this early hour even the slaves still slept, and the great racks of weapons – as well as the bins of coal and the stone-walled edifices of the city’s great forges – stood for the most part undefended. Animals rustled and paced in the crowded corrals, bellowing and lowing as if they sensed the danger of which their masters remained blissfully unaware.

The listless sentries Ash saw included many humans and a few bored, lazy ogres. The guards on duty seemed more concerned with finding a comfortable place to rest than in protecting their precious stockpiles. And even when one of them did sit up and look around, the elf noticed that the guard paid a great deal more attention to the city beyond than to the smoldering mountain rising so close by. Obviously, the notion of an attack from the east was a thing that these guards – and, by inference, their commanders – had long since discounted.

Dawn seeped veins of crimson light through the smoke, bringing an otherworldly glow to the mountainous horizon. Whips cracked, and hulking ogres urged columns of slaves from their barracks to the mines and forges on the plateau. Ash saw these miserable laborers marching dully forth, responding only to the extent necessary to spare the sting of the lash. What must life be like for them, he wondered? How could any sentient creature surrender to such an existence? He knew that he, or any Kagonesti, would sooner accept death than allow himself to be compelled into a life of servitude.

He heard the clanging of a heavy metal object and ducked once more into a crevice between two lava-scarred rocks. Several ogres appeared, apparently marching right out of the mountainside, clomping within a stone’s throw of the concealed elf. Only then did Ashtaway notice that they had emerged from a tunnel, leaving a pair of great iron doors standing open in the mouth of their subterranean passage.

Squinting in the growing light, the Kagonesti observed that the file of ogres numbered at least a dozen. The brutes were coated with black dust and tromped along slowly, with an unmistakable air of fatigue. They wore large swords at their sides and dented, battle-scarred helmets on their heads. Obviously these were not workers, but warriors.

“Good to see sky again,” one grunted, coughing with an exhalation of dust.

“Tunnel’s too blasted long,” another groused. “Too many days underground.”

“But at least we get to Sanction,” a third growled. The latter seemed to be some sort of commander. He cuffed the two complainers across the backs of their heads. “Straighten up! March good-like!”

Still muttering, the rest of the monsters took steps to obey, brushing the heaviest layers of dust from their arms, adjusting their swords at their belts so that the weapons hung straight. They even tried to collect their file into a double rank, but in this they were less than successful. The elf watched as they marched out of earshot, discerning that the ogres veered sharply left, apparently heading for the city and not the labor fields of the broad plateau.

Ash took careful note of the concealed entrance, wondering if his knowledge of yet another path might prove useful in the immediate future. Sidling sideways, darting from one cluster of rocks to another, he sought to get a look inside.

The tunnel opened into a low cut in the rocks, which helped to conceal it from outside observation. The two large doors must have weighed many tons each, and for a moment Ash couldn’t understand how anyone could have opened them. Then the elf saw a curious wheel, set on its side with spokes extending out beyond the rim. Around the axle below the wheel was a tight coil of rope, and though he couldn’t understand how it worked, the Kagonesti guessed that this mechanism was the means of opening and closing the door. Leaning farther, he saw a second, matching wheel beside the other door.

Movement within the tunnel caught his eye as several figures advanced from the shadows. He heard the cracking of a whip and a sudden yelp of pain.

“Move, you toads!” growled a deep voice – a sound that could rumble only from an ogre chest.

Ash crouched just a few feet outside the still opened doors and observed a number of small figures scrambling and tumbling toward him. The whip snapped again, and the small figures scattered to all sides.

“Get back here! Turn that capstan! Now, by the Dark Queen, or dere’ll be no gruel for you!”

Whimpering pathetically, the little fellows gathered, cringing, around one of the curious wheels. Seizing the spokes where they emerged beyond the rim, the dwarflike figures began to pull. With a creaking groan, the nearest door began, very slowly, to move.

Now Ash saw the overseer, who was indeed an ogre. The monster wore a black tunic of stiff leather studded with nails. An old specimen, the brute had lost both his tusks, but his bloodshot eyes still sparked with evil and cunning. He raised a clublike fist, and the elf saw the supple strand of the whip lash back, ready for another strike at the tiny, pathetic slaves.

That blow would never land, as a steel-tipped arrow flew into the cavern mouth with silent accuracy, slicing through the ogre’s neck. The brute, retching and gagging, stumbled backward, far too slowly to avoid the tattooed figure that plunged through the door.

Ashtaway raised his axe with cold, deadly efficiency. The ogre, both hamlike fists grasping the shaft that emerged from its throat, gaped stupidly at impending death. The axe swept downward once, and again, leaving the monster as a gory corpse on the tunnel floor.

The slaves, each of whom was as filthy and disheveled an individual as Ash had ever seen, gaped up at him. Slack jaws distended, eyes as wide as saucers, the little fellows looked from the dead ogre to the tall, garishly tattooed elf.

One of the slaves left the wheel and stepped to the side of the corpse. He sniffed the brute, then prodded with his toe. Finally he hauled back and delivered a sharp kick into the monster’s unfeeling knee.

In an instant, the rest of the group, which numbered perhaps ten, scrambled all over the body, spitting, kicking, pinching, punching, inflicting all manner of vengeance over what Ash had no trouble believing had been very rough treatment.

“T’anks, Mister!” declared the first of the slaves to inspect the corpse, leaving to his fellows the meting out of revenge. “You kilt ol’ No-Teeth, but good!”

“You’re welcome,” Ash replied, struggling to understand the slave’s thick accent. The Kagonesti leaned forward to get a better look at this curious laborer.

The little fellow, as if sensing that he was under inspection, stood up straight and thrust his chest out so far that a seam ripped along the side of his filthy tunic.

Ashtaway had encountered dwarves before, though he had never spoken to one – and never would, if he had a modicum of choice about the matter. He knew there was something vaguely dwarflike about this wretch, but at the same time no dwarf he had ever seen had been as scrawny, as filthy, and as abject as this slave and his fellows. A beard that was really no more than a few straggling hairs curled outward from the runt’s receding chin, and he casually picked his nose – even as he continued to stand at attention.

As they finished their gleeful vengeance, the other slaves, one by one, marched over to stand beside their leader. Ash sensed that the fellows actually tried to form a straight line, though the formation assumed more of an S shape as more and more of the slaves joined up.

“Ogres find ol’ No-Teeth, they gonna be right mad,” one mused, not displeased by the notion.

“Real mad,” another declared sagely – or at least, he would have sounded sage if he hadn’t belched immediately following his pronouncement.

“You better scram,” the leader suggested, winking at Ashtaway. “When more ogres come, we’ll tell’em No-Teeth fell down, say he couldn’t git up. They just give us a new boss.”

The Kagonesti was touched by the courageous, if misguided, offer to cover for him. He looked at the corpse, with the arrow jutting from beneath its chin, the two gruesome axe wounds that had only now ceased to bleed. “I, um, I think they’ll see that No-Teeth didn’t just have an accident.”

The spokesman for the slaves sniffed, insulted by the suggestion. “I’m Highbulp Toofer – I’m a good liar! You think I’m no-good liar or sumthin’?”

Holding up a placating hand, the elf shook his head. “No! I’m sure you’re a very good liar! But tell me, what are you? Are you a dwarf?”

“You betcha! Gully dwarves, all of us is! We the bosses of these tunnels —’til the ogres come, anyway.”

“Are there more ogres coming? Do they live down here somewhere?”

The highbulp looked at Ashtaway, apparently wondering if the elf could possibly be as ignorant as he seemed. Deciding, obviously, that he could, the filthy dwarf spoke with great seriousness.

“Nobody lives down in these here caves – they’s just roads to here and there.’Ceptin’ us and No-Teeth. We live here, so’s we can open da gate.”

An idea began to tug at the edge of Ashtaway’s consciousness. Perhaps it had started even before he had shot the fateful arrow. “These tunnels – do they go a long way?”

Highbulp Toofer nodded vigorously, causing his dirty braid of hair to flop up and down over his face.

“Do they come out only in Sanction – or do some of them go under the mountain, come out somewhere else?”

“They goes all over the place. Under mountain, over mountain – even to different mountains!”

“You seem like a terribly wise Highbulp – but do you know these paths? Could you show a person the tunnel, say, to the other side of this mountain?”

“I kin show!” boasted one of the gully dwarves, shoving Toofer aside.

“Boodle gets you lost, right quick!” Toofer snapped. “But I knows the ways!”

“Look!” cried another gully dwarf, who had crept toward the still-opened doors and looked out on the plateau beyond. “They’re doin’ a parade!”

Ash remembered the knights and vividly pictured what the dwarf imagined as a “parade.” The elf sprang back to the doorway, stepping out just far enough to get a view of the wide, flat ground to the east of the city.

The first thing that caught his eye was the rank of knights. True to his plan, Sir Kamford had led his company down the trail in the predawn shadows. His stealthy approach had no doubt been aided by the darkness cloaking the west-facing slope of the descent. In any event, the knights had apparently arrived at the foot of the mountain without being detected.

Now, as Ashtaway watched the last of the horsemen take up positions in the center of the line, they formed into a long, single rank. Lances raised, horses prancing anxiously, the Solamnic riders sat straight and proud in their saddles – as if they held themselves aloof from the chaos they were about to bring upon this valley.

An ogre sentry near one of the grain barns shouted, voice shrill with panic, and others took up the cry as the dawn mist parted to reveal the line of steel and flesh. A battle horn brayed somewhere in the midst of the labor camps, and the elf saw small groups of ogres lumbering toward the field. Many more figures – most of them slaves, no doubt – streamed out of the camps, toward shelter in the fiery, tangled city below.

The sun crested the ridge behind the knights, piercing beneath the heavy layer of overcast with shocking brilliance, like a wave of fire sweeping from the heavens into the seething hell of Sanction. Sunlight glinted like diamonds off the silver armor of the horsemen. Ashtaway realized that the knights had scrubbed the clay and the mud from their armor, discarding the leafy camouflage they had worn during the mountain trek. Polished, gleaming, and immaculate, they rode horses brushed sleek, with silken manes flowing in the wind.

For the first time Ash understood that it was more than vanity that had caused the knights to spend so much time cleaning and polishing their equipment. The pristine rank, appearing as if by magic against Sanction’s unprotected flank, must have seemed to the enemy like some ethereal strike force dispatched by Paladine himself to smite his enemies.

Now the men put their heels to the horses, and the long line of steeds commenced to advance at a slow, deliberate walk – a pace that was, by its precise and unhurried nature, in some ways more frightening than a thundering gallop. Lances raised high, the riders quickly accelerated into a pounding, steady trot. Ash was particularly impressed by the way in which the rank never wavered – each of the horses moved at exactly the same pace. Spread across the broad field, the line of the charge stretched for nearly half a mile – a startling breadth of frontage for the relatively small number of attackers.

Ashtaway knew that no Kagonesti advance could ever be so precise, so well ordered, and he briefly regretted the chaotic impulses of his own braves. Certainly those urges led to many acts of individual bravery, but at the same time they served to dissipate the concentrated force of the tribe’s warriors as a whole. He remembered the attack against the bakali beside the Bluelake. If all the braves had shot their arrows together, the shocking effect of the initial volley would have been greatly magnified.

The horses broke into a canter, and the thundering of their hooves pounded audibly to Ashtaway on the mountainside – and, no doubt, throughout Sanction as well. Still, somehow, despite their speed, the knights maintained a precise line. Lances that had been upraised were now lowered, couched in the riders’ flanks, silvery tips angling toward the pockets of ogres and other warriors who scrambled to form some kind of desperate, makeshift defense before their precious forges, barns, and arsenals.

Finally the attackers broke into a gallop, and here the slightest variations opened in their lines as the fastest horses pulled slightly ahead of the slowest. Even so, the knights and their chargers advanced as a wall, bristling with razor-sharp lances, fueled by a grim desire for victory.

The initial groups of defenders raised their weapons, some ogres displaying heroic courage in standing to meet the charge. Screams of pain rose from the field, mingled with the splintering sounds of spear shafts breaking and the shouted battle cries of the charging knights. Yet the horsemen swept past without pause, the straight line barely rippling over each pocket of defenders, and Ash was awed to see that not a single ogre remained standing once the rank had passed them. The knights and their horses, conversely, did not falter in the precise formation of their advance.

Other groups of defenders – ogres, bakali, and numerous human warriors – scrambled to raise weapons, to join ranks in the face of the thunderous onslaught. Unarmored, clapping helmets on their heads, breastplates hastily fastened over their cotton tunics, these ragged, frightened warriors emerged from the barracks and forges, urged toward the sounds of the charge by the profane exhortations of their captains. One by one the companies were pounded into the dirt by the inexorably advancing knights, until those that had not yet joined the battle turned and fled in a desperate attempt to avoid the crushing wave of death.

One or two horses fell, gutted or hamstrung by desperate ogres. Ash saw a knight climb to his feet beside a writhing mount. The man shook his head groggily, then drew a mighty sword. He cleaved a nearby ogre who showed signs of stirring, then looked around for further victims. When none showed, he raised the weapon and trotted, on foot, behind the rank of his fellows.

By the time Sir Kamford’s charge swept fully across the vast plateau, the horsemen had smashed every defender who had dared to stand in their way. A few ogres still moved, but these were stunned by the shock of the attack. Ashtaway saw one of these stagger to his feet, look at the devastation around him, then collapse in apparent despair. Others tried to fight, but could offer only feeble resistance to a few dismounted knights who now charged forward in the wake of the horses. Most of the riders had discarded their lances, and now the riders chopped, slashed, and stabbed with cold efficiency.

The knights broke into smaller groups as the charge was segmented by the looming piles of coal and the block-like structures of the forges, storage barns, and arsenals. Around the corrals, where horses bucked and snorted, fences went down under the hooves of chargers. More knights dismounted, smashing additional fences and prying open steel-barred gates. Like water flowing out of a breached reservoir, the horses streamed through the openings, while shouting knights, brandishing flaring torches, urged the frightened beasts into a raging stampede.

In Sanction itself, bright banners now flew from many staffs, while brassy horns brayed a constant summons to arms.

Ash saw troops streaming upward from the city, impelled by brash trumpets and hysterical cries of warning, but he could also see that these reinforcements would be too late. Flames spurted upward from one pile of wooden sticks – sticks that would never become the spear shafts that had been their destiny. Seizing the makeshift torches, the knights plunged through the camp, throwing flame at the stockpiles of coal.

Some of the men dismounted, smashing down the doors of forges and storehouses, charging inside with swords drawn. Soon smoke puffed from the broken doorways, and by the time the knights emerged to seek their next targets, orange blossoms of flame had begun to surge upward. A few more pockets of defenders tried to stand against the knights, but these were quickly ridden down and smashed.

More corrals collapsed under the onslaught, and herds of oxen lumbered in panic. Ashtaway had a brief picture of the food that stampeded away from them, thinking that a small portion of the herd would be sufficient to feed his tribe for years.

Frequently, now, the defenders of Sanction showed no heart for this battle. Ash watched with cruel pleasure as a whole company of human pikemen threw down their weapons and fled toward the city, only to be trampled beneath the hooves of the vengeful cavalry.

When bands of survivors did reach the broad roadways leading down into the city, their terror was a palpable force. Fleeing headlong, their shouts of panic audible even to the distant Kagonesti observer, these men piled into the wave of reinforcements that was trying to climb up the same road down which the routed defenders fled. Even when the fresh troops raised sword and spear in the face of their fleeing comrades, they couldn’t bring the rout to a halt – the panicked survivors simply parted like water, scrambling through ditches and over rough slopes in their haste to escape the killing ground.

The combination of gravity, a lack of knowledge about their foes, and the palpable fear of the retreating troops gave pause to the fresh warriors. Many of the reinforcements stepped off the road to allow the running men to pass, while others actually turned and joined the flight. It amused Ashtaway to observe the contagious nature of this panic. Soon hundreds, then thousands, of men ran from a fight that they had yet to see! Of course, Ash thought with a tight grin, when these veterans later gathered around a bivouac’s campfires, their roles in this furious battle would undoubtedly be embellished.

Much of the plateau was obscured by smoke now, as more and more fires erupted from the Dark Queen’s arsenals and strongholds. Knights rode back and forth, many bearing torches, chasing the fleeing animals, trying to infuse even greater panic to the stampede. Sir Kamford, Sir Blayne, and the other leaders shouted and waved their arms, seeking to collect their men into companies, reforming the ranks to pursue the attack.

Once again Ash felt the tickling sense of alarm that had disturbed him earlier in the morning – hairs prickling upward at the nape of his neck. He looked to the west, suddenly fearful, and observed a serpentine shape, ghostly white, gliding below the clouds. Other mighty, winged creatures soared just beyond – another that was white, and several of rich blue. Broad wings stroked the air, and the deadly forms gained speed as they plunged downward from the overhanging pall of clouds.

With a pang of dread, Ashtaway knew what he was seeing: the dragons of evil had taken wing and were but moments from the fight.

CHAPTER 19

INTO DARKNESS

Ashtaway acted with the speed of thought, throwing back his head and drawing a deep breath. His lips stretched taut across his mouth as, cupping his hands, he released a piercing shriek. The urgent cry of the eagle keened across the valley, ringing even over the sounds of battle. Several of the knights raised their heads, looking about for the source of the sound.

Instead, they saw serpentine death, plunging from the heavy layer of cloud. A white dragon in the lead shrieked in fury, and behind it other white and blue shapes thundered downward from the glowering clouds, horrific merchants of violence and death.

Again Ash sent out the cry, drawing his axe and waving it above his head. Would they see him? One of the knights looked in his direction and shouted something, spurring his horse toward the wild elf. Several others wheeled to follow, and he knew that the humans had at least seen the hope he offered. Whether they could reach it in time was another question.

Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw that the iron doors to the tunnel remained open. He expected that the gully dwarves would have vanished deep into the passageway and was startled to see the group of them clustered at his feet. The little wretches had crept forward soundlessly and now eagerly observed the battle from behind the shelter of the elf’s legs.

Quickly Ash sought out Toofer, fastening his gaze on the Highbulp’s grimy face. “Go back. Get ready to close the doors when I tell you to! Will you do that?”

“You betcha!” Toofer’s head nodded eagerly, though he made no move to return to the tunnel.

Desperately Ash looked back to the battle, where most of the knights had remounted their chargers. In small groups they galloped toward the mountain, where the Kagonesti again waved his axe.

Looking skyward, the warrior saw three white dragons, diving in the lead, and at least a pair of blues coming close behind. The knights separated, scattering not from panic, Ashtaway sensed, but training. This way they presented the fewest targets to the horrific, death-dealing breath weapons of the vengeful serpents.

“Go inside! Now!” Ash repeated, his voice a desperate growl as he saw Toofer and the other gully dwarves still watching the battle.

The Highbulp scowled suspiciously. “You want us to miss best part of fight?” he demanded.

“I want you to stay alive!” Ashtaway snarled, furious. “And just maybe, to save some of my friends! Now, go!” He punctuated the command with a menacing wave of his axe, and that was enough to send the dwarves tumbling like ninepins back toward the tunnel mouth. They took up positions at the great closing-wheels, but fortunately did not yet draw them shut.

“Wait till I tell you to close the doors!” the elf shouted, before turning back to the deadly fight.

The leading white dragon belched a cloud of frigid, killing frost. The white blast exploded downward and out, expanding across the ground, sweeping several riders and their plunging horses into the deadly effect – not to mention a few craven ogres who crouched nearby, apparently having realized they could never outrun the horses.

Dissipating almost as quickly as it had formed, the frost revealed the motionless figures of horses, knights, and ogres in its wake. The victims had not been frozen in the postures of the battle. Instead, the force of the frosty blast had sent the knights tumbling from the horses, smashing the unfortunate steeds to the ground with fatal, crushing power. The dead lay still, rigid, in postures suggesting the extreme agony and horror of their last moments.

More of the riders began to retreat, dodging through the dense clouds of smoke spewing from the coal piles. The white dragons soared after them, breathing their deadly frost, but nowhere could they catch more than two or three victims in any single explosive burst.

Breaking out of the enclosed buildings, the riders lay low across their saddles, lashing every bit of speed from the plunging mounts. The horses needed no encouragement; nostrils snorting, eyes wide with panic, the animals galloped in a desperate lather, keenly aware of the doom that soared just behind their tails.

One of the blue dragons swooped in from the flank, gliding low across the path of the knights. The monster’s jaws gaped, and Ash blinked against the bright flash of lightning that burst forth – a killing bolt that seared two riders, instantly killing men and horses. The dragon slashed with its front foot, striking another armored rider from his horse as the azure wyrm swept upward for another pass. The man writhed in the serpent’s crushing grip until, a hundred feet in the air, the dragon released its helpless victim. Ashtaway clenched his fists in barely contained fury as he watched the man plunge to his death.

Now the first of the riders neared the tunnel’s mouth, and the Kagonesti Pathfinder gestured with his steel-headed axe. “In here! Keep going – get out of sight!”

A white dragon soared low, the cloud of his deadly breath trapping a number of riders as they crowded toward the tunnel entrance. Ashtaway tried to ignore the cries of agonized men as the killing frost embraced them, turning his eyes instead to the dozens of knights still struggling to reach shelter. Lightning crackled through the air, and more clouds of frost swept the ground, but now a steady file of horsemen galloped through the widespread iron gates, disappearing into the shadows below the mountains.

Ash recognized Sir Kamford, with Sir Blayne galloping at his side. A monstrous blue swept toward the two knights and in an eye blink the Kagonesti raised his bow and let a steel-tipped shaft fly. The arrow struck the dragon in its face, and with a roar of irritation the creature jerked its head to the side, spitting a hasty lightning bolt into the rocks before the elven archer.

Tumbling backward, Ashtaway smelled the acrid scent of the lightning strike, but realized that he was still alive. The flying dragons had all swept past, and though they quickly swerved around for another pass, most of the riders had gained the shelter of the tunnel.

Staggering to his feet, the wild elf looked back across the field. Kamford and Blayne waited beyond the gate, holding their wild-eyed, snorting horses in place with firm tugs at the reins. Apparently unconcerned with their own safety, they waited to watch the last of their men flee toward shelter.

“Start closing the gates!” cried Ashtaway, fixing his eyes on Highbulp Toofer’s awestruck face. Blinking, the dwarf squinted in concentration, then shouted something to his fellows. Grunting from the effort, but working with surprising unity, the little fellows began to turn the great wheels. Ash saw the doors swivel inward, though he was dismayed by the slow progress of their movement. The gap remained plenty wide enough to allow a dragon, on foot, to press inward after the retreating Knights of Solamnia.

A trio of knights, fleeing from the far end of the camp, seemed like the last of the riders. Ash looked at the doors, which still closed with painful slowness, then back to the three knights. Lying low across their horses’ necks, the men kept their eyes fastened on the refuge, refusing to look at the death wheeling through the skies, diving toward their tails. Kamford and Blayne reined in their horses just outside the gate, staring in desperate hope at the last of their fleeing companions.

Ashtaway heard Sir Kamford’s groan of dismay as two dragons, a white and a blue, dove toward the three knights. Lightning crackled, the bolt of energy vanishing into a sudden cloud of frost with an intense hiss. The stench of burned flesh rose even above the stink of the lightning, and the cloud dissipated to reveal the garishly frozen, incongruously blackened corpses of the three men and their horses.

The blue dragon swooped toward the tunnel mouth as the white tried to pull up and away, but the frost dragon moved too slowly. The trailing coil of its tail struck the blue’s wing, sending the creature careening off to the side. The two serpents crashed into the ground with a shudder that Ashtaway felt through his moccasins.

Still another dragon, a white, dove toward the iron doors that gradually inched shut as the last of the fleeing riders disappeared inside. Sir Kamford and Sir Blayne were the only two knights still exposed to danger.

“Go!” cried Blayne, suddenly leaping down from his saddle. The knight drew his monstrous sword and slapped the flat of the blade against the flank of Sir Kamford’s horse, sending the animal galloping inward, carrying its cursing rider into the darkness of the tunnel.

Ashtaway leapt to the doors, seeing that they were about halfway closed – still not enough of a barrier to halt a plunging dragon.

“Go, elf!” cried Sir Blayne, stepping away from the doors to face the diving dragon with his upraised blade.

Words caught in the Kagonesti’s throat as Ash tried to urge the knight inward. He understood the man’s sacrifice, knew that it was necessary, but in that instant wanted desperately to change his mind. Blayne had been an arrogant boor, he remembered with a pang of guilt, but there would be no faulting the man’s courage.

Ash dove through the narrowing portal, hearing Sir Blayne’s voice rise in a roaring challenge. “For the Oath and the Measure!” he cried, stepping forward and chopping savagely at the white’s looming snout.

The serpent reared back, avoiding the blow, and the elf waited for the killing blast of frost, hoping that the deadly chill did not penetrate too deeply into the shelter of the tunnel. Curiously, the beast did not belch its murderous breath. Perhaps the monster had expended all its frigid exhalations against the fleeing knights outside.

In any event, the creature closed on Sir Blayne with wicked talons and crushing jaws. The knight’s blade flashed again, and then, finally, the closing of the tunnel doors blocked the scene from view.

*

Gully dwarves clustered around Ashtaway, clinging to his leggings, grasping for his hands. The little creatures stared upward, horrified, at the snorting horses and grunting, cursing knights, who tried to dismount in the utter darkness of the tunnel.

“Why you bring them here?” Toofer asked in a hoarse whisper – a voice loud enough to resonate through the enclosed tunnel.

“These are my friends – and yours. You helped save them,” the wild elf explained.

“But horses, too?”

Ashtaway wasn’t listening. He saw Sir Kamford, numb with shock, staring at the huge doors, where the faintest trickle of light spilled through the crack in the center. Somewhere behind the elf another knight groaned as two comrades worked to set his broken arm.

The Pathfinder stepped to Kamford’s side and, hesitantly, laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. The knight sighed, shook his head in resignation, and turned away from the heavy iron doors.

“Our fight will make the lords proud,” declared Sir Kamford wearily.

“And you? Should it not make you proud as well?” asked the wild elf.

“Aye, my friend, but with the pride comes a weighty measure of grief.”

“Was this a victory against the Dark Queen?” Ashtaway asked, remembering the great fires, the scattered livestock – and the fallen knights.

“A bloody fight, but a victory indeed,” Kamford agreed. He blinked, trying to see into the depths of the stygian tunnel. “At least, a victory if we can get out of here. Do you know? Are we in a trap or an escape tunnel?”

“Come over here. There’s someone you have to meet. I think he can show us the way.”

CHAPTER 20

A PARTING OF FRIENDS

“Go out here,” Toofer said, pointing to a pair of large iron doors blocking the end of the roughly carved tunnel. The gully dwarf halted in his tracks, arms crossed firmly across his chest, as if he couldn’t wait for the elf and his human companions to be gone.

Ashtaway stepped forward, Sir Kamford at his side. The knight held aloft the last of the sputtering torches that had illuminated their world during the long, often confusing march through the tunnels under the great mountain.

The portals before them resembled strongly the doors Ashtaway had discovered in the valley above Sanction – though the elf sensed that their long subterranean march had carried them well south of that dark and smoldering city. They had been underground for approximately three days, Ash guessed, though they had seen no glimpse of the sky in that time and thus had no real grasp of the duration of their sunless trek. The wild elf also deduced, based on long stretches of gradual downhill slope, that the war party had descended a considerable distance from the entrance on the mountainside.

“Go on. Git,” urged the Highbulp, all but pushing the knight toward the door.

“What’s outside?” Ash asked suspiciously.

“Usual stuff. Air, mountains, sky. Ground where horses can poop and not stink up tunnel.”

The latter concern, the elf thought with a smile, was strongly on Toofer’s mind. Though the gully dwarves had displayed a remarkable lack of fastidiousness in all aspects of their lives, the presence of the knights’ mighty steeds in these enclosed tunnels had apparently proved too much for even their less-than-delicate sensibilities.

Sir Kamford called several of his men forward to work the door-opening mechanisms – capstans, he called them. The first glimmerings of daylight soon crept through the opening portals, causing the men to blink and shield their eyes until they could adjust, once again, to bright illumination.

“Your help has been very valuable,” Ashtaway said to the gully dwarf Highbulp, who had begun to tap his foot in agitation.

“Never mind about that. But t’anks for killin’ ol’ No-Teeth. We never liked him so much.”

“You’re … welcome, I think,” Ash said with a grin. “But to be on the safe side, I wouldn’t go right back to Sanction if I were you. No-Teeth might have had some friends, and I bet they’re not too happy right now.”

“No friends. But still, we go to different tunnel for a while. Was getting boring, just ‘open door,’ ‘close door’ alla time. Toofer real Highbulp, gonna get me a tribe. Maybe even make a army, like you got. No horses, though.”

The gully dwarf wrinkled his face and held his nose as one of the great warhorses made another contribution to the floor of the tunnel. “Canya open that door faster?” he asked.

The knights ignored him, and in truth the iron portals swung open fairly quickly. No doubt, Sir Kamford’s men were as eager to get outside as the gully dwarves were to see them go. Against the brightness of a cloudless day they saw tall, leafy trees, the edge of a forest beginning a few paces beyond the tunnel doors.

“You’ve been a true ally,” Ashtaway solemnly told Highbulp Toofer. “Among my people, we have a term of honor. We bestow it on some of our great warriors, and those leaders who have an impact on our history. We call such a hero ‘Pathfinder.’”

The Kagonesti took a tiny feather from his belt pouch, a tuft of ruby-bright crimson fading into an iridescent green. He placed it behind Toofer’s ear, entangling it in the loose curls of oily hair.

“Highbulp Toofer of the Smoking Mountain, I name you ‘Pathfinder.’”

The gully dwarf blinked in surprise. His chest puffed outward as he stood up to his full three-foot height, beaming.

“No worries about ogres chasin’ you,” he said. “Highbulp Pathfinder gets’em going on the wrong way!”

“Thanks, my friend.” Ashtaway was touched by the little fellow’s heart.

“And our thanks, too.” Sir Kamford joined them as the knights, leading their horses, began to file out of the doorway. No more than sixty of the original hundred had survived, but they knew that – without the discovery of the tunnel – all the knights would have perished beneath frost and lightning or fang and talon. “Sorry about the mess. I suggest you leave it for the ogres to clean up,” he suggested with a chuckle.

Toofer brightened still further. “That’s a good idea,” he agreed before turning to the dozen members of his clan who had watched, awestruck, the bestowing of the colored feather.

“C’mon, you louts!” he shouted, pulling a forked stick out of his voluminous pouch. A string of rubbery, flexible sinew linked the two split ends “We got new game wit’ ogres. Everybody got a flinger?”

The Highbulp commenced describing what promised to be a very elaborate tactical plan as Ashtaway and Sir Kamford finally passed through the doors. Breathing deeply of the fresh air, the elf looked up and saw close-pressing ridges, thickly covered with broad-leaved trees. A waterfall streamed, a plume of white mist, into the head of the valley, and nearby they could hear the splashing of a shallow but fast-flowing brook. The smells were summery and the air thick enough to confirm that they had indeed descended far from the mountainous heights.

“We must be very near the plains,” Ash guessed. “If you follow the stream down from this valley, I suspect you’ll be out of the foothills by the end of the day.”

“Then westward, toward Solamnia,” Sir Kamford agreed. “I need to learn how Huma’s campaign fares – and let the lords know of our success.”

“Was it worth the cost?” Ashtaway wondered. Throughout the long, dark march, his mind had replayed the glorious images of the charge. He remembered the inexorably precise advance, the way that no ogre or human could stand in the face of those raging horses.

Then had come the fires, when so much of the enemy’s stockpiles had burned. This still seemed, to Ashtaway, a curious way to fight. It made sense when the knight described it – the Kagonesti could understand that the weapons and food would benefit the Dark Queen’s army for some months – but it was not the kind of thing any wild elf chieftain would try to do. After hours of subterranean meditation, Ashtaway had finally understood why: When the Kagonesti went to war, they expected to win or lose on the day the battle was joined. This planning for battles that would not occur until the next season was a thing that seemed pointless, even defeatist.

“I believe it was,” Sir Kamford declared, though he shook his head with a weariness that belied his words. “To lose Sir Blayne … to see so many other good men fall, never to rise. Who can say? If those arrows, that steel, were destined to kill a hundred men in the future, the cost was just. If they never were to have been used. …”

The knight lapsed into silence, and only after a moment’s reflection did Ash realize that the human was patiently, elven-fashion, awaiting the Kagonesti’s response.

“Even so, many ogres were slain. And some slaves were freed. I think that those are good things,” Ashtaway replied.

“And I would like to think that the knights have made a friend – a good friend – among the proudest, the finest elves on all of Ansalon.”

The Kagonesti Pathfinder, deeply moved, touched his hand to the knight’s shoulder. “You have,” he promised, knowing that Sir Kamford Willis was a warrior as courageous, as mighty – in his own way – as Faltath, or any heroic wild elf brave.

Ashtaway stood still, remembering and meditating, while the knights allowed their horses to graze and drink. He still hadn’t moved when they mounted, though he finally raised a hand in farewell as Sir Kamford, riding at the rear, disappeared into the trees.

After a few brief minutes spent rigging several snares, Ash spent the rest of the day swimming in the stream and sunbathing. The snares provided him with two plump rabbits for dinner, and afterward he slept under the stars. Every time he awakened, he rejoiced to the array of lights that gleamed and twinkled at him from the moonless vault of the sky. He felt newly alive, as if he had emerged from the tunnels a different person, a different kind of Pathfinder.

He took five days in returning to the south, following valleys that became steadily more familiar as he moved closer to the Bluelake. All the while his mind worked, as he wrestled with an expanded view of his world. For the first time in his life, he considered the notion that there were good people in the world – people who were not of the Kagonesti. Sir Kamford, and even Highbulp Toofer, had forced Ashtaway to reconsider the traditions that had kept his tribe in an almost constant state of war. Surely some enemies, such as the ogres and the bakali, were worthy foes. But perhaps it was wrong to assume that humans, that dwarves, were enemies, simply because they were humans or dwarves.

Ashtaway even speculated about the Silvanesti – might the Kagonesti learn that the ancient clans of the House Elves were not filled with the despicable villains that Ash had always been taught resided there? He had known Kagonesti who had been killed by Silvanesti swords, and of the deadly traps laid by the House Elves to protect their precious cities. He had seen Silvanesti slain by arrows fired from wild elven ambush. He sensed that such depths of hatred could not be wrong. The House Elves and the wild elves were forever destined to be foes.

As he traveled through the eternal woodland, Ashtaway discarded some of his earlier beliefs and embraced others. He reflected on war and peace, on the worth of life and death when a hated foe stood before one’s blade or bow. He wondered about the nature of hatred, such as that which had raged between his people and humankind through all the ages of Krynn. And still the inner torment raged within him. It was not until he had reached a familiar valley within a day’s march of the village that he understood why.

Turning to the side, he made his way toward the foothill valley, climbing through the rocky notch to see the black, obsidian wall. He wished he had the time to hunt, to bring fresh game with him, but his urgency wouldn’t allow delay.

Once again he found Hammana in the woods – though this time he didn’t surprise her. Instead, she stood in the midst of the clearing, watching the woods as he emerged from the underbrush.

“Hello, Pathfinder,” she said quietly. Her hazel eyes shined as she looked at him, her chin held proudly raised.

“Hammana. …” He crossed to her in long strides and took her hands in his.

“No.” She pulled back, and he saw that the shining in her eyes came from unshed tears. “I cannot let myself love you.”

He didn’t pursue, though his hands remained outstretched, reaching. “I am the Pathfinder now. I didn’t ask for the horn, but it’s a destiny that came to me – and I shall bear it, I hope, well.

“But I know already, Hammana, that I’m a different Pathfinder than those who came before me. I am not Iydaway or Barcalla or Father Kagonesti. Just as Iydaway changed the tasks of leadership by speaking and persuading rather than guiding in aloof silence, I, too, shall change. I will not make war against the humans, simply because they are human. Already I have done a thing unlike any other Pathfinder of the Kagonesti.”

“You … you will be a great leader of our people. This I know.” She seemed proud when she said this, and sad as well.

“But this peace with humankind is not the only way I will be different,” Ash persisted. He stepped forward and took her hands again, holding too tightly for Hammana to easily pull away. “Other taboos, too, date from an earlier time. They may have been right in the past, but I know they are wrong for me.”

She looked at him intently now, surprised and wondering.

“I will also be the first Pathfinder who takes a wife … if she will have me.”

For a moment, he didn’t know what she would say. The tears spilled down her cheeks then, overwhelming her efforts to blink them away.

“She will,” the elfwoman said, and his arms wrapped her as she fell against him.

“This is a wonderful development, truly splendid!” Lectral declared when, hand in hand, they went to the cave and shared their news. “A bit of departure from tradition, though, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Ashtaway agreed. “We live long lives, your people and mine, but I have learned that times can change, peoples can change – many things change.”

Lectral blinked sagely. “Even for elves and dragons,” he said with a contented nod.

CHAPTER 21

A FINAL PARTING

The two wild elves returned to the village together. As they entered the vallenwood glade, Ashtaway saw Faltath, bearing the fresh, plump carcass of a wild pig on his shoulders, emerge from the forest on the opposite side of the clearing.

“Ashtaway!” cried the delighted brave, casting his prize to the ground. “I thanked the gods for sending me this gift of game – and now I know the cause of our joy! We shall have a feast to celebrate your return!”

“I thank you, my friend. And know that there is even more to celebrate – on this day I shall speak to Wallaki about the taking of his daughter’s hand.”

Faltath’s eyes widened, then he threw back his head and whooped in delight. “You are the Pathfinder!” he declared heartily. “And you are sure to show the tribe some very interesting trails!”

The tribe immediately set to the preparations for a feast. Older women took Faltath’s pig and began to skin it, while several braves laid a bed of hardwood on the base of the fire pit.

Ashtaway crossed to the bark lodge where Wallaki, Hammana’s father, sat outside the door, enjoying the afternoon’s warmth. Blocked by the hut, the elder Kagonesti had not seen the pair return to the village.

“Welcome back, Pathfinder. Come sit with me and rest your feet after your long march. Do you have any further word of my daughter, or have you come straight from the Three Smoking Mountains?”

“Thank you.” Ash squatted beside the old warrior. “Hammana has returned to the village with me. She will come to see you soon.”

“But first …?”

“I would speak with you.” Ashtaway drew a deep breath and told Wallaki about the changes that he would make in his time-honored role. “I shall bear the Ram’s Horn as long as the tribe wants me to have it,” he concluded. “But, also, I will take a wife.”

Now Wallaki’s eyebrows raised and he looked at Ashtaway with keen interest. “Hammana is a precious girl, and a wonderful prize for any brave. She knows the arts of curing in ways that many healers who have studied for centuries can never master. Too, she is an elf of wondrous beauty, with many other talents as well. But I do not know how I should survive without her to tend to my needs.”

Ash might have pointed out that Wallaki had survived quite nicely while his daughter had been caring for Lectral, but he did not. Instead, he spoke with respect. “Perhaps two doeskins and the down of fifty geese would make your loneliness more comfortable,” he suggested.

Wallaki nodded. “That would help. But see these old fingers? They are too gnarled for proper fletching. I can still shoot, but I have no arrows.”

“You will soon have one hundred of the finest shafts that I can feather,” Ash promised, bowing his head. The dowry price was very high – and he was elated to pay it.

“Ah … that will do much to soothe my despair!” It was all the old shaman could do to keep from cackling in delight.

“We shall be wed with the autumn harvest,” Ash told the beaming priest. The Pathfinder rose and bowed respectfully before he went to spread the word through the rest of the village.

Ashtaway stood beside the slowly roasting pig, far enough away so that he didn’t get burned – but close enough for his silhouette to darken against the backdrop of brightness, as he looked across the faces of his people. The young Pathfinder felt a vague, unidentifiable sense of disquiet, wondering what unease lurked at the back of his mind. He wished that Iydaway could be here – and he wondered what his uncle would say about his break with tradition.

Then he realized another thing: He wished that Lectral, too, could share in this feast – that they could really celebrate the end of the Dragon War. But did he dare to hope that Huma’s victory over Takhisis would occur, that the scourge of evil dragonkind might be lifted from Krynn?

“What is it, my Pathfinder?” He felt a gentle hand in his and looked down into Hammana’s bright, penetrating eyes.

“I’m thinking of a friend,” he said quietly.

“I think our friend will come.”

Ashtaway patted her hand, appreciating her optimism even as he couldn’t share it. But she was no longer looking at him – instead, she raised a hand and pointed toward the forest encircling the village.

“Look!”

Shiny silver rippled through the trees, and Ashtaway and Hammana raised shouts of greeting as a broad snout poked out of the forest. Kagonesti voices shouted in alarm, mothers sweeping children into their arms as warriors raced toward the dragon that had suddenly appeared in their midst.

Ashtaway raised the Ram’s Horn to his lips and blew a joyful blast. “Hold!” he cried, as the warriors turned to look at him. “This is a friend – a very welcome friend!”

Stepping forward, Hammana at his side, he advanced to greet the mighty dragon.

The serpent, dragging his injured hind leg, limped into the clearing and coiled himself, smiling gently, at the edge of the village. Remembering Ash’s tale of the great silver dragon, Lectral Hornbearer, the Kagonesti gradually overcame their awe and came forward to regard the dragon, who returned their dignified inspection with a serious and serene expression.

Children stared at the dragon wide-eyed, but without fear. Some even ventured to approach, and soon Lectral was entertaining them by lifting them up on his broad snout and letting them slide, squealing, down his smooth, curling tail.

“It is a time for changes of many kinds,” Ashtaway observed solemnly.

“Aye, and friendships of many kinds as well,” the dragon replied as a giggling tot tumbled from his tail into the dirt. Children clamored for more turns, but Lectral gently disengaged himself – after each of the youngsters had had a ride – and limped to the central clearing. The Kagonesti hurried about, cleaning dirt off the children, getting ready for the feast.

“It is good to see you so happy,” said Lectral. “For this alone I would have come to the village.”

Ashtaway didn’t miss the dragon’s meaning. “There is another reason that you came, then?”

“Yes. It is to make my farewells to you and Hammana, who have cared so well for me.”

“Farewells? But surely you’re not going anywhere? Not with the battle won, perhaps even the war! You must stay with us and celebrate the peace!”

“Alas, I cannot,” sighed Lectral with genuine regret. “For, as you suspect, the war is won. But the price of that victory is the departure of me, and my kind.”

“What do you mean?”

“They are winging to me, tonight. I came here to say good-bye to you and await Saytica – for the two of us will fly together.”

Saytica, Ash remembered, was one of Lectral’s female offspring – now a huge silver dragon in her own right. Her proud father had boasted that she was one of the foremost fighters in the dragon wing defending Palanthas.

“You’re going to fly? Fly where? And how?” Ashtaway couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He gestured at the scarred mass of the dragon’s once-mighty wings. “Saytica may be a mighty dragon – but do you think she’s going to carry you?”

Lectral smiled tolerantly, even puffing a brief snort of amusement.

“As to the where: We go to a place called the Isle of Dragons, a place beyond Ansalon. We – the dragons of silver and gold – are going there, and there we shall live out our days, and our generations.”

“How do you know this?” Ashtaway challenged.

“Peace is a thing of which even the smallest birds take note – it has been the song on the wind for these past days. It is a music that spreads across the world, a tale of hope and mystery that an ear as sensitive as mine cannot help but sense.”

The dragon smiled more broadly, mocking himself.

“Of course, it helped this morning that one of Saytica’s children – a nestling, barely, but a fast flyer – came to my cave and told me to make ready.”

“But Lectral – without wings, how will you fly?”

If the dragon had heard the question, he made no indication of the fact.

“They say that the Isle of Dragons is a splendid place, idyllic, bountiful to a dragon’s needs,” Lectral continued, his voice soft, dreamy. Ashtaway sensed that the great serpent did in fact relish the prospect of a pastoral life there.

The Pathfinder raised the horn to his mouth and began to play. He didn’t think about the notes, but let the music rise from somewhere within his soul. Lectral half-closed his eyes, listening dreamily, while the rest of the Kagonesti sighed softly with the poignancy of the melody.

The notes of the horn, this time, were fuller and more profound than could possibly have resonated in that slender tube. Ashtaway recognized great, keening chants in the rich melody and understood that the instrument played a song of dragons. He did not, could not, know that these sounds had not rung from the horn in more than two thousand years, but he sensed their historic portent as he heard them now.

Lectral raised his own horn, and these notes joined Ash’s in rising toward the sky, singing through the night. The elf had a strong feeling that Father Kagonesti himself hovered there, looking down at his people, his tribe. Ashtaway wondered what Kagonos thought about the changes in the world – and in the Pathfinder – that had come about during this portentous season.

In a flash of insight, he knew that the Elderwild was pleased.

At last, the big silver dragon lowered his horn and raised his eyes to the canopy of leaves over their heads. “They come,” he said softly.

Limping awkwardly, the great serpent hobbled through the village, and made his way between the vallenwoods that stood at the top of the lakeside bluff. Emerging from the trees, he looked toward the northwest, where Lunitari had just settled below the horizon. The Kagonesti came behind, reverently gathering along the crest of the precipice, looking across the star-dappled pattern of the Bluelake.

The tribe settled into silence as the wild elves waited, following the direction of Lectral’s gaze. Ashtaway still played, and still the notes of the horn keened impossibly deep and broad, and now the song expanded to fill the night.

The dragons came into sight first as silhouettes against the starlight, but as they flew lower the metallic glow of their wings shimmered even in the night sky. Many silver dragons circled overhead, most of them wheeling tirelessly far above the lakeside camp. A few dove, however, and one of these settled toward the great vallenwoods of the bluff’s top, spreading her wings to land in a gush of wind beside the gathered elves and the great, crippled serpent.

“Greetings, Honored Father.” Saytica, proud and beautiful, bowed to the great silver dragon. Her body was not as huge as Lectral’s, but Saytica was supple and slender in a way that suggested deep and abiding power.

“Welcome, my daughter.” Lectral’s voice, firm with ritual, was nevertheless warm with the depth of his love.

“I am glad to find you,” she said respectfully. “The time for flying is now.”

“Farewell, my friends,” Lectral declared with a bow of his head. Ashtaway watched in disbelief as the dragon’s body abruptly shimmered and shifted, shrinking rapidly until he stood before them as an old human man. Shaggy white eyebrows concealed his yellow eyes – though Ash could still see those eyes flash in amusement at the elves’ consternation.

“A – a human?” stammered the young chieftain after he regained his voice. “Why not take the form of an elf?”

The old man’s face wrinkled into a smile. “Tradition, really. You see, my grandsire favored a body such as this. There were those who believed it to be his true form. In any event, I find that these whiskers, this old and wrinkled shape, suits me well.”

The old man hobbled to Saytica’s side, and the sleek silver neck bent low to allow him to mount. Seated between her wings, the man gave a single, regal wave, and Ashtaway felt a brief tug of melancholy. It seemed that more than a part of his life was closing – indeed, it was the conclusion of an epoch of Krynn. A world without dragons … what would that mean?

Then Saytica took to the air in a downrush of wings and a powerful spring. The elves watched for several minutes as she and her rider climbed into the sky, until the pair merged with all the other shadowy outlines there. In a sweeping, grand formation, the serpentine shapes turned to the north, slowly winging toward the horizon.

Gradually Ashtaway become aware of Hammana’s hand in his. Together they watched the dragons wing northward for many long minutes, until their shadowy forms disappeared over the distant horizon.

Kaz and the Dragon’s Children

(1015 PC)

He had learned to sleep with the battle-axe clutched in his hands, a trick that had saved his life more than once. Even now, with the war supposedly over for more than a month, it was a wise thing to do, for there were still those who would have seen him dead simply because of what he was. Three days ago, he had barely escaped the local militia. They’d wanted to make him pay for what his kind had done in the service of the Dark Goddess, Takhisis. Small matter that he had served with the Knights of Solamnia and chosen to fight against his old masters in the waning weeks of the war. Kaz was a monster in the eyes of humans, and to some that made him forever an evil that needed to be extinguished. Birth alone had condemned him to that fate.

The savage history of the minotaur’s race had not helped, either.

Kaz’s huge hands tensed imperceptibly. He opened his eyes a crack. He could see little, for the moons were hidden by the clouds, and dawn was still at least an hour away. What little he did see did not aid him. And so he listened. A sound, a slight sound, had broken the normal pattern of night noises and stirred the veteran warrior to waking. It might have been nothing more than an anxious rabbit, a clumsy bat, or Tempest, his own horse, shifting position, but Kaz didn’t think so. He had not survived this long jumping at animal noises. This was something more.

If those infernal soldiers have tracked me down again, Kaz thought in bitterness, then this time I will stand and fight regardless! In the war against the legions of the Dark Queen, he had fought beside a lone knight called Huma, a knight whose honor and skill would earn him the titles of Dragonbane and Huma of the Lance. When defeat had appeared imminent, Huma had brought to the desperate defenders of good the legendary dragonlances, which had turned the tide by bringing down the dragons of doom and despair. Huma himself had died defeating the Dark Goddess.

Honor was the most important force in a minotaur’s life, and Kaz had admired Huma for his honor. The knight’s unshakable belief in the goodness of the world had changed the minotaur. Kaz had sworn that his weapons would be raised against only those who followed the path of evil. It was his tribute to one he considered the greatest champion of all.

A tribute he was finding very difficult to survive. The soldiers who had almost captured him three days ago had basically been good men trying to clear their land of the stragglers and marauding bands that had sprouted up like weeds after the Goddess’s armies had been routed. It had been quite reasonable for them to assume that a minotaur wandering this far south was a part of those scattered forces. Unfortunately, they had not allowed Kaz any time to present proof otherwise. The documents and medallion given to him by the masters of the Solamnic orders were secure in the hidden compartment of his saddlebags. He doubted that his pursuers would believe the proof even if they allowed him the chance to display it Scared humans had the bad habit of killing first, asking questions later.

Kaz continued to listen, but the night was now silent save for the anxious movements of his horse. The silence in itself was ominous, for even the sounds associated with the dark had ceased. Kaz opened his eyes a bit farther.

Something hissed. His mount, tied to a tree behind him, began to shift in unease. All notion of a human foe vanished. Nothing in Kaz’s experience had ever made a sibilant sound quite like that.

He leapt to his feet, axe at the ready. The hiss had come from so close that he was certain that the... thing... would instantly be upon him.

Nothing. The night was silent again. Kaz, however, did not relax. An unwary warrior was a dead warrior.

“This is what I get for seeking solitude,” the minotaur muttered, snorting.

A piece of the night shifted among the trees. Kaz hefted the axe and snarled but did not take a step toward the nebulous shape. Let whatever was out there come to him.

It did. The minotaur’s horse whinnied as the thing materialized.

“Sargas!” Kaz shouted, forgetting – in his astonishment – and calling on the dark god his own people worshiped. Kaz had forsaken Sargas for the just god Paladine, patron of the knighthood, but in times of great excitement, his heritage caught up with him.

The monster was huge. Standing, it would have been at least as tall as Kaz. In the darkness, he could not make out specific details, but the creature had a tail and looked like some sort of bizarre reptile playing at being human. Most important, the thing had long, wicked talons and jaws wide enough to snap a minotaur’s head off.

The monster stank. Kaz wrinkled his nose. Fighting back the urge to throw up, Kaz thrust the shaft of the battle-axe into what he hoped was the monster’s stomach.

He might have been striking rock, so armored was the beast.

Talons raked at his arms. The minotaur grunted in pain, but fortunately his attack had taken some of the fight out of the horrific creature. Kaz fought down the pain and pushed forward, trying to overpower the beast before it recovered. Once again, though, hitting it was like hitting a wall of stone. Kaz drove back the slashing claws of the thing, but nothing more.

Even this close, Kaz could not see what it was he fought. It was reptilian, yes, but like nothing the minotaur had ever come across in the war. Almost it resembled... but that was impossible.

It came for him again.

Twisting the axe around, he brought the flat of the double-edged blade against the snout of his adversary.

The beast hissed in pain but did not back away.

Kaz struck the sensitive snout again and again.

Howling, the reptilian monster stumbled back. Kaz shifted the axe to drive the deadly blades into the monster’s head, but the beast suddenly sprang backward. It stopped, looked around, as if it had heard a call. Then, without warning, the creature turned and leapt for the safety of the woods. The minotaur started to pursue, but the monster’s tail struck him in the side like a whip. It was all Kaz could do to maintain his hold on his weapon. Through pain-blurred eyes, he watched the shadowy thing vanish into the safety of the night-shrouded woods.

It was several heartbeats before the pain became bearable. Kaz’s wounds continued to sting, but a quick check revealed that he had been fortunate. The jagged wounds were shallow.

“What was that all about?” Kaz muttered. He had been stalked and assaulted, but then his attacker fled before the battle had really been joined. A bloody nose shouldn’t have been enough to make that thing run off.... What was it after?

The minotaur snorted in annoyance. In the early days, before Huma had taught Kaz patience, he would have sought out something to batter with his heavy fists. Now he could only clench his fists in frustration. He had ridden here in the hopes of finding solitude, sanctuary. He had sought out this forest and the nearby mountains because few creatures of the intelligent races were said to dwell in this region. Kaz was not a hermit, but it was good to be able to rest and reflect now and then, even when one was a warrior born.

The monster had ruined Kaz’s peace. Now he would have to spend the next several days pondering its abrupt appearance, while constantly looking over his shoulder.

Snorting, he turned to see to his horse.

The horse was gone, spooked by the monster. Kaz felt around the tree and discovered the tattered remnants of the tether.

“The gods are out to get me!” the minotaur snarled. There was no time to tend his own wounds. He had to begin searching for his horse immediately. Every second meant less chance of recovering the animal, and without Tempest, he would be faced with a long, hard journey.

His campfire had gone out while he slumbered, and there was no swift way of starting a new one. Kaz decided to forego a torch and hope that his night sight and hearing would be up to the task.

As he moved, Kaz made clicking sounds with his mouth. If the horse was near, it would recognize them. Knights of Solamnia often trained their horses to respond to a whistle, but minotaurs’ mouths were not designed for creating such sounds.

He was climbing a squat hill in the predawn light, when he heard something on the other side. Kaz cautiously completed the climb and peered down.

Something moved among the trees beyond the hill.

Unable to tell whether or not it was his horse, Kaz readied his battle-axe and started down the slope. His wounds continued to burn, but he ignored them. He had ignored worse ones during the war. As he reached the bottom, Kaz caught another glimpse of something, but it was still too far away and too obscured by foliage to be identifiable.

Picking up his pace, he darted among the trees. At last, Kaz caught a better glimpse. He exhaled in relief. His mount. The animal was glad to see him, seemed to wonder where he’d been.

Putting his annoyance aside, Kaz called out. The horse trotted toward him. Kaz replaced his battle-axe in the harness he wore on his back. He was pleased to note that his packs were secure and that the horse was uninjured. The horse rubbed its nose in Kaz’s shoulder and sniffed him. Kaz took the reins, which dangled loosely over the horse’s neck, and patted the animal on the side. “Brave war-horse, aren’t you now? They told me that you’d face up to just about anything! Ha! Still, I can’t blame you for running from that hellish creature, but the least you could’ve done was take me with you!”

A sense of dread suddenly washed over Kaz. He looked swiftly around, but saw nothing. It was the silence again. The same eerie silence that had fallen when he was attacked by the monster. Still scanning the area, Kaz mounted his horse. He had a great desire to be far away from here.

“I must have monsters on the brain,” he muttered. Was this what it was going to be like now that he did not have the war to occupy his every moment? Jumping at every sound – or lack of sound. Imagining foes behind every tree and rock?

“Let’s go!” he growled at his horse.

The animal trotted a few steps, then came to a halt.

Kaz prodded the animal again. He truly wanted to get away from this place. “What’s the matter with you, Tempest? Get moving!”

This time, the animal began to plod along; the pace it set was so slow that Kaz began to wonder if he would make better time carrying Tempest instead of the horse carrying him.

The wind began to pick up, tossing dead leaves about. Clouds were gathering in the sky in what might be the precursor of a storm. “Sargas take you, beast!” Kaz kicked the horse’s flanks. “Move, I said!”

Unbelievably, the horse began to slow its pace.

Black clouds swirled. The wind was a howling fiend that tossed leaves and broken foliage around the horse and rider. Kaz shielded his eyes against the stinging dust and began debating the possibility of stopping where he was and seeking shelter.

As if reading his thoughts, Tempest abruptly halted. Kaz tried to urge the beast on again, but it stood fast. Furious, Kaz started to dismount, thinking perhaps he could lead the animal.

The wind buffeted him back onto the saddle.

He tried again to dismount.

Once more, the horrendous wind seemed to hold him fixed in place.

“By Paladine’s blade! I’ll not be bested by air!” The minotaur let go of the reins and tried throwing himself off his mount.

A wall of wind tossed him back.

Then, it was as if a tornado had sprung to mad life. Wildly tumbling leaves and twigs cut visibility to a foot or two beyond the horse’s nose. No matter which direction he looked, all Kaz saw were leaves.

No, not all directions. Gazing up, he noted that the air was inexplicably clear a few feet above his head. With the exception of the clouds that had gathered directly overhead, the sky was sunny and bright. All around him the forest was peaceful, yet Kaz himself was caught up in a veritable maelstrom.

Instinctively, he reached for his weapon, though what he would do with it was beyond him. Kaz was a born warrior and understood nothing about the workings of magic, but he knew its malevolent touch when he saw it. He also had the sinking feeling that finding Tempest had not been the good fortune he had assumed, but rather the lure with which the unknown mage had drawn him into a trap.

Paladine, Kaz prayed, if you still watch over me – assuming you ever have – I could use your help about now!

The whirlwind started to close in around the minotaur. Now, only a few inches separated horse and rider from the thickening wall of dead foliage.

A leaf struck the side of the minotaur’s snout and stuck there. Kaz reached up to tear the leaf away, but – to his bewilderment – it remained fixed to him. A second leaf caught on his hand, and when the minotaur tried to shake it free, that leaf, too, clung.

Kaz’s legs and torso were already dotted with leaves, none of which would shake loose. His horse was nearly half buried under a growing skin of foliage, but, unlike Kaz, Tempest showed no concern. The animal did not move at all, seeming to accept its fate.

Not so the minotaur. Snarling, he tried to shield himself with his leaf-encrusted axe, but the barrage was too great. Leaves blew over, under, and around him, sticking on his face and arms, clinging like blood leeches to his skin.

“Blast you, mage!” he roared, covering his mouth in order to prevent suffocation. “Come and face me! Fight me as a warrior, not a coward who must hide behind cursed tricks!”

No one responded. He had not truly expected anyone to do so. Mages were, in his opinion, conniving milksops who worked from shadows or anywhere far from danger.

The onslaught continued. Leaves almost completely buried him alive. His snout was already covered, and leaves complete obscured vision in one eye and partially in the other. It was nearly impossible to move. He was forced to breathe through his mouth.

Round and round the wind blew, adding leaf after leaf to the pile. The minotaur was near to suffocating. He struggled desperately to clear the leaves from his nose and mouth, but he couldn’t lift his leaf-coated arm more than an inch or two. Kaz began to choke....

“Kiri-Jolith, god of just cause, is this any way for a warrior to die?” Kaz demanded in helpless fury.

If there was an answer, he did not remain conscious long enough to hear it.

*

“Amazing – the things one finds in one’s nets,” a voice said in the darkness. “I was expecting to catch a knight, not a minotaur. When I captured the horse, I assumed its rider would be human. Silly of me.”

Kaz stirred and slowly noted that while he could neither see nor move, he was most certainly alive.

“Ah. Awake at last. Feeling better?”

The groggy minotaur forced his eyelids open a slight crack. What little he could see was blurry, but at least it was not leaves. He had the vague impression of a robed figure standing almost below him. Nothing else was clear enough to even guess at.

“What are you doing in these parts, so far from your kind, my solitary minotaur? You’d best answer me before I lose my temper and feed you to my other guest.”

Feed me to it? Kaz opened his eyes wide.

He was in a magical prison, a clear bubble floating several feet above the floor. Although delicate in appearance, the bubble held firm when he pressed his hands against it. Kaz snorted and gaped. His weapons were gone.

“Really a simple sort of spell, my bovine friend. Nothing so spectacular,” said the voice. Yet, there was a touch of pride in the tone.

Kaz glared down at his captor. He wore the familiar ebony garments of the dark mages, or Black Robes as the evil magic-users were called. The mage was tall for a human, almost as tall as the minotaur, but so gangly as to make a scarecrow look fat. His face looked as if someone had wrapped a bandage of skin around the skull. Long, flowing gray hair hung to his waist.

Kaz searched nervously for the “hungry” guest. He was imprisoned in a cavern chamber, one that had apparently been hollowed out by some force other than nature. The walls and ceiling were smooth. A curious blue sphere floating above his gaunt host illuminated the chamber.

Shelves lined the cave walls, shelves filled with scrolls, books, and artifacts that even Kaz, who had no sense of magic, could tell were powerful talismans.

Below his floating cell, a pattern had been etched into the center of the floor. A series of triangles and pentagrams were bound together by an overlapping circle, nearly twice Kaz’s height in diameter. Directly below Kaz, a small metal stand with a top resembling a hollowed-out gourd stood in the circle’s center.

Kaz breathed easier. No sign at all of the hungry “guest.”

The mage had been silent during his captive’s inspection, but now he spoke again. “What is your name, minotaur?”

“I am Kaz.”

“And I am Master Mage Brenn.” The spindly figure bowed sardonically. “You are much too far south and west for one of your kind, my horned friend. I ask again – what are you doing here?”

Kaz thought quickly. Brenn must not have bothered to inspect Kaz’s gear closely. He had obviously missed the hidden compartment containing the Solamnic documents and medallion. Good – a Black Robe would not be friendly toward a friend of the Knights of Solamnia.

“I’ve been on the run since the Lady fell, Master Brenn.” Kaz answered boldly. “The minotaur army was scattered, the forces of Paladine blocked my way back. I killed a knight, stole his horse, and fled south.”

“Why did you not fight to the death like a good cow?”

Kaz growled, barely succeeding in keeping his temper in check. Such an insult would have had the mage’s head rolling from his shoulders if Kaz and his axe had been free.

“The cause was lost,” he said. “The battle was over. I thought it preferable to preserve myself for the day when my skills can be put to better use.”

Brenn smiled. “You have a finer head on your shoulders than most of your kind.”

The magic-user snapped his fingers. Kaz found himself standing on the rocky floor. He glanced up. His magical prison had vanished. All that remained was the pattern on the floor, the stand, and, of course, the Black Robe.

“As it happens, Kaz the Minotaur, you have come to the right place. I will have need of your skills before long.”

“Where is this right place, Master Brenn?” Kaz demanded.

“You are in the mountains near where I found you,” Brenn replied. “You are fortunate, my horned friend. Had you been a knight – as I first presumed – you would be dead. I am too close to success to allow my secrets to be discovered.”

The gaunt mage paused. “Tell me, minotaur, did you see anything... unusual... in the forest?”

“What did you have in mind, Master Brenn?”

Brenn frowned, irritated. “You would know what I meant if you had seen it.”

Kaz was certain that the Black Robe meant the monster, but he elected not to share the details of his encounter with his host. What Brenn did not know might benefit the minotaur. Did the mage have something to do with the monster? If so, what? And where was it? Kaz was debating the danger of probing for more information when a mournful wail echoed throughout the mage’s sanctum. The sound reminded Kaz of a woman sobbing, but at the same time he knew that it was not human. It was unnerving, terrible, and extraordinarily sad.

Brenn, quite calm, nodded at the sound and cryptically said, “She’s awake. She should be more manageable, by now.”

“She?” the minotaur rumbled.

“Come. I will show you.” Brenn started toward the cavern’s entrance. Abruptly, he turned. He studied the minotaur, then commanded, “Hold out your hands.”

Kaz obeyed.

Suddenly he was holding his lost axe.

“You will feel more comfortable with that in your possession. Do try to be careful with it.”

The mage turned his back on the minotaur and resumed walking. Kaz hefted the weapon, thinking briefly of parting the mage’s long gray hair. Kaz knew better than to attack, however. If Brenn had given the axe back, it could only be because he had no fear of it.

Things were not looking promising.

The glowing sphere flew ahead of them, lighting the way. Kaz followed the gangly magic-user through a maze of tunnels that led from one cavern chamber to another, until they came to one larger than all the rest.

Brenn paused at the entrance, one hand on the rocky wall, and turned to the minotaur. “I think perhaps it would be best if you stayed in the background. She becomes distraught at the slightest thing. I will speak to her in private.” His eyes narrowed a bit. “Don’t wander off.”

With that warning, Brenn entered the chamber, the blue light following him. Kaz was more than satisfied to be left behind, but he was also interested in a glimpse of the Black Robe’s other “guest.” Standing to the side of the entrance, the burly minotaur peered into the cavern.

“There, there, my dear!” Brenn called out. “I think things will look brighter from this point on, would you not agree?”

A huge reptilian head rose from the cavern floor. The gleaming eyes of a silver dragon stared at Brenn. Kaz had never seen such open hatred and revulsion in all his life.

“I want... my children, you vile... vile monster!” the silver dragon cried in a low, anguished voice.

There were no dragons left in Krynn. They had all vanished soon after the defeat in battle of dread Takhisis by the knight Huma. All dragons, whether followers of the Dark Lady or servants of shining Paladine – her victorious foe – had departed from the world.

Kaz the minotaur wondered if someone had forgotten to tell this particular dragon that she was not supposed to be here.

The silver dragon was enormous; Kaz had never seen one so large. Brenn was little more than a mouthful to such a grand creature, yet the dragon made no hostile move toward the master mage. Kaz dared to step a bit closer, and saw the dragon in a better light. The dragon was badly injured. Deep, fetid scars scored the massive body. Her wings were torn. One eyelid drooped and the orb that it half-obscured did not focus well. Most of the wounds were old, yet untreated. If not cared for soon, they would almost certainly mean a slow, painful death.

The minotaur’s respect for the mage’s dark powers grew a hundredfold. Brenn could not have possibly inflicted such damage... at least, Kaz thought not... but even this badly wounded, the silver dragon must be a terrible force to reckon with.

“Your children are safe, as you can plainly see, madam,” Brenn said, stretching his right hand to the side to indicate something. Kaz tried to see, but couldn’t from his vantage point. Did the mage have a cage full of young dragons as well?

“Monster!” The silver dragon moaned.

Brenn crossed his arms. “You can say that, madam, when I so thoughtfully allow you to gaze upon your precious eggs whenever you desire? I thought it rather a kindness on my part.”

“Kindness?” The dragon struggled. Like Kaz earlier, she was held in place by invisible magical bonds. After a moment of intense effort, the glittering dragon’s head sank to the ground.

Kaz feared she was dying.

“Kindness...” the dragon whispered. “Torture... is... is what you mean, mortal! Placing my eggs where I can see... but not... touch! Eggs that... that you stole from... my lair!”

“Well, madam, no one seemed to be taking care of them. I thought to give them a good home.” Brenn chuckled. “And you know well, my dear, that I have made a very fine offer to you that would see your children back in your care in perhaps two or three days at most! Just give me what I want, and I promise you that your eggs will be returned to you.”

“How... how can I believe you?”

The spellcaster shrugged. “Believe what you like, madam, but either accept my offer or...”

Brenn must have performed some spell on the hidden eggs, for suddenly the injured dragon renewed her struggle to escape. “No! Don’t hurt them!”

“Well?”

“Yes!” She spat, turned a burning gaze on the black robed spellcaster. “You win, fiend! I will do as you wish, but” — the dragon was rocked by spasms of pain — “if you harm my children, I will find some means to destroy you!”

Brenn laughed. “I would make a poor meal, madam, for your kind. All gristle and no meat to speak of.”

“You... have my word now, human. What do you want of me?”

“That you shall learn on the morrow, madam.” Brenn bowed. “For now, other things demand my attention. I recommend you try to rest. You will certainly need your strength.”

The silver dragon was no longer paying any attention to him. Instead her gaze returned to the area that Kaz could not see, to her eggs. Despite her weakened condition, the gleaming dragon craned in that direction.

Kaz eyed the mage. The minotaur’s grip tightened on the axe, yet he forced himself to hold back, fearing Brenn’s magic.

“At some point, though, there will come a moment when you let down your guard, Master Brenn,” Kaz muttered. He simply had to survive until then.

Returning to the passageway, Brenn sagged, leaned wearily against the outer wall. His imprisonment of the dragon was apparently costing him a great deal of effort. After a breath or two, the mage straightened and proceeded past Kaz.

“Come,” Brenn commanded.

They had taken a dozen steps or so before Kaz decided to speak. “You’ve captured a dragon.”

“Weak as she was, it was easy. I caught her while her attention was on other things. That is all I have to say on the subject.” After a moment of silent contemplation, Brenn turned to a new topic. “I will show you where your horse is being stabled. It will serve as your quarters, too. If you are hungry, I will also show you where you may find food. I think I am being quite generous. All I ask in return is your obedience. Fair enough?”

Kaz grimaced. There was nothing he could do but continue playing the grateful prisoner.

The minotaur ate the provisions and cared for his horse. His quarters consisted of a small cave accessible from inside the mountain by means of a tunnel but also open to the outside world. Kaz considered escape, but a trip to the cave’s entrance revealed that the edge ended in a sheer cliff several hundred feet high. No escape from this exit.

He was polishing his axe, his thoughts running over the pattern of tunnels he had walked through, when the mage entered. Brenn looked distracted. “Come with me. I have need of your physical prowess. Bring the axe.”

Acting the obedient soldier, Kaz followed Brenn back through the maze of underground corridors. As he walked, the minotaur kept careful track of the steps and turns he and his host took. If he was to have any chance of escape, it would be essential to know his way around the sorcerer’s domain.

They returned to the cadaverous mage’s sanctum. With distaste Kaz eyed the magical pattern on the floor and the metal device that stood on it. He could still recall his bubble prison.

Brenn, too, studied the pattern. His words were more to himself than to the minotaur. “Now that I have her word, I can wait no longer. It has avoided the traps I’ve set. There’s no telling if it still even exists. I will have to use more extreme measures and try to bring it here now. “Without looking at his companion, Brenn added, “Stand to the side and do exactly what I tell you to do.”

The mage raised his bony hands high.

A bubble – identical in shape to the one that had held Kaz – formed just above the top of the metal device. At first the bubble was no larger than an egg, then it grew to the size of a melon, then larger until its diameter was greater than the length of Kaz’s arm. A tingle ran through Kaz, who readied his axe, even though he was not certain what good the weapon would do under the circumstances. The bubble did not cease its expansion. Kaz wondered whether it would eventually fill the entire chamber.

Then Kaz saw something in the center of the bubble. Kaz squinted to see better. Inside the bubble was a wooden chest – a simple wooden chest devoid of decoration. As the bubble grew, the chest grew.

When the chest was almost as big as the minotaur, Brenn flicked a finger at the magical bubble. The transparent sphere floated over to him, coming to rest at the mage’s feet. As it touched the cavern floor, though, the bottom of the bubble dissolved. The bubble continued to sink, and as it did, it dissolved. Before long, there was only the chest.

Another flick of Brenn’s finger opened the lid. Brenn removed several leathery-looking fragments of what might have been pottery from the chest. He eyed each piece carefully, especially the edges, then – every fragment held securely in his arms – the mage stepped away.

The lid closed and the chest began to rise. The bubble formed around it, and the entire process that Kaz had just witnessed repeated itself, only in reverse. The bubble and chest returned to their place above the pattern and the metal device. Then the chest and the bubble gradually shrank until at last both vanished.

Brenn entered the pattern the moment the bubble disappeared, and he began piecing together the fragments in the large bowl at the top of the talisman.

Soon the true form of the object became apparent. It was not pottery, as Kaz had first surmised.

An egg! He was rebuilding a broken egg! An egg so large and so peculiar in appearance that it could only come from...

“A dragon!”

Only after he had said the words did Kaz realize that he had spoken out loud. Fortunately, Brenn was too engrossed in his work to notice. The mage put the finishing touches on the egg. He stepped out of the pattern and turned to the minotaur.

“Now your skills may be necessary, my friend. Ready yourself.”

Kaz had no time to consider what Brenn was doing with the eggshell of a dragon. Already something was happening in the center. Another bubble – this one reddish in tint – formed around the shell, growing larger and larger until it could have easily contained Kaz and the mage.

Brenn stretched a nearly fleshless arm toward the bubble and muttered something. A fierce look glowed in his eyes. The skin of his face, already taut, pulled so tight Kaz thought it would soon tear away, revealing the skull underneath.

The eggshell wavered.

Brenn stretched forth his other arm. Sweat poured from his forehead; his hollow eyes flared.

“Wherever you are,” he shouted, “you must come to me! The pull of your birth will not be denied!”

In the bubble, the reconstructed shell smoked. Plumes rose above the egg, swirling and forming a cloud.

Kaz blinked. For a moment, he would have sworn he saw an arm in the cloud.

A shape coalesced slowly over the shell, which seemed to be dissolving as the thing above it solidified. The thing was not human; that was obvious after the first few seconds. It was not like any creature that Kaz had ever seen. It had wings and a long, powerful tail. The thing in the bubble was bent over and seemed undecided as to whether it should stand on two legs or four. Standing, it would have been taller than Brenn and possibly even Kaz. It was also likely twice the minotaur’s weight. Kaz stared in shock and amazement at the creature.

It was the monster that had attacked him! He recognized it by the bruised and bloodied snout. Yes, this was what he had fought.

But what was it?

The monstrosity inside Brenn’s bubble opened its blunted, reptilian maw and let loose with a roar... or tried to. No sound escaped the bubble. The creature clawed at the interior of its cell with hands that looked almost human.

It was a dragon... yet it was not. Kaz knew of the silver dragon’s ability to shapechange, but this thing looked as if it had changed its mind midway through the transformation and had been unable to shift back to its natural state.

Brenn walked to where the monster could see him. Its hatred for the Black Robe was evident. Fortunately for the mage, the bubble was stronger than the monster. “Roar all you like, my dragon-man,” Brenn remarked. “Not only will this prison hold you better, but your mother will never hear you in there.”

Mother? Kaz looked closely at the monster’s scaly hide. What he had taken for gray was actually a muted silver!

The thing was one of the silver dragon’s children! There could be no other explanation, yet Kaz had never seen a dragon that looked like this one. It was, as Brenn had put it, more of a dragon-man....

What have you done, mage? Kaz wondered. What vile sorcery have you performed?

“Good. The shell holds,” Brenn commented. He walked around his creation, studying it as a child might inspect a newly acquired pet. “Some further distortion, but the spell has not completely broken down yet. Another few days, though... Yes, I think I was correct after all,” Brenn muttered.

Kaz could restrain himself no longer. “You are responsible for that creature?”

“It is something of a disappointment, is it not? Interesting, but not quite what I had in mind, and I do hate to leave a thing half done. There is also the problem that my magic refuses to stay bound to it. Given three or four more days, the spell would break down, and we would have neither this creature nor a young hatchling, nothing but a nasty mess. Until she gave in, I was ready to let him remain loose until the unraveling of the spell tore him apart. Now that I have her cooperation, I can remedy the situation. I can start on the others.”

“So that was one of the dragon’s eggs?”

Brenn ceased his inspection of the dragon-man and gazed thoughtfully at the minotaur. “Of course. Almost newly laid, in fact. This was my first attempt. Very strong he is. Tore apart the nice iron cell I had him in and fled to the woods. I was elsewhere at the time.”

“That is your reason for stealing the eggs? That thing?” Kaz asked.

“The idea was another’s – an old companion of mine who had become a cleric of the Dark Queen. He once mentioned to me how delightful it would be if Paladine’s greatest servants could be tricked into fighting for Takhisis. What better way to destroy their morale than by turning their children into creatures dedicated to the darkness?” Brenn’s expression was almost wistful. “His power was insufficient for the task, however, and he died in the process.... The fool.”

The mage shook his head. “Clerics! They are too limited by their fanatical devotion. A mage, on the other hand... well, you see what I have accomplished!”

“Not what you intended,” Kaz growled.

The observation did not seem to bother the magic-user. “No, but unlike Augus, my poor, unlamented friend, I understand my limitations... and then devise ways of overcoming them. She will provide the added strength I need.”

Brenn stepped around the pattern and rejoined Kaz. The mage walked much more slowly than before, a sign that he was exhausted. “We have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow, minotaur. I need to conserve my strength for the spell I plan to cast. The physical exertion must fall to you. Therefore, it would be best if you went to bed now. I shall summon you when the time comes.”

The minotaur bowed obediently. “Yes, Master Brenn.”

“Since you do not yet know your way around this place, I shall give you this to guide you to your quarters.” The skeletal figure flicked a finger at the blue light. The orb shimmered, then split into two identical spheres. One of them fluttered over to the startled warrior. “It will remain in existence so long as you need it to reach your quarters. After that, it will fade away, leaving you in complete darkness.”

Warning me not to wander anywhere afterward, Kaz thought, nodding his understanding.

Brenn returned his attention to his monstrous creation. “You may go.”

Kaz started to leave, but felt something make the hair on his neck stand on end. He looked back at Brenn. The mage’s gaze was still focused on the thing in the magical bubble. The minotaur’s brow furrowed, then he chanced to look up at the dragon-man.

It was watching Kaz.

The minotaur stalked quickly toward the passageway, not once looking back. Only when he was several steps down the tunnel and far from the unnerving eyes of the monster did he pause. It had been years since anything had so disturbed him, but the hungry, knowing gaze of the dragon-man had burned into Kaz’s very soul. Brenn had created something insidious, something whose inner darkness perhaps even the magic-user did not fully comprehend.

Kaz did not like magic. An axe could not cleave magic. Yet, Kaz knew he could not leave unless he destroyed Brenn’s creation first. Kaz added up his chances of succeeding in such a mad quest and snorted in frustration.

Little chance, indeed! He would have to be a suicidal fool to seriously consider doing anything other than escaping at the first opportunity!

“Paladine preserve me!” Kaz muttered under his breath. Just as he made that decision, he realized there was no decision to make. He could not permit Brenn to continue his unearthly experiments. He had to act.

The gods, Kaz decided there and then, really are out to get me... and this time they’ll probably succeed!

*

His memory served him well. Kaz was pleased to discover, some hours later, that despite the utter darkness, he was able to retrace his route. Only once so far had he made a wrong turn, and he had realized that mistake almost at once.

Kaz had been tempted to use a makeshift torch, but the light would have put him at risk. He was fairly certain that the weary Brenn was now asleep, but the minotaur was taking no chances. He was counting on the darkness to hide him.

Kaz had been tempted to attack Brenn in the night. But Kaz knew no mage would go to sleep without some protective spell. In Brenn’s case, it would be a powerful ward. No, the minotaur’s best hope was to remain on the course he had decided.

Only she could aid him.

He turned a corner and saw a dim light ahead. At first, he feared that he had miscalculated, that Brenn was still awake. It was a moment before Kaz recognized the dim illumination as coming from the chamber where the silver dragon was imprisoned. With more confidence, he approached the mouth of the cavern and peered inside.

The silver dragon lay still, so still, in fact, that the minotaur feared that she had already died in her sleep. Then, Kaz saw her stir in obvious agony. Understanding to some extent her injuries and wounds, he could not help but admire her determination to live.

The other dragons had all departed, but she stayed behind, unwilling to take the time to heal herself, and all because of her love for her children.

Kaz was outraged at the thought of what Brenn had done to one of those children. The minotaur had to tell the silver dragon the truth... providing she would believe anything a minotaur said. The last was the part of the plan he had been unable to resolve to his own satisfaction.

Kaz started toward the dragon... and ran into an invisible wall.

Cursing, he slammed his fist against it. “What now?” he muttered.

Frustrated, the minotaur shifted position in an attempt to see if there might be another entrance nearer to the dragon. As he moved, he put a hand against the rock wall of the cavern.

Air currents shifted. A tingle ran through the minotaur’s hand. Startled, he pulled his hand from the rock. Kaz recalled something Brenn had done both when entering and departing the dragon’s prison. Twice the spellcaster’s hand had touched the wall. In fact, Kaz realized, Brenn had gone out of his way to touch the rock.

Kaz tried to touch the invisible wall.

It was gone.

Kaz quickly entered the chamber and, with some hesitation, approached the massive prisoner.

“You come... quiet... in the night,” a soft voice whispered suddenly. “The mage... has acquired himself a new servant. You should not be here without your master, minotaur. I should tear you... tear you apart.”

The head shifted. With her good eye, the silver dragon stared bitterly at the tiny figure to her side.

Being devoured by the very thing he had come to rescue was not part of Kaz’s plan. “I am a prisoner here also, Great One. By my ancestors, I swear that what I tell you now is the truth. You have my word of honor.”

“Minotaurs are... are known to lie now and then. For a prisoner, you have very... very long chains.”

Kaz snorted. “Like you, Master Brenn made assumptions.”

“Why... have you truly... come to... to me?” The dragon might not believe him – not yet – but she evidently knew enough about minotaur honor to at least listen to him.

“To get you out of this.” Even as Kaz said it, he realized how ridiculous he sounded. He was trying to rescue a dragon. “I need your power to help end this.”

“Even if... if I believed you, I cannot... leave without my children, minotaur. I will not leave... with... without them.” The silver dragon flinched several times during the course of her reply. She turned her head and indicated the wall before her, the one Kaz had been unable to see from the entrance. “Look there. Just beyond my... my reach.”

Kaz followed her direction. His eyes widened. There in a nook in the rock wall were six large, leathery eggs identical to the fragmented egg Brenn had pieced together. It seemed strange that the mage would put the eggs here, when he would be forced to move them for his experiments. How did he hope to maintain the dragon’s cooperation if she saw them vanishing, one by one?

The dragon swung her head around. “They were only freshly laid a few days before he... he... stole them. Although time has passed, his accursed spell has... kept them as they were.”

Kaz snorted. “How was it he was able to seize them?”

“A battle forced us to leave them for a time. A terrible battle as you can see. I came back, helped by my mate, to discover them gone!” She grimaced as pain shook her. “My mate and I swore that only death would keep... keep us from our children.” The dragon paused for breath. “It seems I will be held to... to that vow. I am beyond either help or helping. Yet, if you would do me any favor, minotaur, save my children.”

Kaz fought down his disappointment at finding the dragon too weak to aid him. He studied the eggs. He could not abandon them to the fate of the other. He could not allow Brenn to create any more such monstrosities... even if that meant destroying the eggs.

It was only when he dared reach up to the eggs themselves that he discovered something strange. He couldn’t reach the nook. He felt a rough, rocky surface beneath his hand. Had his eyes been closed, he would have been unable to tell where the wall ended and the nook began.

He ran his hands around the edge, trying to find some mechanical means to open it, like the entrance. Nothing. He contemplated trying his axe on the wall, but the noise would certainly wake the spellcaster and most likely accomplish nothing but damaging the weapon. Defeated, he turned back to the dragon. “Is there nothing that you can do?”

“Would I be here?” She sighed. “My only hope is that he will keep his word and give... them back.”

“He will do nothing of the kind.” Kaz snarled. “He intends to take your eggs and draw on your power to twist your children into abominations obedient to him!”

The dragon lifted her head. “Even he could not do that; he dares not!”

“Haven’t you wondered why the eggs aren’t all here?” Kaz asked her.

Now she appeared suspicious. “What sort of trick is this? All of my eggs... are there. I see them.”

“What? They can’t be!” Kaz was astounded.

“They are.” The dragon eyed him. “Whatever you were plotting has failed. Perhaps you should return to your master.”

“By Paladine! Listen to —”

Before he could finish, another voice cut through. “Kaz, you know I ordered you not to torment our guest! You would do better to learn to obey!”

Brenn stood near the entrance. Kaz cursed silently; he had been a fool not to guess there might be some sort of magical alarm.

Kaz tried to reach for his axe, discovered he couldn’t move. The silver dragon regarded the minotaur with much loathing. She would never believe him now.

“You are going to have to be punished for this disobedience, Kaz,” Brenn continued.

A bubble formed around Kaz, a floating sphere identical to the one that imprisoned the dragon-man.

He found he could move now, but where could he go? Even as he thought that, there was a sudden, ominous change in the bubble. It began to shrink! Now the top barely cleared his horns, and the sides were so close he could touch them with his fingers.

Being slowly crushed to death in a magical bubble was not an honorable way to die. He tried breaking the bubble with his horns, but realized it was more likely his horns would break before the sphere would burst.

Unable to do anything else, Kaz cursed Brenn in the name of every god he could think of, then began telling the malevolent magic-user what the minotaur would do when he got free. It didn’t matter that Brenn probably couldn’t hear him; Kaz was quite confident that the mage would understand.

Brenn apparently did. As Kaz took a breath, the mage pointed a finger at him. The air caught in Kaz’s throat.

A moment later, he collapsed.

*

Kaz woke up, looked swiftly around. He was still trapped in Brenn’s accursed bubble, but his location had changed. Now he floated in one corner of the Black Robe’s inner sanctum, near the huge pattern and the other sphere that still floated above it. Too near. Brenn’s dragon-man stared at the minotaur as if nothing else in the world mattered. Now and then, the creature would blink or its forked tongue would dart out, but otherwise the dragon-man did not move.

“Size me up all you like, lizard,” Kaz growled, not caring whether or not the beast could hear or even understand him. “You’ll find me a meal that bites back!”

The dragon-man took no notice of Kaz’s ravings and simply continued to stare at him.

Kaz was not certain how long it was before Brenn entered. An hour, maybe two.

“Ah, both of you are awake!” Brenn remarked. He took some time to inspect the dragon-man, which suddenly recommenced with its snarling and clawing. Brenn turned to Kaz. A flick of the mage’s finger brought the minotaur’s sphere floating to him.

“You may notice that you can hear me, but nothing else.”

It was true. Despite the many times the dragon-man opened its mouth in what was obviously a roar, the chamber was silent, save whenever the spellcaster spoke.

The cadaverous mage gave Kaz a smile. “In a way, you make this much easier. I admit I would have felt guilty about sacrificing a useful soldier like yourself if you had not revealed yourself to be the traitor you are. Imagine! A minotaur with a conscience!”

“You actually know the word?” Kaz snarled.

“Still defiant. Good. It means you will put up a strong fight when the time comes. The battle should be entertaining, even if the outcome is inevitable.”

Battle? Kaz did not like the sound of that. “What battle?”

Brenn turned and strolled back to the pattern. As he walked, the minotaur’s sphere followed. “When I said your arrival was timely, I meant it. I was trying to devise a way in which to test the strength of my creation – once I recaptured it – and then you fell into my hands. My original intention was to let you become comfortable, put your mind at ease, so that when the time came to fight, you would be at your best. Then, of course —”

“You plan to have me fight that thing?” Kaz roared, pointing at the snarling dragon-man.

“I would have thought that was obvious, even to you,” the mage commented, looking at Kaz with mild surprise. “I hope your wits are sharper during battle, especially since you will be fighting claw-to-claw.”

Kaz reached back. His axe was gone. He scowled at Brenn, who pointed to one of the tables nearby. The battle-axe now lay upon it.

The minotaur looked from Brenn to the dragon-man, then to the spellcaster again. “This is your idea of a fair fight?”

The mage studied his creation, who continued to scrape at the bubble with talons nearly the length of the minotaur’s hand. The dragon-man opened wide its jaws, revealing once again its razor-sharp fangs. After some deliberation, Brenn turned to Kaz. “No, but it will satisfy my curiosity.”

“Let me loose, and I will satisfy your curiosity!”

The mage smiled. “I think it’s time we begin.”

The bubble containing Kaz retreated several yards. The other sphere also moved away from the pattern. Brenn eyed the magical design and raised a narrow hand.

A bubble appeared, and inside was the huge chest from which Brenn had removed the egg fragments.

Brenn directed the bubble to him. As before, it dissolved when it touched the cavern floor, leaving behind the chest. The spellcaster opened the chest and reached in.

Giving a nod of satisfaction, Brenn pulled out his prize. Kaz could not see what he held at first, but when the tall mage lifted it high, there was no mistaking.

Another silver dragon egg.

“Illusions!” Kaz gasped. “I understand it now! The eggs she longs after are only illusions! No wonder the barrier felt as if it were made of rock!”

Brenn held the egg for Kaz to see. “Of course. I needed a lure, but I was not about to risk my prizes. Dragon eggs are quite difficult to come by.”

He lowered his burden. “It is simple, really. Her own obsession feeds the strength of the illusion as her own power feeds the spell that binds her. Why waste my own energy when I can make use of others? Still, after the incomplete success of my first attempt, I decided to stop hiding from her and instead draw her into my domain. You see, if one sort of magic is not enough, then maybe two combined will achieve success. When I began this, I thought to create an army, but with the other dragons gone, I will be satisfied with my little band and the knowledge that I have once more triumphed where others have failed.”

“I knew a mage like you once,” Kaz growled. “Galen Dracos. He’s dead now, Paladine be praised!”

Brenn laughed. Then he replaced the egg in the chest and closed the lid. Reaching into the collar of his robe, he pulled out a bejeweled pendant. Kaz caught the flash of an emerald crystal embedded in the center.

The mage directed his attention to the dragon-man, which had renewed its attack on the imprisoning bubble. Brenn brought the sphere back to its original resting place above the metal device in the center of the pattern. Then, taking a deep breath, he put both hands on the talisman hanging from his neck and closed his eyes.

“The time has come, madam,” the mage said softly. “You know what I expect from you!”

Kaz sensed intense power, but Brenn appeared disappointed. He opened his eyes. “Your children, madam! Remember our bargain!”

An intense wave of magic overwhelmed Kaz. He shook his head and grunted in pain. Brenn’s fleshless face lit up. The emerald crystal gleamed.

Inside the bubble, the dragon-man clutched at its throat in obvious anguish. Its skin began to ripple. Kaz leaned forward until his snout rubbed against the interior of his prison, looking closer. The dragon-man’s skin was melting!

Power continued to flow from the dragon to Brenn. Dragons were magical creatures; Brenn had only succeeded in capturing the silver one because of her deadly injuries. To alter a dragon – even one not yet hatched – was to work against the natural magic of the legendary race. A formidable task for any mage, no matter how powerful.

The dragon-man’s skin sloughed off in horrid gobbets, yet, instead of becoming smaller, the creature appeared to grow. It reminded Kaz of a young snake shedding its skin. The dragon-man was in horrible pain, so much so that Kaz almost pitied the thing.

His pity faded when he recalled that he would soon be forced to do battle with the monster.

With each shedding, the dragon-man became more humanoid in appearance. Its snout shortened until it was little longer than that of the minotaur. Its forelegs changed into arms and taloned hands. The tail shortened, and the dragon-man’s wings became vestigial. Despite the alterations, Kaz did not think his chances of winning any better. Not only was the dragon-man now larger than before, but there was also a look in those reptilian eyes that spoke of true cunning. It was the look of a warrior.

Warrior or monster or both, I’ll give you the fight of your life! Kaz promised. He was fairly certain the battle would take place soon. The creature was still in a state of flux, but the changes were becoming more subtle. For the first time, the dragon-man seemed to take note of its own shape. It studied itself carefully, then stared at the one who had made it.

Power continued to flow into the talisman and from there out to the creature in the bubble. Brenn was no longer smiling. Strain showed on his face as he pushed for the completion of his spell. Dragon magic continued to flow to him through the talisman. The force was so overwhelming that even Kaz felt stunned by its intensity. Brenn gasped at one point, but did not falter.

Suddenly, the stream of magical power wavered. Brenn glared into empty space and roared, “Remember your children!”

His warning did not seem to help. The power faltered more and more... then dwindled away. With a painful grunt, the mage broke his own connection to the spell. “Damnable lizard!”

Kaz wondered if the dragon’s tremendous exertion had finally killed her. The mage twitched, then rubbed his pale face. Kaz yearned to be free of his prison. If there was a time when the spellcaster might be weak enough to be attacked, it was now.

Brenn gazed at his creation. “Wonderful!” the mage breathed. “Complete at last!”

The dragon-man stood erect within the confines of its cell. Its gaze shifted back and forth between Brenn and Kaz. Each time it stared at the minotaur, the dragon-man clenched its taloned fists.

“Perfect!” the Black Robe proclaimed. “Perfect!” He turned to Kaz, the only witness to his magnificence. “Do you see —”

The dragon-man abruptly bent over and howled. The monster’s skin began to peel off in large pieces.

“What is wrong?” The mage brought the bubble closer to him. Brenn walked up to the wall of the transparent cell and peered down at the dragon-man, which was now on its knees. “What is the matter with you? You must be stable now!”

The dragon-man, eyes wide and red, glared up at its creator and, driven by pain, reached for Brenn. The spellcaster flinched but did not move away.

The dragon-man’s claws dug into the bubble and tore it open as easily as if it had been formed from thin cloth. The bubble popped, dropped its prisoner to the ground.

Brenn stared at his creation in disbelief.

The dragon-man lifted Brenn by the collar and, in a voice both sibilant and deep, rumbled, “You hurt me!”

“Put me down! I can make it —”

The dragon-man ignored the command. “I will hurt you!”

Raising Brenn above him, the dragon-man threw the magic-user across the cavern.

Weakened by his spellcasting, Brenn could not help himself. He crashed into a shelf, crushing artifacts and containers, finally bringing the entire set of shelves down on himself.

Brenn tried to rise, but could not. It was clear that he was badly injured. The dragon-man started toward the mage. Brenn pointed weakly at Kaz, then slumped back, not unconscious, but unable, at the moment, to do anything else to save himself.

The bubble in which the minotaur was imprisoned faded. With a grunt, Kaz struck the hard cavern floor.

The dragon-man turned toward the minotaur, hissing. Talons flashed as it started for Kaz. The dragon-man lunged for Kaz’s throat.

Kaz threw himself to the ground and rolled toward the table where his weapon lay. He hoped he could reach his axe before the creature struck again.

The action caught the dragon-man by surprise. For a breath or two, the creature stared down at the spot where its intended victim had been. Then, hissing again, the creature whirled. Locating Kaz, the dragon-man stalked toward the minotaur, talons extended and maw open wide. Kaz realized that he would never make it to the table before the monster was on him.

Then another wave of pain rocked the dragon-man. It fell to one knee. Its form began to shift again, almost as if liquefying.

Making the most of his unexpected opportunity, Kaz dashed over to the table and put his hand on the axe. Behind him, the howl of pain died.

The dragon-man was on its feet again. It lunged at Kaz, moving even more swiftly than before. Raising the axe with one hand, Kaz succeeded in fending off the attack. The creature was agile despite its grotesque appearance. Kaz tried a second swing. The dragon-man grabbed hold of the axe by the upper half of the shaft, nearly wrenched it from the minotaur’s grasp. Kaz fought to pull the weapon free. He did not like to think about his chances in hand-to-hand fighting.

Remembering their struggle in the woods, Kaz shifted his weapon and tried to repeat his tactic from that battle, tried to hit the creature on the snout. The monster was much more wary this time, and once more Kaz almost lost his axe.

Intent on avoiding the jaws and talons of his adversary, the minotaur saw the slithering tail too late. It darted toward his leg. Kaz struck the tail with his axe. One well-honed blade caught the tip and severed it.

The dragon-man howled with pain, lashed out without thinking. The blow caught Kaz as he worked the axe free, for the edge had not only cut through the tail but gouged a slit several inches deep in the rock-hard ground. Pain coursed through the minotaur. The axe came free just as the dragon-man attacked again. The wounded minotaur stumbled out of reach. His left arm was covered in blood, pouring from ragged gaps near his shoulder.

A red rage began to overwhelm the minotaur. The creature had wounded him!

“I... have... had... enough!” he snarled.

Kaz brought the axe around and forced his reptilian adversary back. Each swing sent shivers of pain through the minotaur, but Kaz knew he could not let up. If he stopped even for a moment, the dragon-man would have him.

The upper edge of one of the axe’s blades cut a streak of green slime across the dragon-man’s chest. It hissed and stumbled, but Kaz could not pursue his advantage soon enough. Recovering, the creature glared at the minotaur, then suddenly leapt straight at him. Had Kaz been uninjured, he would have cut his opponent down then, but the ache in his shoulder slowed him. The axe struck the dragon-man in the upper arm, but the wound was shallow and, even worse, the monster now finally had a good grip on the shaft of the minotaur’s weapon.

Kaz tried to hold on, but he was too weak. The dragon-man pulled the axe from the minotaur’s grip and tossed it aside.

“Now,” it hissed, “you will die!”

Kaz, however, was already moving. Even for a creature as strong as the dragon-man, a full-grown minotaur was a very, very heavy burden. A charging minotaur was even more so. Kaz lowered his head, aimed his horns at the dragon-man.

Wicked talons cut and tore into his body, but Kaz did not stop. The dragon-man grunted in agony as the minotaur’s horns caught it near the chest wound. The horns pierced its hard, armored skin.

Propelled backward by the minotaur’s attack, the dragon-man stumbled and fell. Kaz almost fell, too, but managed to free his horns just in time.

The wounded monster began to shift again. Less and less it looked like a man and more like... like nothing in the minotaur’s experience. The dragon-man roared and struggled to its feet. Kaz wondered wearily where the abomination continued to draw its strength. The wounded minotaur was virtually finished. He barely had the power to stand, much less renew the battle.

The dragon-man hissed. Out of the corner of his eye, the minotaur tried to estimate his chances of reaching his battle-axe. Those odds were not what he would have hoped, but if the continual magical transformations had slowed the dragon-man even a little bit...

The creature also glanced in the direction of the axe.

Kaz started for the weapon. The dragon-man sought to intercept him. The monster moved with more speed than Kaz could muster. The battle had worn down the minotaur. His legs and arms felt like lumps of iron, and with each step the room seemed to whirl.

Then the dragon-man stumbled again. Not much, but enough to give Kaz two or three precious seconds. Just enough time to grab the axe and barely roll out of reach.

Kaz turned back in time to see a hideous sight. The monster’s flesh dribbled off as it moved. The creature continued to howl in fury and in pain.

Summoning what remained of his strength, Kaz swung the battle-axe over Ms head and brought it down.

The blow caught the monster in the skull. To Kaz’s astonishment, the axe went clean through the skull into the body.

Literally cleaved in two, the dragon-man collapsed.

Then it disappeared. Kaz saw only a tiny remnant of Brenn’s creation. The minotaur studied the head of his axe, but found little trace there, either. As far as he could gather, the dragon-man had dissolved the moment Kaz had killed it.

A shuffling noise caught Kaz’s attention. He whirled, thinking the dragon-man had somehow returned from the dead. He saw the battered form of Brenn instead. The mage had dragged himself to the center of the patterned floor. His face was taut. One leg dragged uselessly. Seeing the minotaur, Brenn managed one of his ghastly smiles.

“My gratitude for... for cleaning up that little mess.” The mage glanced around anxiously, as if searching for something on the floor. “I shall endeavor to avoid such an occurrence the next time.”

Kaz snorted. “Next time?” He hefted the axe.

Brenn pointed at Kaz.

The warrior’s movements slowed. He was reminded of all those times during the war when he and the others had been forced to wade through hip-deep mud. He moved as if in a dream.

Brenn saw that his spell had only half succeeded. For the first time, the mage’s eyes looked a bit frantic.

Kaz suddenly knew what Brenn was seeking. The mage was looking for his crystal talisman. It must have been torn off when the dragon-man tried to grab the gaunt sorcerer by the throat. Both Brenn and Kaz saw the crystal at the same time. Brenn was closer; he would have the talisman before Kaz could reach him.

Fighting against the spell, the minotaur swung the axe to one side. As he did, he saw the mage’s hand hovering over the talisman.

Kaz threw the axe, aiming not for the mage but for the metal stand in the center of the room.

The flying axe struck the metal device. Sparks flew.

A bubble formed over the center of the pattern. Unlike the previous bubbles, it did not float off the ground. It was sinking, almost exactly where Brenn was trying to drag himself away.

His injuries slowed him. The bubble touched him. Suddenly Brenn was inside.

The mage struggled, but his efforts only brought him back to the center of the pattern and the bent mechanism from which the bubble had been summoned. Kaz saw frantic fear on Brenn’s face as the bubble drifted back to the magical device. The sphere froze as it reached the center.

The bubble began to contract. Brenn screamed, but no sound could be heard. The sphere now gave him little room to move. The mage locked eyes with Kaz and pointed at the talisman. Brenn was pleading.

Kaz grunted, shook his horned head. The bubble shrank, and with it shrank Brenn. All the while, the increasingly tiny figure of the mage silently screamed.

The bubble vanished. Kaz picked up the gem and tossed the talisman among the rest of the wreckage.

“Can’t say that I’m sorry, Master Brenn.”

*

The dragon was dead.

Kaz had gathered up the remaining eggs and dragged them to her cavern, only to discover the silver dragon was no longer alive. He also noted that the illusionary eggs were gone. Perhaps she had realized that Kaz had been telling the truth: The mage had tricked her and was using her own power to experiment on her children. The shock must have been too much in her injured state.

He tried not to think about that as he made plans for his departure. There were many things to be done. Kaz had his own injuries to deal with, injuries that made dragging around five heavy eggs painful. He had to find a path out of these caves. Locating the dragon’s mate would be difficult, but Kaz had some idea of where to look. His time as a dragon-rider had given him insight into where the dragons nested. One way or the other, he would locate the male and return the eggs. Kaz had the feeling that – like his mate – the male silver dragon would not leave Krynn until certain the eggs were safe.

Kaz also had to make sure that no one would be able to use Brenn’s sanctum again. The minotaur was determined to wipe away all traces of the foul mage.

The death of the black-robed mage, alone, cheered Kaz. Brenn’s experiments would be lost to the world. There were enough monsters on Krynn without adding such horrible specimens to the list. Thanks to Kaz, Krynn would never know there had ever been such a thing as a dragon-man.

Kaz envisioned an entire army of the creatures. The image was enough to make even a minotaur blanch.

Kaz snorted. Dream armies were not worth worrying about. Krynn had nothing to fear of dragon-men. Not now.

Not ever.

Kaz, The Minotaur

(1013 PC)

Chapter 1

They sat huddled around a small campfire, twelve and one. The distinction was important, because, although the twelve followed the one who was their leader, they despised him as much as he despised them. Only necessity and a matter of honor threw them together and somehow held them together for so long.

The one was an ogre, a coarse, brutish figure well over six feet tall and very wide. His face was flat, ugly, with long, vicious teeth, good for tearing flesh from either a meal or a foe. His skin was pasty and mottled, and his hair was flat against his head. He wore only a dirty kilt and belt. In a scabbard strapped to his back, he carried what would have been, for a man, a two-handed sword, but for the ogre was just fine for one: a trophy of war. Stuffed into his belt, seemingly insignificant compared to the huge blade, were two knives. The ogre’s name was Molok, and as he used his huge, bloody claws to tear meat from his portion of the kill, he surreptitiously eyed the others.

Most of the others, when standing, were a full head taller than the ogre, not that the fact disturbed Molok. He tore another piece of the nearly raw meat from the bone in his hand and jammed the morsel into his mouth while he watched the dozen minotaurs eat their own meals. Unlike the ogre, the minotaurs ate more slowly, carefully, albeit still with a certain savageness that would have unnerved humans or elves. There were nine males and three females, and all were armed. A couple had spears and three others’ swords, like those their unwelcome companion carried, but the remainder carried huge, double-headed battle-axes. The males had horns more than a foot long, while the females’ were a bit shorter.

The minotaurs were too at ease, Molok decided. That did not suit him. He wanted them agitated and anxious to be done with this task, if only so they would not have to travel with an ogre much longer.

“It’s been near a week, Scar-face, since you found any trail.” Molok picked a piece of meat out from between two yellowed fangs. “Is it maybe that the coward is craftier than you? Be he your better?”

At the sound of his gravelly voice, all twelve of the minotaurs looked up, the fire giving their eyes a burning, haunting look. One minotaur, whose ravaged features bespoke many fierce combats, threw his meat down and started to rise. A smaller one, female, grabbed hold of one arm.

“No, Scurn,” she said quietly. Her voice was deep, but for a minotaur, it would have been considered quite pleasant.

“Release me, Helati,” the one called Scurn rumbled. His voice was like the low, rolling thunder before a great storm. The battle-axe he used, which lay next to him, was huge even for one of his kind. Molok had seen it wielded most effectively, but was not concerned. He knew how to manipulate this band. Had he not kept the chase alive for over four years now?

“Easy, Scurn,” muttered another minotaur next to Helati. These two bore a strong resemblance to one another. Hecar was sibling, brother, to Helati. They were the weak links as far as the ogre was concerned. Over the four years, they had gone from dedicated pursuers to abject admirers of the renegade the band sought. The renegade that these minotaurs could never return home without.

The scarred minotaur settled down, but Molok saw that he had already accomplished his purpose. He had stirred things up. As always, the band began to talk about the latest setback.

“Cannot deny that Kaz is crafty.”

“Even cowards have minds!”

“Coward? He survived the lands of the Silvanesti!”

“Scurn said that was just a rumor, didn’t you, Scurn?”

The ravaged head tipped forward briefly. His horns, even in the light of only a single moon, Lunitari, were quite plainly worn from action. Scurn was a fighter, one who, if his mind had been as strong as his body, would have been leader of his people by now. Scurn was headstrong. He was perfect for Molok’s purposes.

“Kaz never journeyed into the lands of the Silvanesti,” Scurn snorted in derision. “He’s a coward and dishonorable. Just another ploy to throw us off the trail.”

“Which he be doing all too well,” added Molok casually.

Scurn glared at him with blood-red eyes. He wanted to take the ogre by the neck and squeeze until the life was gone. He could not, however. Not, at least, until their journey was over and Kaz was either dead or captured. “You’ve been of little help to us, Molok. All you are good for is telling us how bad we are. What have you done to speed up this Sargas-be-damned quest? We are as sick of staring at your mongrel face for the past four years as you are of staring at ours.”

Shrugging disinterestedly, the ogre bit off another chunk of meat. “I was told that you be great trackers, great hunters. I see nothing so far. I think you be losing your edge. Does your honor mean so little to you? What about Tremoc? Would you be less than him?”

The ogre liked to bring up Tremoc at times like this. It was a favorite minotaur tale. In the name of honor, Tremoc had crossed the continent of Ansalon four times in his quest to bring the murderer of his mate to justice. The pursuit had lasted more than twenty years. It was a useful story for two reasons. First, it reminded his bullheaded companions of dedication and what was most important in their lives and, second, it urged them to renewed efforts. None of them wanted to be doing this for twenty years.

He had stirred them up enough. Now it was time to get them thinking about the hunt. “If not among the elves, Scurn, where be he?”

It was Hecar who answered. “Whether or not Kaz journeyed to the lands of the Silvanesti elves – which he could have – he probably turned west.”

“West?” Scurn glanced at the other minotaur. “Qualinesti? That’s as foolish as entering the lands of the Silvanesti!”

Now it was Hecar who snorted. “I was meaning Thorbardin. The dwarves are more likely to leave him alone. He can go from there to the land called Ergoth.”

Studying them both, the ogre said nothing. He was interested in hearing what the scarred minotaur’s response would be.

Scurn rose, tore off a piece of fat and gristle from their catch, and tossed the piece into the low flames. The fire shot up, a sizzling, spitting sound erupting where the fat melted away. The disfigured minotaur laughed, an ugly sound.

“You are either growing stupid or you have come to admire Kaz so much for his ability to run and hide that you are trying steer us away!”

Hecar started to rise, and it looked as if the two creatures would come to blows. Many of the others began to grow agitated, snorting loudly in their excitement. Helati, once more trying to be peacemaker, quickly rose in front of her brother, facing him.

“No, Hecar!” she hissed quietly.

“Out of my way, female,” her brother muttered through clenched teeth.

“Scurn will kill you,” she whispered. “You know that!”

“My honor —”

“Your honor can take a little punishment. Remember, it is the wise minotaur who knows when to pick his battles. Another time, perhaps.”

“I will not forget this. The others —”

Despite their difference in height, she somehow managed to look him straight in the eye. “The others know full well that you can defeat any of them any time.”

Hecar hesitated. He glanced briefly toward the ogre, who appeared to be busy examining the bone he held on the off chance that it still held some shred of meat, and snorted quietly. Nothing is certain about that one. Finally he nodded and sat down. Helati joined him. Scurn gave him as much of a triumphant grin as a minotaur’s bovine features could. What his expression mostly consisted of was a showing of sharp teeth. Hecar could barely contain his fury.

“Kaz will not go west, nor will he go east. He will stay in the south, hoping to evade us.” Scurn turned toward Molok for agreement.

The ogre gazed at the minotaurs around him as if only just now remembering he was the instigator of this heated argument. It was time to settle things, Molok decided. Wiping his hairy paws on his kilt, he reached down to a pouch between his feet and pulled out a crumbled piece of parchment. With one fluid motion, he tossed it at Scurn. The startled minotaur succeeded in catching it before a sudden burst of fire scorched both paper and his own hand.

“What is this?”

Molok cracked open the bone he had been picking over and began sucking the marrow. Frustrated, the minotaur unfolded the sheet and tried to make out the markings in the dim, flickering light of the flames. His eyes widened, and he looked angrily at the ogre.

“This is a proclamation signed by the Grand Master of the Knights of Solamnia himself!”

There was renewed muttering on the parts of the assembled group. After four years of pursuing their quarry through the lands of humans, they now knew more about the Knights of Solamnia than any others of their race did, save Kaz.

“What does it say, Scurn?” one of the other minotaurs asked impatiently.

“The Grand Master offers a reward for several beings of various races. One of them is Kaz!” The last was said with total disbelief. “He is wanted, it says, for conspiring against the knighthood, specifically, the planned assassination of the Grand Master himself. There is also mention of murder here, but it does not specify whose and when.” Scurn’s tone indicated that he was a bit confused about what he had just read.

“Then he is wanted by the knighthood as much as he is wanted by us,” someone stated.

“Where did you get that proclamation?” Hecar snapped at the ogre.

Molok shrugged. “I find it yesterday. It had … fallen … from the tree that someone had posted it on, I think.”

“Why would the knights demand Kaz? He was their comrade!” one of the other females asked the group as a whole.

“As are some of these others,” Scurn added. He tossed the parchment to one of the other minotaurs, who started reading it slowly. The minotaurs prided themselves on the fact that, of all races save perhaps the elves, they were the most literate. While physical strength was the final arbiter in their society, knowledge was the tool that honed that strength.

“The knights are mad!” Hecar muttered. “Have they given a reason?”

“Have they given a reason for anything we have seen in the time we have pursued Kaz?” Scurn glanced around. “They may have a reason; they may not. There are names on that proclamation that were their staunchest allies in … in that time.”

“That time” was a war that the minotaurs were doing their best to wipe from their memories. More than one gave Molok a look of bestial hatred. The minotaurs had been slave-soldiers to the ogres and humans who had followed the dark goddess, Takhisis, in her struggle against her counterpart, the lord of light, Paladine. The Knights of Solamnia had represented that god, and in the end, it was one of their number, a Knight of the Crown named Huma, who had literally forced the goddess to capitulate. Only one other who had witnessed the costly victory had survived.

Kaz. Very few actually knew what part he had played in the final battle. Humans did not care to glorify what they tended to think of as a monster. The other minotaurs had pieced the story together over the years, though some, like Scurn, denied its plausibility.

“If the Knights of Solamnia want his head,” the mutilated warrior began, “then he will surely stay in the south, where their presence is weaker.”

Many of the others nodded. Molok looked at each and every one of them and then shook his head. “After four years, you know nothing. Even you who knew Kaz.”

He received twelve steady glares, which he ignored, as usual. “The knights be acting strange. His friends be now his foes, even the Lord of Knights, who, if what we learned be true, called him comrade in the war.”

There was a pause. He had their full attention now. “Kaz will go north – north to Vingaard, I think.”

It was fortunate that the land they presently roamed was empty of settlements, for the shouts that rose among the group could no doubt have been heard for miles around. It was finally Scurn who quieted the others – Scurn and Hecar.

“The Knights of Solamnia may have become twisted, Molok,” Hecar blurted, “as we have seen time and again, but do not make Kaz one with their madness. Despite all else, he is still a minotaur!”

Scurn nodded. Even he did not believe their prey was enough of a fool to head north.

Molok retrieved the proclamation and glanced at it one last time. With a toothy, predatory smile, he thrust it into the fire. After watching it burn to ash in mere seconds, he looked up once more at his companions … his hated companions.

“He be no fool. Never said he was.” Molok reached down, gathered his few belongings, and rose. He gave the minotaurs a look full of contempt for what they were. Even now, no longer slave-soldiers, they needed an ogre to lead them around by their ugly noses. “He be Kaz, though, and that be why he will go north to Vingaard. He needs no other reason.”

The ogre turned and stalked away, a disturbing look on his face, hidden from the minotaurs.

Chapter 2

I should go west, Kaz thought grimly. West or remain in the south.

He snorted as he glanced back at the path he had been following. The sun was high in the sky, making it possible to see quite some distance. So why am I continuing north, when each day brings me nearer and nearer to Vingaard Keep and whatever madness has descended upon the Knights of Solamnia?

His mount, the giant war-horse that Lord Oswal himself had bestowed upon the minotaur as a token of his appreciation, nickered impatiently. After five years with Kaz, the animal had picked up rebellious tendencies that would have shocked the more formal knighthood. In many ways, the horse was a reflection of its master.

Kaz quieted his mount and stared at the proclamation once more.

It was the fifth copy he had seen of this particular one, and it made no more sense to him now than it had the first time he had read it. Lord Oswal was a friend, a comrade. The elder Knight of the Rose, made Grand Master after the death of his brother, had even given Kaz a seal permitting him safe passage in any land that respected the might of the Solamnic Order. Yet now this same comrade was making unsubstantiated accusations of crimes Kaz had supposedly committed!

The notices had only recently reached the southern lands. Kaz snorted. He glanced at the other names listed as outlaws along with his. Some he recognized, such as that of Lord Guy Avondale, the Ergothian commander who had aided in the final battle against the renegade mage, Galan Dracos, and his dark mistress, the goddess Takhisis. Huma had always spoken well of the man, once going so far as to say that Avondale deserved to wear the garments of a Solamnic Knight, so admirable was his individual code.

With a snarl, the minotaur ripped the sheet from the tree. Conspiracy and murder? He crumpled the paper up tightly and tossed it into the underbrush.

Kaz led the war-horse by the reins to a more secluded spot to the left of the path and leaned against one of the trees to wait for someone. Patience was not a habit he had been successful in cultivating during his life so far, and what little he did have was just about used up from waiting.

“Paladine’s Blade, Delbin!” he muttered under his breath. “If you don’t make it back in the next hour, I’m moving on!”

He could only imagine what sort of mischief his companion was getting into in Xak Tsaroth, the city a few miles due west. Xak Tsaroth bordered southwestern Solamnia and eastern Qualinesti, the land of the elves, and was a center of commerce linking north and south. Kaz had hoped his companion might be able to purchase a few of the things they needed. He also hoped that Delbin would be able to overhear some gossip that might explain the Sargas-be-damned rumors floating in from the regions surrounding the knighthood’s seat of power in Vingaard – rumors that could not – must not – be true.

But sending Delbin Knotwillow had been a risk at best. Kaz cringed each time his comrade of four months cheerfully volunteered for any task. It was that cheerfulness that unnerved the huge, powerful minotaur.

Delbin Knotwillow was a kender, and kender were born to mischief.

As if on cue, he heard the sounds of a horse. Delbin had departed three days ago, promising that he would return at the appointed time. If properly motivated, the short kender made an excellent spy. No one paid attention to a kender, except to check their personal valuables. Kender picked up a good deal of information, which they were all too willing to pass on to anyone who made their acquaintance. The kender thought this all one grand adventure, something he could brag about to his kin – and anyone else who would listen. After all, how many kender got to travel with a minotaur?

Kaz was all set to call out to his diminutive companion when he heard the second horse. He quickly reached up and took hold of his horse’s muzzle. The war beast, trained for all combat situations, recognized the gesture and froze.

The trees obstructed the minotaur’s view, but he thought he caught a glimpse of black. It was impossible to say whether what he saw was part of one of the riders or one of the horses. Either way, he knew by now that the newcomers were not his companion.

The riders slowed and then halted their mounts. He heard the clank of armor and the low muttering of the two men as they talked. Their words were unintelligible, but one was evidently angry at the other one. Kaz snorted quietly. This was a fine time and place to have an argument! If Delbin showed up now …

When he heard the third horse, Kaz was ready to look up to the heavens and curse every god. Another rider? Then he realized that this latest one was coming from the south. If this kept up, the minotaur planned to open up an inn. The location was obviously excellent, what with the heavy traffic.

The other riders grew silent. Kaz began reaching for his battle-axe, aware that at least one of the newcomers had started moving in his direction. One sharply clawed hand tightened around the lower end of the axe shaft. Only a few more yards of foliage and the rider would be upon him.

Kaz caught a glimpse of ebony armor as the rider suddenly turned his steed back toward the road. The minotaur’s eyes widened. He had seen armor like that during the war against the goddess of darkness. He had served under men and ogres who had worn that armor and, near the end, had fought alongside Huma against some of the deadliest of them.

This was one of the elite, fanatical soldiers of the deceased warlord Crynus, commander of Takhisis’s armies, who long ago had been dispatched to whatever dark domain his kind deserved by Huma of the Lance and the silver dragon. Kaz remembered the moment all too vividly. Crynus had refused to die; finally it had taken dragonfire to destroy him.

Regardless of the danger to himself, Kaz could not let one – no, two! – of the warlord’s guardsmen roam about the countryside. It was not the first time he had come upon such marauders during the last five years. There were still a great number of the Dark Queen’s servants who refused to acknowledge that their mistress had been utterly defeated. With nowhere to hide, they generally became traveling bands of thieves and murderers – all in the name of Takhisis, of course. The guardsmen were the worst; they still believed that she truly would return.

Kaz tapped the horse on the side of head, a signal that he had learned from the knighthood. The horse would remain where it was until he summoned it. Nothing short of a dragon would make it move, and since there were no more dragons, there was no reason to worry.

Slowly, carefully, Kaz brought his axe around in front of him. Maneuvering his horse in this thick brush would have given him away. If Kaz was lucky, he might be able to bring down his opponent without a struggle, but …

The black figure before him abruptly stiffened, and Kaz knew he had somehow given himself away. A long, wicked blade, hidden from view prior to now, sliced a vicious arc through the air as his adversary half-turned in the saddle. Kaz brought his axe up to fend off the blow, but the guardsman had underestimated the distance between them. The blade jarred to a halt only halfway to the minotaur, its tip caught firmly in the side of a mighty oak.

Cursing, the rider tried to free his sword while simultaneously turning his mount. Kaz altered his grip on the axe and swung. The sword rose up to turn his blow from the rider, so that he struck the horse instead. Bleeding and excited, the animal fought its master for control. Kaz was forced to fall back as the huge beast reared and struck out randomly. The horse began to wobble.

The minotaur blinked. There was no longer anyone in the saddle. Now it was his turn to curse. He had forgotten how swift as well as deadly the ebony warriors could be.

A figure burst from the foliage beside him. Kaz parried the sword thrust, but lost ground in doing so. For the first time, he got a close look at his adversary. The man – he was too short to be an ogre, though possibly he was an elf – wore a face-concealing helm, but the eyes that peered out seemed to stare through the minotaur to some point well beyond. The soldier was building up to a berserker fury.

Briefly Kaz heard the sounds of a struggle coming from the path, but the other solider continued to harry him. An axe, especially a battle-axe designed for two-handed use by humans, was not a good weapon in such close quarters. Every time Kaz tried to back up, his opponent moved with equal speed and pressed yet another attack.

It was the woods that saved him. Almost unmindful of the world about him, the raging guardsman stumbled over the exposed root of a tree. It was not much of a delay – in fact, the soldier regained his balance almost immediately – but the hesitation gave Kaz the opening he needed.

He brought the axe around in one clean swing, his full strength behind it. There was no denying the power in that swing, for very few humans could approach matching a minotaur at full strength. Given the proper tool, a minotaur could chop a fair-sized tree down with one blow.

By comparison, armor was next to nothing.

The head of the axe caught the guardsman just above the elbow of his sword arm and kept going without pause. It tore into the hapless fighter’s side and did not stop until its arc was complete. As Kaz stepped back, his foe, arm and trunk awash in red, toppled forward, the rage and life already gone from his eyes.

Kaz inhaled deeply. Up the path, the sounds of struggle had ceased, to be replaced by the growing clatter of several more mounted riders arriving from the south. Kaz had no way of knowing whether or not the others were friend or foe of the single rider.

No one shouted any commands, but Kaz heard a number of riders enter the woods. It wouldn’t take them long to locate him. Wiping the blade of his axe, he hooked the weapon into place in his back harness. The harness was designed to allow him to carry the axe, sometimes two, at all times. Practice enabled him to unhook the battle-axe in seconds. It was a design suitable only for someone with a backside as expansive as a minotaur’s, and with a reach to match.

He mounted the war-horse just as the first searcher spotted him.

“Stand where you are! In the name of the Grand Master, I order you to stay!”

Kaz twisted around and glimpsed the familiar and once respected armor of a Knight of Solamnia – a Knight of the Sword, if he read the crest right. The knight was on foot, having evidently been forced to lead his horse through the thick brush. Kaz turned away and urged his horse forward even as the knight called out something to his companions.

Long ago, Kaz would have stood and fought, likely taking a good half-dozen of the stubborn knights with him before dying from multiple wounds. Huma, however, had taught him the wisdom of avoiding conflict – and certain death – in some situations. The minotaur understood now the pointlessness of always taking a stand. Many of his own people would have thought him cowardly – not that they didn’t already.

Under Kaz’s guidance, the war-horse picked out a path that led deeper and deeper into the woods. That was his only hope for retreat. Kaz knew that such a path would take him closer to Xak Tsaroth, but to the north of that city, not directly east of it. Kaz realized, too, that he had probably seen the last of his kender companion. Of course, Delbin might have already forgotten him, anyway. There was also a possibility that the young kender had gotten caught in the knights’ trap, for surely that was what it had been. They must have known about marauder activity in this area and had set up a trap of their own in order to catch the band by surprise. No doubt they would be disappointed in their catch: only two renegade guardsmen, at least one dead. If Delbin was a prisoner, he doubted the kender had anything to worry about. No one could possibly mistake any member of the kender race for a dangerous threat.

The knights were pursuing him in force now, though he dared not look back to see how close behind him they were. There had to be at least half a dozen, likely more, he estimated.

“Let’s see how well you know this land,” he muttered. He and Delbin had been scouting out this area for nearly a week. Indeed, they had crisscrossed this southern territory for nearly nine months. Always there was someone dogging their heels. Usually it was his own kind. “Be just my luck if I ran into them now,” he added.

It was still too long until nightfall. Kaz would have to continue riding and hope that he lost his pursuers before the horse or his cover gave out. On maps, this land was not marked as heavily wooded, and the minotaur knew that in many spots the trees gave way to open fields quite abruptly. An open field would be the death of him. The knights might deliver him to Lord Oswal, but they were just as likely to deliver his body instead. The Grand Master’s proclamation made it clear that Kaz was an enemy, and the Knights of Solamnia were not going to waste effort trying to capture a minotaur alive when dead was just as satisfactory.

He was putting some ground between him and his pursuers; that was evident from the slow dwindling of shouts. It was too soon to hope, however, because the order was not known for giving up easily. They might hound him for days … as if he needed still more following him in pursuit.

The horse stumbled over fallen limbs and depressions in the earth. The ground here was more treacherous, and a wrong step could injure both horse and rider. With a strength that brooked no argument from his mount, Kaz suddenly reined the horse to the right. The animal let loose with an irritated grunt and followed his lead. Kaz steered him around a precipitous drop, knowing that each second of delay was precious lost time. Once on level ground, he urged the war-horse on with a kick of his heels.

Kaz counted nearly up to thirty before he was rewarded by the echo of bewildered and angry cries. He heard at least two horses neigh madly and one man scream. The sounds of pursuit dropped off, but still not completely. He dared to glance briefly behind him. One knight still pursued, at some distance. His face was uncovered, and Kaz thought he looked rather young. He may have had a beard; it was impossible to say whether that was the case or whether he had merely glimpsed the knight’s hair blowing in the wind. Kaz had no idea why he should care about the other’s visage, save that he had almost expected it to be Huma.

An arrow shrieked past his head, embedding itself in a tree behind him. But it had come from ahead of him, not from behind.

Paladine, do you have something against me, too? What had Kaz succeeded in stumbling into now?

He was answered by the sight of several figures, some clad in green, others in black armor, moving to intercept him. These were undoubtedly the very same marauders the knights had been seeking to flush out. Kaz had unwittingly completed that part of their mission for them. Now he had to get out alive.

Desperately he turned his mount. One hapless attacker flew back against a tree, bounced there by the horse’s left flank. The minotaur recalled the single knight still chasing him. He opened his mouth to warn him, but the knight’s horse was already riderless; another arrow had marked the end of the determined young warrior. Kaz snorted furiously. Yet another futile death for which he would get the blame.

He fully expected a bolt in his back, but the marauders had their own problems. The other knights were catching up now, and the element of surprise was no longer on the side of the raiders. Kaz’s eyes widened as he realized just how many knights had followed him. He was about to be enmeshed in the middle of a full-scale fight unless somehow he broke free.

An ugly figure dressed in ragged brown and green garments tried to pull him from the war-horse but received a skull-shattering kick from the animal instead. A few of the marauders and knights were already exchanging blows. A man with a sword was run down by a Knight of the Rose and literally trampled to death. Another knight was pulled off his horse by two black-suited guardsmen. Reinforcements from both sides were moving to join the fray.

“Paladine,” Kaz hissed, “if I have done anything at all worthy of you in these last few years, would it be too much to ask to provide me with a path out of here?”

Kaz didn’t expect an answer; after all, gods spoke only to clerics and heroes. Then a flash of white caught his attention. It looked like some kind of a white animal, whether a stag, bear, or wolf he could not say. Had Paladine actually heard him?

Unless Kaz departed instantly, the blood urge would overwhelm him and he would waste the last few precious seconds of his life hacking away at his adversaries, as did so many of his respected but short-lived ancestors. While he revered his ancestors, he had no intention of joining them in the land of the dead just yet.

So he turned his mount and rode madly in the direction of the white vision.

Kaz rode for a solid quarter of an hour before daring to slow down. By then, the sounds of combat had been left far behind him. He was now just northeast of Xak Tsaroth.

“I’m no coward,” he suddenly whispered to himself and to whatever powers might be listening. Nevertheless, he still felt some misgivings. By rights, shouldn’t he have stayed and aided the Solamnic Order in any way he could? Had he not betrayed his trust to Huma, a man he had admired as much as the greatest of his ancestors?

“My honor is my life.” The phrase sounded strange now as he whispered it. It was part of the Oath and the Measure that Huma’s order had sworn to follow. To a minotaur, it was one reason why the Knights of Solamnia had been held in higher esteem than any other human organization.

Maybe you could have explained honor to me, Huma. He sighed, a very unminotaurish thing to do, and studied his surroundings.

He was at the edge of a field of wild grass, which he hoped would not suddenly reveal yet another dire threat. If Kaz continued on in the same direction, he knew that he would first come across an offshoot of the mountain range that more or less ran the length of Qualinesti. If he continued farther, he would find himself in the densely packed forests of the elven land itself. That, he knew with bitter satisfaction, was one choice he did not have to ponder. After Silvanesti, he had no desire to see another elf ever again. Let them stay happy in their seclusion from the outside world. Kaz knew of a shortcut. Delbin had told him of a river that ran north to Vingaard Keep. It meant passing through some mountains and part of the vast forest of Qualinesti, but it would lead him to his goal: Vingaard Keep, and a confrontation with the Grand Master himself.

He found himself wishing the kender was with him, if only to act as guide. Delbin knew the land well, but Kaz could not afford to wait for the ever-cheerful little annoyance. Luckily, he carried Delbin’s map.

Though he wouldn’t admit it to himself, Kaz had grown fond of the kender. Only a fool would have pointed that out to him, however, for minotaurs are generally picky about their companions, and to admit befriending a pouch-picking, childish creature like Delbin was tantamount to weakness.

With a grunt, Kaz urged his mount onward. He wasn’t going to get anywhere remaining where he was, contemplating everything under the heavens.

*

As the minotaur rode west, something stirred in the high grass. It was pale white and hairless. The eyes had no pupils and glowed scarlet. It remained in the tall grass as much as possible, hating, in some dim way, the light that burned in the sky. Its eyes remained fixed on the receding figures of rider and mount. When the figures were far enough away, the beast rose and began to follow. Standing, it resembled something that had once been a wolf – a wolf long dead, perhaps.

Fighting the searing pain of daylight, it began to follow the minotaur.

Chapter 3

At times, it seemed to Kaz that his life was nothing but turmoil. Following Huma’s sacrifice and the war’s end, he had hoped things would be different. His fellow minotaurs might have called him soft, dishonorable, but he no longer cared. The more he thought about the minotaur way of life, the less he liked it, which was not to say that the ways of humans, dwarves, elves, or even kender were any better.

The ride to the river was surprisingly without incident. If this river had a name, the mapmaker had forgotten to include it. Delbin had never said exactly where he had picked up his map, and Kaz, knowing kender, did not push the point. It served its purpose, and at least it was fairly accurate as far as landmarks.

The sun hung very low in the sky. Kaz estimated that he had perhaps a little less than an hour before it sank from sight. Lunitari was already visible above the horizon. Solinari, the pale white moon, would reveal itself later on. It would be a fairly bright night.

A river this size meant settlements and shipping along its length. That meant more people than Kaz really cared to encounter, but it was still the quickest route. For the time being, his best bet was to skirt the minor chain of mountains east of the river and just north of his present position. By the time the mountain range turned from the direction he needed to go, there would be forest, which would provide him concealment for nearly half the journey. He tried not to think about Northern Solamnia, which from what he had heard, was still a fairly desolate land. And if half the rumors were true, the knights were behaving strangely indeed.

He rode on. The mountains began to grow.

*

As the last vestiges of sunlight retreated before the night, Kaz began to wonder if he had made the right choice.

It was only a small range of mountains, and the mountains themselves were nothing in comparison to some of the giants he had crossed before. They were rather ordinary peaks. Yet he was disturbed by them in some way he could not decipher.

“Any magical weapons lying about?” he whispered half-mockingly to them. The minotaur’s eyes widened as he realized that was what disturbed him – the memory of Huma, that final conflagration. Kaz could not look at a mountain without subconsciously remembering how it all started – the search for the legendary Dragonlances, the only weapons capable of defeating the hordes of dragons of the Dark Queen, Takhisis. They had found those lances, but only a couple of dozen at first. Kaz, riding along with Huma, had been one of the small band that had first wielded them in battle. He was also one of the few survivors of that band and the only one to see Huma, in the last moments of his life, utterly defeat the evil goddess, forcing her to swear an oath that she would depart Krynn and never return. In the last five years, Kaz had often gone out of his way to avoid getting too near mountains. Granted, there had been times when it had proven unavoidable, but he had always tried his best to pass through them as quickly as possible.

Afraid of mountains! Kaz snorted in self-disgust and urged his horse forward. Tonight he would sleep with his head against one of these leviathans. The more Kaz thought about it, the more determined he became. At the very least, the minotaur would stand less of a chance of being discovered by some other traveler. Kaz eyed the looming peaks and tried to estimate how long it would take him to reach the nearest one. Past nightfall, the minotaur decided grimly. He would have preferred it otherwise.

*

Under a tall, worn peak, Kaz made camp. At some point, perhaps in the distant past or perhaps in the war, a good portion of one side of the mountain had broken away, giving it a toothy look. It reminded the minotaur of his grandsire, a once-fierce bull who had survived to great age despite a number of improperly healed injuries. He dubbed the mountain Kefo, in his ancestor’s honor. It made sleeping under its shadow much easier.

After months of incessant kender chatter, it was odd to rest with only the sounds of the night to keep him company. Kaz snorted. If he was beginning to miss Delbin, then perhaps it would be better if he turned himself over to his enemies!

“Paladine preserve my mind!” Kaz whispered wryly.

Delbin had come across him in the south, just after Kaz had returned from a long, hazardous journey to the frozen lands in the extreme south. The proclamations from Vingaard were just appearing in the southern regions, but the unorthodox captain who had led the expedition and who had grown fond of Kaz gave him the benefit of the doubt despite the harsh accusations of murder and treachery that the proclamations spouted with no evidence to back them up. The seal given to Kaz by Grand Master Oswal of the knighthood only strengthened the minotaur’s story of the truth. Besides, having a minotaur proved fortuitous, for the icy domains proved to be treacherous in more ways than one. A hardy explorer the human might have been, but after that one trip, when the soil of Kharolis, his home, was once more beneath his feet, he told Kaz he was looking forward to spending the rest of his days – and he was still a young man – in some nice, peaceful market haggling with customers over the price of apples or something.

A high, curious voice had asked, “Did you really come back from the ice lands? Is it true your breath freezes so hard there that you’ve got to melt it over a fire to hear what you said? I heard that somewhere! Are you a minotaur? I’ve never seen a minotaur before! Do you bite?”

At first Kaz thought the intense questioner no more than a half-grown human child with a long, thick ponytail. Only when the captain swore and reached for his gold pouch did the minotaur realize the horror that they were facing.

Delbin Knotwillow, Kaz thought in retrospect, is probably annoying even to other kender. Certainly they never seemed to come across any others – at least not for long. Delbin, who had stuck by the minotaur’s side from that time on, plying him constantly with all sorts of inane questions about minotaurs and everything else, was a young male, handsome by his people’s standards. He was slightly larger than most of his kind, perhaps an inch or two under four feet and almost ninety pounds. He considered himself studious and had taken it upon himself to write a history of present-day Krynn – a worthy goal, except that often when he reached into his pouch for his book, instead he pulled out an item that some clumsy human had apparently dropped. In the excitement of finding it, Delbin would forget all about the incident he had wanted to record.

Now the kender was likely somewhere in Xak Tsaroth or hopelessly searching for Kaz east of the city, unless something else had caught his attention. Or, for all the minotaur knew, Delbin was at this moment deep in Qualinesti looking for an elven horse, something he had always wanted to see.

Staring at the two visible moons, Kaz began to wonder if he was going to spend the entire night thinking about the kender or getting some of the rest he so badly needed. He hoped to have journeyed well into the forest before tomorrow evening.

Exhaustion finally began to overwhelm his senses. Nightmare visions of hundreds of curious and excited kender began to fade into the warm darkness of slumber. Kaz almost sighed in relief as at last he drifted away in peace.

*

He was standing before a great fortress that seemed to cling precariously to one side of the jagged peak. Creatures of all races lay dead or dying, and it was difficult to say who had been fighting whom.

“It’s all over now,” Huma sighed. Kaz turned to gaze at his friend and comrade. Despite his relatively young age, Huma’s handsome visage was marked with lines, and his hair, including his mustache, was silver-gray. His face was pale, almost deathlike.

An inhumanly beautiful woman with gleaming tresses of silver stood at his side, her arm linked with the knight’s. Kaz blinked. Every now and then, her face seemed to shift to that of a dragon.

“We won,” she said sweetly.

“You have won nothing but death!” a voice cried.

The ground before the vast citadel burst open, and a fearsome creature with a multitude of heads rose before them. Huma pulled a Dragonlance from his scabbard, but the monstrosity only laughed. The woman at Huma’s side melted and grew, wings bursting from her delicate back. Her slender arms and legs gave way to misshapen limbs that could only belong to a dragon. A symbol of majesty, she flew into the air and challenged the horror that Kaz realized must be Takhisis, the dark goddess.

Takhisis laughed mockingly and burned the silver dragon in midflight. A shower of ash, all that remained of Huma’s love, scattered in the breeze created by the goddess’s massive, leathery wings.

Takhisis laughed even harder. Kaz uttered an oath to his adopted god, Paladine. The heads of Takhisis were not the heads of dragons, as the minotaur had thought at first. Instead, most were human. One was incredibly beautiful, so that even Gwyneth, the silver dragon, was ugly by comparison. Takhisis the seductress. Turning his gaze from that visage to another did not help. The next head was the ebony-helmed visage of the mad warlord, Crynus. Spittle ran down his chin. Another was the head of the sorcerer Magius, Huma’s childhood friend, who had died a prisoner of the Dark Lady’s servants.

Yet another, this one the gaunt, deathly visage of a Knight of Solamnia, made both Kaz and Huma gasp. This was Rennard, he who had helped sponsor Huma to the knighthood and who, in the end, had been revealed not only as the lad’s uncle, but also as a treacherous cultist serving Morgion, god of disease and decay. Rennard had died horribly after failing in his mission to kill both Lord Oswal and Huma. Morgion was not a forgiving god.

The worst was last. Towering above the other heads, even that of the temptress, was one that Kaz had never really seen, but knew without having to hazard a guess. Grinning like a death’s-head, the long, narrow face swelled until it was almost as large as the rest of the abomination itself. Human was a term one could only loosely apply to it, for the skin had a slightly greenish tinge to it, and Kaz could see an elaborate network of scales, like those of a snake, covering it. The hair lay thin and flat against the head. The teeth were long, sharp, and predatory.

“Dracos,” Huma muttered. “In the good graces of his queen once more.” He shifted his grip on the Dragonlance, the only weapon ever to defeat Takhisis, and to Kaz’s horror, held it out for the minotaur to take.

“What – what’s this?”

Huma smiled at him sadly. The young-old face was drawn and white, as dead as ghostly Rennard’s. “I cannot do any more. I’m dead, remember?”

As Kaz watched in horror, his comrade was caught up in the wind and scattered like ash all around. In seconds, there was not a trace left.

“Minotaurrrr. Wayward child. Time to come back to the fold.”

He looked up at the leering faces and was gripped by an overwhelming panic. Despite a part of him that cried out at such cowardice, he turned and tried to flee, only to discover that no matter how hard he ran, he only seemed to be drawing closer to the five-headed beast.

The Knights of Solamnia were there, but instead of aiding him, they were jeering. Lord Oswal and his nephew Bennett, their hawklike features so identical it was uncanny, watched his struggles with as much interest as if they were studying an ant on the ground.

“I’ve never seen a five-headed dragon before,” a familiar voice commented happily. “Will each head take a bite out of you? Does it have five stomachs? Is something wrong? Kaz? Kaz?”

The heads, maws open and grossly exaggerated in size, dove toward him.

The last thing he heard was a voice asking, “Kaz, do you want me to leave you alone?”

*

With a bellow, Kaz sat up, eyes wide with horror. Something short and wiry fell backward, landing with a loud “Ouch!” on the rocky ground.

“Are minotaurs always this excitable when they wake up? Maybe that’s why nobody likes minotaurs! Well, I like minotaurs, but you know what they say about kender – well, they say something! I thought I’d never find you!”

Kaz rubbed his eyes, unsure whether the voice he was hearing was part of the nightmare from his sleep or a living nightmare instead. His eyes began to adjust to the light of the moons. Squinting, he ventured a hesitant “Delbin?”

Even in the darkness, he could still make out the kender’s irreverent smile. “What’re you doing here, Kaz? Did you ever see so many humans fighting each other? Was it like that during the war? I didn’t get to see any of that! Grandfather said I was too young! Said I should leave serious business like that to the adults!”

“Take a breath, Delbin,” Kaz replied automatically. After weeks of effort, he had finally been able to make the kender understand that there were times when it was absolutely necessary to shut his mouth, unless he wanted to chance making the acquaintance of the heavy fist of an enraged minotaur.

Delbin quieted, though it was always an effort for him to do so.

“How did you find me, Delbin?”

The kender gave him a triumphant look. “My grandpa, he could track something as small as a mouse halfway across Hylo – well, maybe not that far – and he taught me all sorts of stuff, so when I saw all those men fighting, I figured you’d either be trying to take them all on or you had gone! When I didn’t find you, I remembered the river from the map, but you don’t want to be seen any more than you have to, so that left the mountains, and you were easy to find after that, what with the trail you left behind!’Course anyone but a kender like me would’ve never seen it, but I did!”

Kaz snorted. He had forgotten what explanations from Delbin were like, although this one was fairly straightforward for the kender. “You must have traveled nonstop.”

For the first time, the cheerful look vanished from his companion’s visage. “I was worried about you.”

“Worried?” Kaz, unused to such sentiment from anyone, especially a happy-go-lucky soul like Delbin, grunted. Taking a deep breath, he tried to make himself look as huge as possible. “I’m a minotaur, Delbin! No reason to worry about me!”

“Well, you’ve been so good to me, letting me come with you even though I know I’m pretty young and maybe not as worldly-wise as some adult kender. That reminds me, I should write down what happened today, because this’ll make a great addition to my book and show the others that I am smart and not a childish wastrel and – gee! This isn’t my notebook, but it sure is interesting! I wonder how it got inside my pouch?” He started examining a small flat book that Kaz suspected the former owner had been searching for futilely for some time already.

The minotaur groaned and leaned back. Things were back to normal – or at least the kender variation of normal. Despite his annoyance with Delbin at times, he was forced to admit that things never looked gloomy when the effervescent kender was around. Confusing and irritating, yes, but not gloomy.

Suddenly he realized that Delbin had grown uncharacteristically quiet. Kaz raised himself up and eyed his companion. Where the bright-eyed and energetic kender had been now lay an exhausted, slumbering little form.

The day’s chase had worn Delbin out completely.

Tomorrow, he decided with a yawn, he would try to say something nice to Delbin.

His eyes closed and in moments he was sleeping peacefully, the troubling dream already a distant fragment of memory.

*

Kaz woke to a chill morning and discovered himself in the shade of the mountains. An odd, brisk wind was dancing about. The minotaur stretched his stiff limbs and rose. Delbin still slept soundly.

It could not have been much later than dawn. If not for the blue of the sky, he would have assumed it was still night, so dark were the shadows of the mountain range. Kaz reached for his pack and searched for something edible. As usual, half the contents were missing. He knew that the vast majority would be located in the kender’s pouch, where they had been put the evening before for “safekeeping.” Hungry, he decided not to wake the kender just yet. He found some rations where he had tucked them in the lining of his pack, just as an extra precaution. The rations were tough and practically tasteless, but Kaz had gotten used to them long ago. He wondered if the kender had managed to locate any of the items the minotaur had asked him to purchase in the market. The temptation to go through his companion’s pouch was powerful.

“I’ve got some fruit and baked sweets, Kaz,” Delbin called out. There were times when the kender’s ability to move so stealthily jarred the minotaur.

The kender began rummaging through his bag.

“If you happen to come across any of the things that I’ve lost lately, I’ll take them off your hands,” Kaz remarked innocently.

“Y’know, you should be more careful, Kaz. If it wasn’t for me, you’d not have anything left!” The sarcasm of the minotaur’s statement lost on him, Delbin began tossing things to Kaz. The pile was astonishingly large and included more than one item that had never belonged to him. Half-buried in the pile were two large, ripe pieces of fruit and one somewhat battered pastry. Kaz retrieved the food and gobbled it up while he waited for his erstwhile companion to finish inventory. He was amazed to discover how much he had missed the taste of the sweet pastries that humans baked. Minotaurs scoffed at such delicacies as being for youngsters and soft races.

“My notebook!” Delbin held the battered book up for Kaz to see. Kaz wondered if there was anything written in it. Not once had he seen the kender actually scribble anything down. Delbin stuffed his prize possession back into his pouch, which somehow looked too small to have contained all of the kender’s acquired treasures.

Since a seven-foot minotaur needed far more food than a not quite four-foot kender, Kaz devoured the rest of his allowance of dried rations. Somewhere along the trail today, he was going to have to hunt up some more food. Exhausted last night, he had failed to set any traps. Still, it was early enough that he might be able to catch something. Rabbits and other small animals seemed to be common in this region, more so than farther north. He suspected that the war in the north, which had dragged on for decades, had steadily pushed the wildlife either to the south or to the extreme north, where, while not untouched, the lands had suffered far less.

Kaz shook his head, scattering memories of the war. To Delbin, he said, “I’m going to try a little hunting unless you think they might be following us still.”

Delbin pursed his lips in thought. The kender was trying his best to be useful. “I think – I think they won’t be. Some men in Xak Tsaroth were talking about how the southern keeps are worried about Solamnia and what’s going on and how they think they should send some men to speak with the Grand Master or at least his nephew, who, I guess, has a lot of say about it all and might even be Grand Master soon because some of the knights think the present one is ill and —”

All thought of hunting vanished at what the kender said. “Grand Master Oswal is ill?”

“That’s what they said. It might be a rumor one old man said but a younger one thought it was true, and the nephew – I forget his name —”

“Bennett.” Kaz’s face grew grim, and he snorted angrily. Delbin hushed, having seen the minotaur in this mood before.

When Kaz had first met Bennett, the son of Grand Master Trake, the young, aristocratic knight had seemed little more than an arrogant tyrant. The final days of the war had seemed to change him, however, for Bennett had learned from Huma’s sacrifice what a true knight should be. On the day that Kaz had finally parted company with the knighthood, Bennett had been one of those who had thanked him solemnly for his part in the final conflict.

There was an old saying among the minotaurs that warned of enemies who suddenly offered you their hand in friendship: One should always check for sharp claws first. Bennett, perhaps, had gone back to his old ways.

I should give him the benefit of the doubt, Kaz thought. Huma would do that. But if I’m wrong. … The minotaur’s hands flexed as if gripping an imaginary axe.

Hunting was the farthest thing from his mind now. “Delbin, did they say anything about me?”

The kender shook his head. “They’ve got raider troubles, Kaz. A lot of the warlord’s army came south, and I guess they thought this area would be good, though I don’t know why. I always thought Hylo was much more pleasant, even though I really wouldn’t want the raiders going there either. After all, they’re not very well behaved, are they?”

“I find it odd that they came here at all. Why not northeastern Istar or the mountains of Thoradin?” Kaz shrugged. The marauders had no apparent leader and they had no real home. Eventually they would be weeded out.

“If they’re not paying any attention to me, then we’ll risk moving closer to the river. When we come to some settlement, I want you to go and buy – the key word is ‘buy,’ Delbin – some food for us. After we reach the woods in the north, we’ll start hunting again. We should be able to gather enough to see us to Vingaard.”

Eyes wide with anticipation, Delbin grinned. “You’re really going all the way to Vingaard Keep? I’ve never seen it, but I hear it’s got vaults and locks and hiding holes and —”

“Take a breath, Delbin. A deep one.” As the kender clamped his mouth shut, Kaz’s mind drifted to the journey ahead. He had everything planned out, and there was no word of his relentless pursuers. If nothing unexpected happened, the journey would be a safe one.

The minotaur grimaced. If he really expected it to be so easy, then there was no need for him to continue to carry the heavy axe strapped across his back. He would certainly be more comfortable if he left it behind. Kaz had other weapons better designed for any hunting they might have to do.

When the two of them rode off a few minutes later, however, the axe was still firmly in place in the harness strapped to his back. A single movement and it would be ready and waiting in his hand.

Just in case.

Chapter 4

“One day —” their instructor said proudly, “one day it will be the minotaurs who rule the world of Krynn. Our enemies will be crushed under our strength. They are, after all, barbarians, are they not? We are the race that shall rule. Only we can truly bring civilization to this backward land. Others have tried, but they have always lacked our determination, our discipline. We minotaurs have a destiny.”

The young minotaurs huddled wide-eyed before the standing instructor. Zebak was not the best of orators, but he had the passion that counted when dealing with the young. It was his duty to spread the message to the children, so that they would begin to understand.

Another minotaur, not quite an adult, leaned through the entranceway and signaled to Zebak. The elder nodded and dismissed the newcomer. The children knew the signal, having seen it at least half a dozen times. It meant that one of their masters was passing nearby.

Zebak began speaking of the art of war and how it should be the focus of a minotaur’s life. As he progressed, another being entered the room. He was a toothy abomination, as far as the children were concerned, but then, the ogre probably cared as little for their looks. As the ogre studied the children, Kaz, sitting in the back, was not the only one who could not completely conceal his mounting hatred.

“A good class, teacher,” the ogre commented, his voice rumbling. His expression was like that of one admiring a potential meal.

“I do my best.”

The ogre gave him a strange look, one Kaz was too young to recognize. “So I hear.”

Their visitor departed without another word, and the lesson continued.

The next day, Zebak had disappeared. An ogre trained them for the rest of the season. They were to be ready for their first combat by spring.

*

“Kaz?”

“Hmmm?”

“Is there something wrong? You keep staring off into the sky, which is pretty, I know, but the look on your face was strange, and I thought maybe —”

“I’m fine, Delbin. Just remembering.” Kaz grunted. Now he was getting melancholy. Perhaps he was getting old.

“There’s a place up ahead. I think it’s a sort of village. There might be fishermen. Should I buy us some fish? I promise I’ll be good. You’ll see.”

Kaz scanned the settlement. Perhaps five crude houses – “houses” being a compliment to such ramshackle structures – sat near the river. Beyond the settlement and across the river lay the edge of the forest he had wanted to reach. High-pitched shouts made him tear his attention from the forest. A couple of human children ran in wild abandon around the houses. Kaz tried to picture young minotaurs in a similar situation but failed. Always there had been the training, even from the moment they began to walk. It was never too early to learn.

A couple of adult males were pulling a small boat in from the river. Kaz gave the boat a cursory glance; no minotaur with any pride would have bothered with such a decrepit piece of flotsam. It was a disgrace.

Someone spotted them. A cry rose up, and Kaz reined his horse to a stop. “Hold on, Delbin.”

The kender looked at him curiously and, remarkably, said nothing.

Kaz waited until a fair number of people had gathered. There seemed to be three definite families and a few scattered individuals. From the fearful looks on their faces and the ragged clothing most of them wore, he suspected that they were recent arrivals from the north who had come here in the hope of starting their lives over. That raised them a notch in the minotaur’s eyes. Many of the victims of the war had simply given up and were surviving, nothing more.

When no more joined the group, he urged the horse forward at a slow pace, Delbin following suit. Kaz suspected at least one or two other men were hidden somewhere nearby, watching his moves.

A graybeard with courage stepped in front of the others and said, “Come no farther, beast, unless you want to court death.”

Kaz halted. Unless they had excellent archers, he knew that it would be a simple matter to wade into the villagers and disperse them. A swing or two of his axe would relieve them of any foolish souls. The urge to do just that was there, deeply embedded in the minotaur, but Kaz smothered it. Huma would have never forgiven him for attacking such people.

“I am Kaz, and this is Delbin. We come in peace, human. Perhaps to trade for some food, if you can spare it.” Kaz tried to speak as softly as possible, but his deep, bellowing voice still made some of the weaker ones cringe.

Graybeard rubbed his buried chin. “You travel with a kender.”

It was a statement, not a question, but Kaz responded regardless. “His name, as I mentioned, is Delbin, and he’ll talk your ear off if you let him – or even if you don’t. His presence alone should tell you I’m no threat, and I swear I’ll keep him away from your belongings as well.”

Kaz smiled slightly, aware that what he considered truly a smile would reveal far too many teeth for the humans’ tastes.

“Let’s kill him, Micah!” someone, a narrow, foxlike man, muttered. He had the look of an ex-soldier about him and was probably, judging by the others, the most dangerous of the bunch. Kaz’s hand inched a little closer to his axe.

“There’s no need of that.” The voice was light and very female, as far as humans went, but one used to being obeyed, not out of fear but respect. A short, slightly robust female with long brown hair walked toward them from the direction of the river. She had large, dark eyes that reminded Kaz of those of his own kind and full lips that turned slightly downward, giving her a bit of a disapproving look, like an instructor.

Kaz found no treachery in her face and, gazing at her clothing, understood why. The gown was a simple coarse material, but that was not what attracted his attention. Rather, his eyes were fixed on the medallion hanging from her neck. The minotaur was long familiar with what was carved on the medallion, for he had seen more than a few of them during the war. A cleric of Mishakal, goddess of healing. Such a one was no threat, and her word was as good as any, probably better. Kaz moved his hand away from his axe.

“I still say we can’t afford to take a chance,” the ex-soldier muttered.

“If Tesela thinks we’re safe,” the graybeard chided. “then we’re safe.” He paused. “You meant what you said, didn’t you, Tesela?”

She smiled, brightening an already sunlit day. “I meant it, Drew. There is no evil in this one, regardless of his race. Great confusion, yes, but nothing harmful —” the cleric paused and eyed the man who had protested — “unless someone provokes him needlessly.”

The ex-soldier quickly shook his head. “I was only thinking —”

“I know, Korum.”

“What about the kender?” Drew asked, frowning beneath his bush of hair. “Are you going to vouch for him as well?”

“Delbin will stay here with the horses,” Kaz offered immediately. As the kender opened his mouth for what surely would have been a long-winded protest, the minotaur added, “Take a breath, Delbin.”

His companion closed his mouth tightly and gave him as glowering a look as a kender was capable of. Some of the humans smiled in amusement and Drew nodded.

“Then you are welcome here for today, but I must ask you to leave by tomorrow.”

“No worry there, elder. I plan to keep going as soon as possible.” Kaz dismounted and handed the reins to a pouting Delbin. He turned back to the humans and found all of them, including the cleric, staring up at him in awe. They were only now just realizing how massive he was. Some of their fears were returning, and Kaz quickly tried to think of some way to set them at ease. He decided on surrendering his axe.

“You really have no need to fear me. If you like, I’ll leave my axe here as a sign of good faith.”

The elder was about to accept the offer when Tesela, with a harried look suddenly on her face, spouted, “No! That – that won’t be necessary.”

“See here, cleric,” the old man snarled. “We appreciate all your help in this past month, what with Gia and my wife becoming sick and all of us worn out, but you’re a guest here as well. I wish you’d let me do what I was chosen to do.”

The cleric looked downcast. “I apologize, Drew.”

“Don’t do that.” The graybeard smiled. “When you do that, I feel as if I just cursed Mishakal herself.” With a sigh, he turned to Kaz and said, “If she feels you should keep your axe, then I guess that’s all right, although I can’t for the life of me fathom what you might be needin’ it for.”

Kaz nodded his thanks. He was surprised that a cleric of Mishakal would speak on his behalf and countenance a weapon besides. A weapon was always a weapon, and to a healer like Tesela, it represented everything she worked against.

“Kaz?” Delbin was squirming in his saddle. “Can’t I get off now? I promise I won’t go near anything. Could I bring the horses down the river there so we can all get some water, because I don’t know about them, but I could really use some. It’s been a dry ride, and the sun was shining and I’d really like to —”

The minotaur looked at Tesela and the elder, and Drew nodded. “As long as he brings the horses downriver and keeps away from our things. We have little enough without a kender getting his sticky little hands on our things.”

Delbin looked at his hands sulkily. “My hands aren’t sticky. I even wash them on occasion, and I said I wasn’t going to touch hardly anything because Kaz here doesn’t like it, and —”

“Don’t push your luck, Delbin. Be nice and quiet and go water the horses.”

“I’ll go with him,” Tesela offered.

It was clear that Drew would have preferred that the cleric take charge of the minotaur, but he nodded permission nonetheless. With some hesitation, the gray-bearded man held out his hand to Kaz. “W-Welcome.”

The minotaur’s hand swallowed up the old man’s. They shook and Kaz released him. Drew took a moment to make certain that his hand was still attached to his arm and then asked, “What will you be needing?”

Kaz rattled off a list of food and some basic goods he thought the small settlement might be able to supply him with. “I’ve got the gold to pay for it.”

Drew nodded and began leading him toward the riverbank. “That will be greatly appreciated. We’ll be able to buy a few things from the river traders and possibly even send someone down to Xak Tsaroth. We lost so much before and during our journey down here.”

“You came from northern Solamnia?”

“From a place called Teal, west of Kyre.”

“Kyre?” Kaz’s eyes widened. “I fought near there – on the side of Paladine, of course.”

The elder lowered his voice. “It would be wise not to mention anything about the war, no matter which side you fought on. There have been … troubles.”

Grunting, Kaz said, “I hear disturbing things about Solamnia, elder, especially concerning those who dwell in Vingaard. I’d have thought the land would be on the way to recovery by now.”

Drew’s tone grew bitter. “It would be … if things had continued. At first the knighthood directed people in the rebuilding of their homes and the revival of the land. They spent their own money to buy food from those regions spared the greatest atrocities at the hands of the Dark Lady’s minions, and they hunted down the scattered bands that refused to surrender. Things seemed well on their way. …”

“But?”

The old man’s eyes grew vague, as if he were looking back into the past. “It wasn’t just the knighthood, but those who lived near Vingaard as well. We can all understand bitterness and the fact that some people cannot return to a way of life the younger ones don’t even remember. Did I tell you that I was once a merchant? Pfah! That’s neither here nor there; my mind’s going! You want to hear about the troubles. Hold on a moment.”

At the elder’s summons, a burly man with a bow came trotting over. “Gil, here, was our protection in case you proved dangerous. He was a master archer in Kyre, but you know what happened to that city. Now Gil is our chief procurer of meat. A better hunter you will never meet.”

Despite his savage looks, the archer seemed to be a pleasant man who took Kaz in stride. “Elder Drew overstates my skill. With most of the woods to the north either dead or torn apart, the wildlife fled to these parts. I practically trip over game every step I take.”

Drew shook his head in denial. “Our archer underplays his skill. I think Chislev, who watches over nature, or Habbakuk, who is lord over the animals, guides his hand. They know that he takes only what is necessary for food and never hunts for pure sport.”

“As is only right,” Kaz commented. He could see that the archer was a man of honor and fairness.

The elder explained Kaz’s needs, and Gil said he would work on supplying them. With a nod to each of them, the hunter departed.

Drew watched him go. “You will find few men like him as you near Vingaard Keep, my minotaur friend. As I was saying, the aid stopped, not all at once, but so quickly that many were caught with nothing. The lands produced little food, and many of the forests were useless save as huge supplies of kindling. Then Vingaard began sending out its knights with a different mission in mind. With great efficiency, they began to gather whatever raw materials they could. They started demanding labor for the money spent. Those who could not pay, and that was most of the populace, were turned into serfs.”

“Serfs?” Kaz could not believe that of Lord Oswal, or even Bennett. The two were, in the end, believers in the Code and the Measure, and from what the minotaur had learned during his time with them, the enslavement of others was something that was forbidden. It was a law that Vinas Solamnus, founder of the knighthood, had himself created.

“I see by the look in your eyes that you disbelieve some of what I say, minotaur. Unfortunately, it’s all sadly true.” Drew’s tone suggested that he had experienced much of this firsthand.

“I’m not denying your words, human. It’s just that I have fought by the side of the Grand Master and his nephew. Whatever their faults, I can’t believe they’ve slipped so far. You make them sound little better than the roving marauders.”

“More like the greedy lords of Ergoth, I would have said, minotaur, but then I was a merchant in that land for some time. I fear, however, that the Knights of Solamnia will not stop there, as you yourself should know. I have seen the proclamation of the Grand Master, Kaz, and some of the others have as well, I’m certain.”

Kaz felt his throat tighten. “And?”

Drew smiled, which did not ease the minotaur’s anxiety. “A merchant learns to smell a poor investment if he wants to stay alive. I, for one, have no intention of trying to drag you back to Vingaard Keep, where I doubt they’d reward me anyway.”

“How comforting,” Kaz retorted. He was pleased with the former merchant’s frankness, but something that he could not put his finger on still disturbed him about the human. But the elder was no magic-user, from the look of him. Kaz was wondering if his paranoia was acting up.

“I sometimes begin to wonder if it was not Paladine himself who was defeated, and that the stories of Huma of the Lance are just that … stories.”

The minotaur shook his head. “They’re true, for the most part, I suppose.”

He found it hard to speak. The elder studied his inhuman visage for a moment and said quietly, “Yes … you were there, weren’t you? I’ve heard one or two tales about Huma of the Lance that mention you. I get the feeling that most of the storytellers, however, dislike having a minotaur share the glory with one of their own kind.”

“A lot of them cared little enough for Huma when he lived.” Kaz grew somber as memories flashed by. For his part, the elder paced alongside silently, his gaze oddly anxious as he led the minotaur along.

They had reached the river. Drew hesitated, almost seeming to be torn between continuing on or turning around and returning to the others.

“I wanted to show you something and seek your opinion. Gil thinks it nothing but some animal, but I – I have seen too many things in the war.”

Intrigued, Kaz allowed the human to lead him to a place perhaps a thousand paces north of the village. Trees now dotted both sides of the river. “What is the name of this river? My map did not say.”

The elder shrugged. “I don’t really know. We call it Chislev’s Gift, but, believe me, that’s strictly our name. We were so relieved to find such a wonderful location. I suspect that, if we hold out, this will someday be a fairly profitable site. It will mean some sacrifice, but we will do what we must.”

“Spoken like a true merchant.”

“It’s in the blood. Here we are. Gil was the one who found it, but he thought it might be a good idea to show it to me, just to be safe.”

“It” was a partial footprint on the damp riverbank. Kaz went down on one knee to study it better. If the footprint was made by an animal, the animal weighed at least as much as Kaz, judging by the impression. Not so much a paw as a foot, the print was obviously a couple days old, and this close to the river, it had suffered from the elements constantly. Kaz understood Drew’s worry. Goblins and trolls ranged in this area at times, though there were fewer now than during the war. The front of the print indicated sharp, almost clawlike nails like those of Kaz himself, and the impression itself was facing away from the river.

“It crossed here.”

“Crossed? It? It is an animal, then?”

“I doubt it.” Kaz looked up. “You suspected a goblin or something, didn’t you?”

Drew nodded nervously. “But Gil —”

“Your hunter may not have ever seen goblin or troll tracks, though I don’t think it’s a troll. It’s too muddy to really tell.” The minotaur glanced at the forest on the other side of the river. “Is there any way to cross the river?”

“We have some small boats and a pole raft.”

Remembering the boats, Kaz opted for the raft. The odds were better that it could support him. The river was no monster, but it was always wise to respect the raw power of nature.

“While your people gather what I requested, I’ll go take a look. It may be nothing, but I’ll feel better knowing for certain.”

“Gil found nothing.”

Kaz snorted. “With respect to the human, I am a minotaur and a warrior from birth. I may be able to find something he … overlooked.”

A sigh. “Very well. At the very least, it should help me to sleep a little better.”

The minotaur gave him a toothy grin. “Perhaps … and perhaps not.”

*

The river – Kaz could not bring himself to call it Chislev’s Gift – proved much stronger than Kaz had imagined. Knowing his own strength in proportion to that of the humans made the minotaur admire Gil that much more. That did not mean that Kaz had changed his mind about the footprint. It belonged to no animal, although goblins and trolls, with apologies to the wildlife, were often lumped into that category based on personality alone.

He climbed aboard and cautiously pushed the raft out into the river. The pole was sturdy, for which he was thankful, and his progress was slow but steady. His thoughts turned to the possibility of goblins in the area. Kaz had a particular dislike for goblins. When he had been hunted by soldiers of the Dragonqueen for killing his sadistic ogre captain, he had fled into the wastelands, only to be captured by a band of goblins who had caught him unawares and kept him drugged.

Thinking about the past, Kaz forgot to pay close attention to his present situation and almost managed to lose the pole. The raft started heading farther downriver. Cursing, he regained control. When Kaz at last reached the other side of the river, he pulled the raft onto the bank and paused a moment to catch his breath. The current had taken him downstream a little farther than he originally planned, and he would have to hike back. Kaz wondered how the cleric was getting along with Delbin, then decided it was something he could worry about after he returned. He might find nothing, but on the other hand, he might find something.

He combed the riverbank opposite where the print had been spotted. When that proved fruitless, he moved farther north. A little more than a half a mile up the river, he found a second print. Enough of it was still visible for him to match it with the first. From there, he began the slow process of backtracking. It was simple at first. The goblin – Kaz had no reason to believe it was anything else – had made no attempt to hide its presence. The minotaur followed a trail of broken branches and crushed plant life deep into the forest, and then the trail broke off into several different directions.

Kaz grunted softly. There was more than one of them. Either the band had left this area for better hunting grounds or they were still somewhere among the trees. There were more than half a dozen, of that he was certain. If they were still somewhere nearby, Drew’s people were in mortal danger.

It was at that point that Kaz realized his own jeopardy. He heard a movement to his right, little more than the shiver of a branch, but something within him, something developed over the course of his lifetime, warned him that the cause of the noise was neither the wind nor some small animal. Carefully, so as to avoid giving the watcher notice, he let his hand drift toward the handle of his axe. He cursed himself for not unhooking it sooner. His peacemaking with the village had put him off guard.

The other made a step toward him.

Kaz tugged his axe free and, without a sound, rose and whirled to the right. The battle-axe was poised, ready to strike.

“Delbin?” The glare he gave the kender should have shriveled his companion to nothing.

“Oops! I’m sorry, but I didn’t want to cry out. After all, you looked so busy. What are you looking for? Tesela had to step away, so I thought that since I had been so good, you wouldn’t mind if I went exploring, and when I saw that someone had left a boat lying around and you had gone off on the raft —”

The minotaur snorted angrily. “Take a breath, Del —”

At that moment, three huge forms charged from behind Kaz, taking him down before he could turn.

Someone with a deep, snarling voice cried, “The kender! Get the kender!”

There was some kind of a reply, but it was lost in the noise of the fight. Kaz, his face buried in the earth, succeeded in shoving one of his would-be captors away. Another one got an arm around his face, blocking his vision. Whatever he fought, it was as big as he was and almost as strong. It also had help, for the third one had a death grip around Kaz’s legs, and despite his best efforts, the minotaur could not break it. But he would not die passively. With his free hand, he raked a face, then paused in startlement. His discovery proved costly, for the attacker secured his free limb and pinned Kaz to the ground.

“Your honorable surrender is offered. Will you give in freely?”

Kaz could not reply at first, since his snout was still pressed against the ground. Someone realized this and pulled his head up.

Reluctantly he answered by rote. “I submit to honorable surrender. Will you accept?”

“Accepted.” Strong, clawed hands with firm grips pulled him to his feet.

He had been mistaken. He had assumed the footprints had belonged to goblins, but he had forgotten how many races left similar tracks. So much for his vaunted tracking superiority. Kaz had done no better than the archer, and to make matters worse, he had been captured.

By minotaurs.

Chapter 5

Of course Kaz knew who the minotaurs were: They were the stubborn posse that had been pursuing him for months over many miles.

Not one of the band of minotaurs was familiar to him, though one eyed him as if they had met before. Kaz studied him but could not recall. The one who had demanded his surrender, broad and a bit shorter than the others, laughed harshly.

“He was right. He predicted that this one would go north and that this was a likely spot!”

“A week of waiting around here,” the one who was binding his arms said gruffly, “and we finally capture the coward.”

“He did not fight like a coward,” retorted the first minotaur, the one Kaz felt he ought to recognize.

“It matters not, Hecar,” argued the short male. “We know his crimes, and he’ll have his chance to speak his case.”

“Such as it is,” completed the one behind Kaz.

Hecar snorted. “If I read the ogre right, Greel, Kaz will not have the chance to defend himself.”

Ogre? Kaz jerked straight. “An ogre? You trust the word of an ogre?”

“Not just an ogre, criminal.” Greel reached into a pouch at his side, then halted. “But we have no time for that now. It will take a good week’s journey to reach the others, and we must be away before one of the humans discovers the duplicity of their elder and the archer.”

“They knew?” Kaz fairly spat the words out. Of course they knew! What a fool I’ve been!

“An easy trap, coward. The war has made many folk pliable. Gold is still valuable, after all.” Greel reached forward and pulled Kaz’s pouch away. He studied the contents, pulling out a few items such as the Solamnic seal, and tossed the pouch on the ground. “We also have a proclamation of our own, like the one the Grand Master has issued, condemning you for murder and cowardice. But really, how many humans care about matters of minotaur justice? To them, only gold counts.”

“The footprint …” Kaz muttered. A trap!

“Other settlements, other traders, have been made similar offers. You have run for far too long.”

Kaz strained at the bonds.

“The bonds are tight,” said the minotaur behind him. Huge hands, even for one of his kind, looped a noose over Kaz’s head. It was lowered around his neck and tightened. “Struggle too hard and you’ll choke yourself.”

His eyes blood red, Kaz snorted, “Listen to yourselves! You pay off humans and take the word of ogres! You are bounty hunters, not servants of justice!”

He saw the fist of the short minotaur coming, but did not flinch. It caught him below the jaw and set his head ringing. He could taste blood in his mouth. Greel stared at him coldly.

“If the other races lack honor so much that they are willing to trade it for a few pieces of gold, it only proves their inferiority to our kind!”

“Even if you are the ones offering them enough gold to make them willing to betray their honor?”

Instead of answering, Greel whirled on Hecar. “Where is Helati? Where is your sister? Is one kender too much for her?”

“One kender is not,” a new voice, strong and pleasing to Kaz, added disdainfully. “But a cleric of Mishakal is.”

“The cleric? That – that —”

“Was it perhaps ‘human’ or ‘female’ you were about to say, Greel?” The minotaur who stepped into Kaz’s range of vision was slightly shorter than Greel and had horns only half the size of any of the males. Muscular beyond the norms of most races, she was well formed for a minotaur. Kaz realized how long it had been since he had last seen a female of his own race. There had been none in the army he had fought with. Ogres believed in separating the minotaurs by gender as much as possible.

“I am no human, Helati, to be bothered by the fact that you are female. I have fought beside many valiant warriors of either sex.”

Helati glanced Kaz’s way and gave him a brief, sour smile. “Then do not underestimate the females of other races. Small she may be, but the cleric is gifted. I tracked the kender to the river, but I could not find him. I only barely escaped her notice. She senses something amiss.”

“Clerics!” The leader snorted. “Weak, useless, simpering creatures —”

“You will see how useless they truly are not if we don’t start back now. The farther we are from here the better.”

Greel pointed at Hecar. “Help Tinos with the prisoner. Helati, you guard the rear. I will scout up ahead.”

In this fashion, they began to move north, following the general weave of the river. Whenever Kaz tried to look over his shoulder, Tinos delivered a swat on the side of his head. Hecar gave Kaz odd glances every now and then.

Kaz wondered where the other minotaurs were camped. His captors had spoken of at least one other small group. That group was probably waiting on the other side of the mountain range. In some ways, Kaz had to admire his own people for their determination and thoroughness – and the human, Drew, as well, for his pretense of reluctance to have Kaz enter the settlement. The elder, Kaz suspected, had been shrewd and successful as a merchant at one time and was able to put on a convincing false face even to the discerning. It was difficult to both admire and despise someone, but the minotaur did nevertheless.

Tinos gave him another swat. “Dragging your feet will not save you, coward. We will drag your carcass along if we need to.”

“I was only thinking of my comrade. Have the minotaurs grown so base that they must kill uselessly? He was only a kender.”

“A kender! That a minotaur, even one lacking honor and the courage to face judgment, would demean himself to call one of those a comrade. You are weak, Kaz.”

“It took three of you to subdue me,” Kaz retorted.

That earned him yet another swat. “The high ones want you alive. You will be proof that honor and justice are still paramount to the minotaur race, despite the few who must always be weeded out.”

Kaz snorted.

Hecar spoke, his tone much more civil, more calm than the fanatical Tinos. “Bad enough to stand accused of murder, Kaz, but to flee instead of facing judgment as you should have …”

The prisoner’s reply was cut off by the reemergence of Greel from the forest. “All clear for some distance. Push him if you have to, but make him move!” The short minotaur smiled toothily. “I want to see the homeland. After all this time …”

The other minotaurs, even Kaz, could not help feeling twinges of longing themselves. Kaz had not been home since the day he was deemed a warrior and sent out to fight for the glory of the Dark Queen, something he had really not believed in. Though the race of minotaurs counted her consort, mysterious Sargas, as their chief god, they had little love for the ways of Takhisis.

At that point, Greel growled at the others. “What are you standing around for? The sooner we meet up with the others, the sooner we return home.”

He turned and began stalking off into the forest once more. Tinos and Hecar each took one arm and began to pull Kaz forward, almost causing him to lose his footing.

*

At nightfall, Kaz was deposited against a tree and tied to it. Both he and his captors were exhausted, but he was pleased to note that they were in worse shape. The hope that Delbin had reached the human cleric and convinced her to help Kaz had slowly dwindled away over the hours. What could a servant of Mishakal, the gentle goddess of healing, do against four heavily armed minotaur fighters? Would she even care?

Greel had snared an animal for food, and now the minotaurs were cooking it over a small fire. As Greel began to divide up the meat, a brief argument developed between the four. Listening closely, Kaz discovered that he was the cause. They were arguing over whether or not he should be fed. Greel finally gave in and handed something round to Helati, who had apparently appointed herself the prisoner’s keeper.

Helati was a grumbling shadow as she stalked over to Kaz. “May Sargas take Greel’s damned hide, and Scurn’s for good measure!”

“Scurn?” Kaz asked quietly.

“He and the ogre lead this farce we call a mission of honor and justice.”

She dropped whatever it was that Greel had given her and fed him a few strips of meat. “I’m sorry that I cannot untie you. Hecar and I argued on your behalf, and even Tinos seemed willing, but Greel wants to take no chances. You are his prize. I daresay that by the time we reach Scurn, the short one will have us believing that he caught you alone, without our aid. Such honorable people we are. These past few years of chasing after you have changed us – much to the worse, I’d say.”

“You and Hecar are siblings?” Helati’s face was deep in shadow. He wished she would move so that he could see her better, be able to read her reactions better. It was always wise to know the enemy, he told himself.

“You don’t remember us, then. Hecar was certain of that. You were a tutor for the younger classes. …”

Kaz grimaced at the memory. “The year before they deemed me ready to give my life for the ogres and humans. You and your brother were in one of the classes? Those were for the young just entering adulthood. You cannot be that young.”

She laughed quietly. “Poor teacher. You fail to realize that eight years have passed since then. We have changed, my brother and I. We always felt you picked on us especially. Apparently it was not that important to you.”

“Helati, I had to run after I killed the ogre leader. If I had stayed, they would have tied me to a stake and flayed me alive. I would have joined Braag’s victims.”

It was impossible to see the reaction on her face, but Kaz could hear her breathing catch briefly and noticed that her hand, still holding a piece of meat, had paused halfway to his mouth. He regretted causing the latter action most of all, having eaten almost nothing all day.

The female minotaur snorted quietly and continued with the feeding, occasionally taking a small scrap of meat for herself. As she fed Kaz, she spoke. “I could believe you – certainly the stories I’ve heard prove you are no coward and have dealt with others honorably – but Molok has his own proof. Proof that the high ones found convincing.”

This time Kaz snorted, his anger flaring. “If they are the same ones who ruled when we were slave-soldiers to the other races, then small wonder! They are lackeys to the ogres and those who followed Takhisis’s pet, the renegade sorcerer Galan Dracos!”

Greel rose from the fire. “If he cannot keep quiet, he does not get fed, Helati! If that fails to calm him, I can silence him personally!”

“I can handle him, Greel!” To Kaz, she said quietly, “Greel would be only too glad to silence you. He thinks your running away is judgment enough, and that you have forfeited any right to speak on your own behalf. Only his fear of Scurn keeps him from you.”

Kaz swore under his breath. “You and your brother seem levelheaded. How can you be a part of this?”

“We were given a duty, and as minotaurs we will see that duty through to the end.”

It all seemed so futile. This was what he had feared would happen if he allowed himself to be captured.

“Greel wanted me to show you this.” Helati put down the meat and reached for the object the leader had given her. To the prisoner’s eyes, it appeared to be a dark sphere, perhaps the size of an apple.

“What is it?”

“Watch. Stare into it.”

As Kaz stared at it, the sphere began to glisten. Kaz shuddered without thinking. “Magic? Have we weakened so much we have turned to magic?”

Helati quieted him. “It is something the ogres use that they buy from mages. Scurn has one like it, and a proclamation from the emperor claiming the honorable intentions of our mission: the capture of an accused murderer. Now watch.”

Kaz did as he was told, his eyes widening as the dark, opaque sphere suddenly became transparent. Within the sphere, he watched a landscape begin to grow from nothing. Tiny mountains rose in the background, and skeletal trees burst from the earth like mad, undead horrors. Figures began to blur into being, one on the right, the other in the center.

Kaz knew what land this was, though not the name of it. He knew it because he had served there, still blindly obedient to dark-robed mages and ebony-armored warlords. It came as no surprise that the figure at the right was him, and that the one in the center was the ogre who had commanded this army. There was something wrong with the scene, however, something that did not reveal itself to his eye at first.

The humans. The victims. The living toys of his captain, a loyal servant of the Queen of Evil. Where were the old one and the children that Braag’s axe had played with? Instead, the ogre seemed intent on something in the distance and did not even notice the minotaur’s presence. Kaz could predict what was going to happen next.

The Kaz figure raised a club. As the club rose behind the unsuspecting ogre, the real Kaz shook his head and denied the falsity of the scene. The club came crashing down. The ogre collapsed into a lifeless heap. The Kaz figure looked around once and fled. Other forms – ogres, minotaurs, and such – rushed forward even as the scene faded away.

It was another inaccuracy. It had taken only a single blow from his fist, struck while they stood face-to-face, to crack the skull of the ogre and send him to his reward. Not some dishonorable ambush!

“A lie!” Kaz no longer cared whether he remained quiet or not. “That’s a lie! I am no base murderer! He cruelly killed the helpless, the defenseless! His action was without any honor! It was the work of a butcher, not a warrior, and he did it far too many times to be reprieved from death! I gave him a warrior’s death!”

The sturdy ropes designed by the minotaurs to hold anything less than a dragon began to strain under his anger. Helati fell back, dropping the sphere. Greel and the others were already on their feet. One of the ropes snapped, and Kaz, still in a rage, roared as he felt the hold on him loosen. For a brief moment, the knowledge that he was a step closer to freedom urged him on. Then Greel and Tinos were on him.

They struck him relentlessly, Greel laughing out loud at one point. The short minotaur was enjoying every second of it. As Kaz’s mind began to swim, he wondered if Greel had any ogre blood in him.

Greel’s rage burned out under the endless blows, and Kaz blacked out mercifully.

*

Kaz stood before judgment, but it was not minotaurs who would decide his case. Black, mad Crynus sat on one side of the triumvirate, his head, which had been severed in life, lolling on his neck at an awkward angle. He seemed not to care.

Bennett, proud, arrogant Bennett, hawklike features glowing with the fire of his own magnificence, sat on the opposite side. He appeared less interested in the trial than he was in giving commands to the knights who rushed in an endless stream to and from him. They knelt, heard some whispered order, and each departed in haste, only to be replaced instantly by another knight.

The central figure, seated high above the rest, seemed to have trouble deciding who he was. One second he was Greel; the next he was Rennard. He became one of the goblins who had captured Kaz after the latter had killed the ogre captain. At last the central figure settled on a shape. It was, of course, the ogre captain himself. A portion of his head was missing, but there seemed to be no blood – nothing, in fact.

“A court of your peers,” a mocking voice said.

Kaz looked around and found himself staring into the sightless eyes of a dreadwolf. The bone-white beast, looking like nothing less than a month-dead, skinned animal, winked at him. It was sitting no more than two yards away, on top of a ledge.

“The dead have no right to judge the living,” Kaz shouted.

“The dead have every right,” retorted the dreadwolf. “But you still have a chance to forego a trial.”

“How?” A storm seemed to be brewing. For the first time, Kaz realized that, aside from the seated figures, the dreadwolf, and himself, there was nothing else, not even a landscape.

“Tell me what you know!” the dreadwolf cried.

“Know?” The minotaur’s head was pounding.

“Do you know anything?”

“About – about what?”

“The citadel! When you joined with the knights in the battle against Galan Dracos!”

Kaz was sick of being pushed, beaten, and judged by others. With a roar, he raised a huge axe, one he could not recall having a moment before, and charged the dreadwolf. To his everlasting pleasure, the beast gave a very human scream and fled.

The other figures faded away. Only the storm still raged, but for some reason, the minotaur did not feel threatened by it.

As thunder shook him, Kaz realized that it was calling his name. He tried to answer, but his words came out as a groan. Then he felt himself vanish, even as the others had vanished. He felt no shock, only relief. …

*

“Great gods, what have they done to you?” a feminine voice whispered at the edge of his dreams. It was a softer, higher voice than Helati’s, and the only one he could compare it to was that of Gwyneth, Huma’s love. She had died, as in his dream, defending the knight from death by the claws of the Dark Queen. Had Paladine allowed her to come back? Was she here to take him to Huma so that they could fight side by side again?

“Minotaur,” the voice whispered, “you must awake. There is little time. I do not know how strong their resistance is.”

Kaz tried to open his eyes. The memories of his beating came back to him, and with it the anger. He started to breathe fast, his blood boiling.

“No!” the unseen one hissed. Delicate hands turned his head until he could see the newcomer. In the dark, it took him time to place the young human face. Only when he saw the medallion hanging over her robe did he remember her name.

“Tesela?” The minotaur’s words came out as little more than a croak. The cleric quickly shushed him.

“I’m sorry I could get here no sooner, minotaur. The people in the village were no help. They sided with Drew when Delbin and I forced the truth from him.” She took her medallion and leaned toward the ropes. Kaz felt them fall away. With a helpless grunt, he slid to one side, landing on an already sore shoulder.

“I’m sorry!” Tesela whispered hastily. The composure she had worn during their first encounter had slipped away, revealing a frightened young woman.

“No time,” Kaz managed to hiss. “Can you heal me?”

“It would take too long here. I’ve put a sleeping spell on the others, but I have no experience with minotaurs. I don’t know how strong they are.”

“Very. Undo the – the bonds around my wrists.”

She touched the medallion to the ropes. Kaz felt them loosen and whispered thanks to Paladine as the circulation returned to his arms. Tesela helped him to his feet. “We have horses waiting.”

“Horses?” he muttered.

The cleric pointed toward the river.

“Let’s go.” Despite his great pride, Kaz was forced to accept the human female’s assistance. He stumbled several times but did not stop. Each grunt of pain sounded as loud as the thunder in his dream, and he expected the minotaurs to come rushing after them at any moment.

The horses became a shadowy mass ahead of them. Tesela, still helping to support him, was looking down, trying to avoid tripping. With the powers given to her, she could have used the medallion to light their way, but she feared to risk sending up a glow. For now, the darkness was not only a hindrance, but it was also an ally.

The horses were there, but so was something else. For an instant, Kaz thought he saw one of the nightmares of his dream, the dreadwolf. The white, ghostly form seemed to pause only long enough to acknowledge him. When Kaz blinked again, it was gone.

“Is something wrong?” Tesela asked nervously.

“I – I thought I saw something by the horses.”

“That would be Delbin. He was the one who told me everything, only he couldn’t understand how he had escaped. The minotaur who followed him had him trapped, even he knew that, but then she – it was a female – turned away in the wrong direction. It was fortunate for both of you that he was so lucky.”

Kaz made no reply. Instead he asked, “How did you find me?”

“Delbin picked up the trail. I understand kender are good at that sometimes. He’s very surprising.”

“So I keep discovering.”

As the horses became distinctive shapes, Kaz could see that sitting on a pony nearly hidden by the two larger mounts was Delbin himself. The kender succeeded in restraining himself to a simple, “Kaz!” and a wave. From the way he squirmed in the saddle, the minotaur knew that his kender companion had much more he wanted to say. For a kender, Delbin was showing remarkable forbearance.

“We should be safe now. With the horses, we’ll easily be able to outrun the others,” Tesela was saying. “And once we cross the river, I can take the time to heal you properly.”

Kaz felt his head swim. “I … think you … had better … help …”

He went to his knees.

“Delbin, help me!” Tesela cried.

The kender leaped from the saddle and landed feetfirst no more than a yard from the others. He helped Tesela lift Kaz to a standing position.

The minotaur was breathing hard. “Get me … onto the horse. I’ll be … able to manage … from there.”

It took some doing. At last, seated on his horse, Kaz gazed blurry-eyed at the human. “You sound … so uncertain. I thought … you had done this before.”

Despite the darkness, he imagined her face reddening. “I’ve only been a cleric for a short time – two, maybe three months. Another healer had passed through only recently. I saw him heal the bones of a man who had fallen. When my father heard about the cleric – he wanted to marry me off to the son of one of the town officials – he made certain I was never able to speak to him.” Tesela mounted. “I cried bitterly. Helping people seemed like such a wonderful thing to do. I fell asleep crying, only to wake with a weight on my chest.”

“The medallion?” Delbin asked eagerly.

“I found it useful that very night. It can unbind things like ropes and locks. Healing someone takes longer, since it’s more delicate.”

“Then we’d best move on.” Kaz paused, then added, “It would be best if we crossed the river now, while they still sleep.”

“That could be dangerous.”

He did not even look at her. “So is remaining here.”

Kaz urged his horse forward. The riverbank was bright in comparison to the forest, and Kaz glanced up at the two moons. Tonight he would have been happier with no moon at all. He was about to look away when he realized that something was amiss with Solinari, the luminous moon that represented the waxing of white magic. A small portion near the bottom was missing, almost as if a bite had been taken out of it.

“What’s wrong?” Tesela asked.

Kaz blinked, and the moon was restored. He turned his attention to the river before them. “Nothing. I was debating where the best place to cross might be.”

The river raged as he had never seen it. Kaz began to have second thoughts about crossing immediately. He turned to his companions. “How was it where you crossed?”

Tesela glanced at the kender. Delbin shrugged. “No worse, no better. It’s not that deep, though, Kaz, because I was able to get across, and even in the dark, Surefoot should have no trouble. He’s a good pony, and if he can make it, then that huge animal you have should be able to walk across with no problems because he’s so much bigger and stronger than Surefoot.”

“Meaning we should be able to cross. Delbin, you stand the most danger; I want you to go second so that someone is on either side of you. Tesela, you had better go first.” When she started to argue, he stared her down as only a seven-foot minotaur could. “These are my people, human. Even as injured as I am, I stand a better chance of fighting them than you do. I doubt if they will let you catch them unaware twice. Besides” — Kaz reached down and patted the faithful war-horse affectionately — “I have a good comrade here.”

“Why don’t we cross together?”

“I would prefer that we always have someone to watch out for the others. Just in case.”

Tesela gave in. Wasting no more time, she led her animal to the river. It was reluctant at first, but she spoke quietly to it, one of her hands touching the medallion. Under her guidance, the animal had little trouble crossing, despite the swift current. When she was halfway across, Kaz sent Delbin. He watched carefully, afraid that Delbin’s small pony might get swept away. He hoped that would not be the case, for his mind and body were exhausted. Minotaur pride had gotten the better of him, however, and he refused to show any weakness to his companions.

The cleric was safe on the other side, and Delbin, despite the fact that his pony had to swim instead of walk, seemed assured of equal success. Kaz urged his own mount into the river.

The wild water battered his legs, and he was sprayed from head to toe. He was thankful for the bitter cold of the river, for it kept him alert. When his horse was fully into the river, the minotaur saw that the water level came only to his own shinbone. The war-horse moved forward, making slow but steady progress. Delbin’s pony was just stepping onto the opposite riverbank.

All thought of his companions vanished as Kaz paid strict attention to the river. There was always the chance that his animal might step into a depression the others had missed, or that the current might change for some unknown reason. More than one overconfident rider had been lost in such a fashion.

Over the roar of the river, he suddenly realized that both Tesela and Delbin were calling to him. He looked up just as the war-horse shook violently beneath him. Kaz struggled for control with the animal, which suddenly seemed crazed. The war-horse was stumbling, and the minotaur was in danger of losing his balance. At any other time, he would probably have had no trouble overcoming his mount. The strain of weariness, however, left him in a weakened state.

His leg, slipping back, struck something hard and long. Kaz dared to turn in the saddle. To his horror, he discovered a spear buried in the animal’s flank. No human or elf could have thrown such a huge spear with such perfect accuracy. Suddenly Kaz knew it must have been Greel’s hand that had guided the missile.

Pain and loss of blood, combined with the struggle against the strong current, proved too much for the great war-horse. The animal began to turn in a circle as the river took control. Kaz had a spinning image of at least three minotaurs on the other riverbank and wondered if he was mistaken when he thought he saw one of them strike another down. He never had a second look, however, for with a last defiant cry, the war-horse tumbled helplessly into the uncaring embrace of the river.

Kaz was thrown back, and his head went underwater before he even had a chance to consider holding his breath. His lungs screamed as they filled with water. He struggled to find the surface, only to be pulled down once again.

Unable to cope any longer, Kaz let the river current take him where it wanted. He asked himself, as he did so often, what it was that the gods had against him.

If there was an answer, he did not remain conscious long enough to hear it.

Chapter 6

A lone drop of water struck the side of his muzzle. Kaz, already on the verge of waking, shivered uncontrollably in the grip of memories of tumbling and drowning. There had been another dream, too – a bad one, like so many he had had of late, but all he could remember of it was that it, too, concerned water.

When he was certain that he was neither asleep nor drowned, the minotaur carefully opened his eyes just enough to get some glimpse of his surroundings. When the world around him finally registered in his waterlogged mind, his eyes widened.

“Now what?” Kaz succeeded in muttering, though someone would have had to put his ear to his mouth to hear him.

He was alone in a room, staring directly at the top of a tree just outside. It registered almost immediately that the reason he could see the top, even gaze downward at it, was that he was in the tree. It was a very high tree, too, because even from the mat he was lying on, he could see that beyond the treetop were countless more trees, nearly all shorter than the one he now occupied.

His surroundings were as simple as they were astonishing. This home, this one room, had not been carved into the trunk of the tree. Instead, it was almost as if the tree had obliged whoever had decided to make his home here by splitting apart at this juncture and then coming together higher up. There were natural depressions where the occupant stored a few unidentifiable objects. The floor was covered with mats, obviously woven from plants, and there was no furniture.

Kaz rose slowly from the mat. With each movement, he expected the return of pain. When the pain did not come, the minotaur began to touch his head and arms. All the wounds – and there had been quite a few – were healed!

Kaz snorted. Like most minotaurs, he was distrustful of magic tricks. Under other circumstances, he would have shied away even from the healing powers of Tesela’s goddess. Minotaurs believed that the more one succumbed to the simplicity of magical solutions, the weaker one became. Whether that was true or not, Kaz pondered, it was too late to change what already had happened. Someone had healed him, and by rights the minotaur owed that person a debt of gratitude.

Cautiously he stepped toward the open entrance. He looked around for a weapon and noticed a small round pot made of clay that sat in a natural shelf near the entrance. Kaz hesitated. It was a beautiful piece of work and looked incredibly ancient. Intricate patterns and pictures had been painted all around its circumference. Most of the pictures dealt with nature, though one revealed a group of beings dancing in a circle. Kaz studied that picture more carefully. The dancers were elves.

Who else, he argued with himself, would live high up in a tree but an elf?

“The pot will not bite, my friend. It never has.”

Kaz whirled and reached for a weapon he had already told himself was not there. Behind him, sitting in a spot the minotaur knew he could not possibly have overlooked earlier, was a tall, handsome elf with long silver hair. If judged by human standards, the elf looked young – until one looked at the emerald eyes. This tree-dweller, Kaz knew, had seen more years pass than several generations of minotaurs.

The elf was clad in a brown and green outfit that made him look like a prince of the forest. There was even a long cloak. Kaz snorted angrily when he saw that the elf was smiling at his inspection.

“Who are you?” he snarled.

“I am Sardal Crystalthorn, my friend. I think this is perhaps the twelfth time I’ve told you that.” Sardal seemed amused by something.

“How long have I been here?” Anger began to give way to surprise.

“Just over two weeks. You were nearly dead when I found you. I am impressed. Everything I have heard about minotaur stamina was evidently true, and then some.”

“Two weeks?” A sudden, fierce desire to be away from this place, away from everywhere, shook Kaz. He turned and bolted toward the entrance of Sardal’s home. A hand, impossibly strong for being so slender and pale, held him back. Kaz swallowed as he stared down into yet more treetops. He had assumed there would be a ladder or steps, but there was nothing. Evidently elves did not need ladders or steps.

“Come back inside before you do something foolish.”

“Two weeks!” the minotaur muttered again.

“You were injured worse in spirit than in body,” the elf said gently. He led Kaz away from the opening.

“How did you find me?”

Sardal’s face was empty of emotion. “I did not. Others found you. They wanted nothing to do with you, but they knew that I have a fondness for meddling. It is why I live here and not with them. It is also their excuse to interfere while pretending not to.”

Kaz began to pace. He could not say what bothered him more, the two lost weeks or the thought that he was so very high above the ground in the company of an elf. “Am I in Qualinesti, then? Did the river drag me that far south?”

The elf gave him the slightest glimmer of a smile. “Hardly. It always amazes me that other races are so boundary conscious. Do you think that we stop and turn back the moment the ‘accepted’ border comes into sight? Only races like minotaurs and humans would think like that. When we elves – and those in Silvanesti – created borders, it was only for the peace of mind of others. We do not believe in such things, although we do have our general territories and places no other race travels through. But actual borders we definitely do not have.”

Sardal, Kaz decided, was as convoluted as Delbin when it came to explanations. “So, where am I?”

“Almost directly north of the human city of Xak Tsaroth. If you had looked in any other direction than the way you did, you would have seen the mountains that border this part of the forest on each side.”

Kaz nodded. He recalled vaguely from the map where he was now. If he was correct, the settlement controlled by the elder, Drew, was almost directly east.

“If I may ask you a question,” continued the elf as he reached for a jug containing some liquid, “how did you come to be attempting to swallow the entire river?”

After the aid Sardal had given him, Kaz more than willingly told the elf the entire story. He began with the murder he had supposedly committed, which had actually been a fair combat against an ogre captain who had been needlessly torturing old and young prisoners. The minotaurs did not care about that, however. He had also broken several blood oaths in turning on the ogre and then running off rather that facing the so-called “justice” of his masters. He concluded the distasteful subject with, “I suspect that that is of more concern to my people. Killing or executing to preserve honor is common among us.”

After that, Kaz unconsciously turned to other matters, as if to avoid thinking about his situation. News of the north especially interested the elf, and the more Kaz talked about it, the more questions Sardal brought up. By the time the minotaur concluded, the elf had extracted nearly every bit of information Kaz could think of.

“You must be greatly skilled to have avoided those other minotaurs all this time,” Sardal commented.

“I survived twice as long as most during the war. Wasn’t just that, though. Me, I’ve dealt with humans; I know better than my pursuers what to expect in this territory – the past few days excluded. Besides, while one minotaur might be able to sneak through a land, a group of a dozen or so is about as inconspicuous as an advancing army. Someone always knows, and I generally find out soon enough.”

“Yet they almost caught you this time.”

Kaz grunted. “They’re getting better. Or maybe I’m getting tired. Still, I think I’ve got one edge. There’s dissension in their ranks. I always wondered and now I know. Some of them just want to go home. The only thing holding them back is their oaths, and those are to leaders with no honor of their own, lackeys left over from the days when ogres and humans really ruled. I think a few of them might – and I may only be hoping – actually be slowing the group down purposely because they believe in me.”

The minotaur put his face in his hands and sighed.

“You have a dark shadow over you, minotaur. I think perhaps that the gods have something planned for you.” He gave a brief smile. “Or you may just attract trouble as a flower attracts bees.”

Kaz began to scoff, then recalled his dreams and visions. They might be merely that, visions and dreams, but there was always the chance they were not, that they were actually omens. Could he dare ignore them?

Sardal, his eyes never leaving the minotaur, continued. “Of your companions or your people, I have no word. Most elves like to avoid the affairs of other races. I have long known the folly of such acts. There were things that occurred during the war against the Dragonqueen that should shame any elf, but still, most would rather continue to ignore the outside world.”

“Delbin knows that I planned to travel to Vingaard Keep and confront Oswal, the Grand Master. He may go there, and it is possible that the human cleric, Tesela, will go there also. If not, I still have to go there myself. I have to discover why my former comrades have turned against me.”

“Not just you. From your words and the stories of others that I have heard, the Knights of Solamnia have turned away from E’li, he who you know as Paladine. If so, we may yet again see the evil of the Dragonqueen.”

“She cannot return. Huma made her swear by something called the Highgod, I think.”

The elf’s eyebrows rose. “Did he, now? A pity, my friend, that you cannot remember the oath. I suspect there are holes in it big enough to fly a dragon through – if there were still dragons, that is.”

Kaz recalled some of the images from his dreams. “She would need the help of another fiend like Galan Dracos.”

“There are other ways. We have no idea what precautions she might have made. What will you do about your countrymen who pursue you?” Sardal asked.

“Like Delbin, no doubt they think I am dead.”

“Yet you might still encounter them.”

The minotaur snorted angrily. “I will deal with them if I have to. It is Vingaard that concerns me. To honor the memory of Huma of the Lance, I will settle with the knighthood one way or the other.” Kaz rose. “Enough prattle. Show me how to reach the ground, and I will be on my way.”

Sardal rose to his feet in one fluid motion. “It occurs to me that I may yet be of some substantial aid to you, minotaur, if you have no objections.”

“What do you intend?” Kaz’s tone indicated he was hesitant to accept yet more assistance.

“Nothing complicated.” Sardal began to gather a few items he thought might come in handy for his guest. His mind briefly flickered to what his fellows would say when they discovered that, not only had he healed the beastman, but he had also given him supplies and even spoke to him like an equal. Smiling, he dropped the thought and continued with the discussion.

“When you get to Vingaard – and I have no doubt that you will – ask for an elf named Argaen Ravenshadow. He is like me and has worked among humans for generations. The elders call him a maverick, but as with me, they never fail to make use of him when it proves necessary to deal with outsiders. Let all who are there know that Sardal Crystalthorn wishes him to place his protection over you.” At Kaz’s expression, the elf added, “Do not be a fool, minotaur. The knighthood respects him greatly, else – but that is unimportant. You will be doing me a favor as well.” Sardal held up a small scroll. “I want you to give him this. He will have need of it. I would have joined him in another month, but now I may turn my mind to other interests.”

Kaz took the scroll and then the rest of the items the elf had gathered for him. One very important object was missing. “Where is my axe?”

“Lost somewhere at the bottom of the river, I suppose. Never fear. I will find you a replacement. Come.” Sardal walked to the entrance of his home and then turned when he realized Kaz was not following him. “I thought you wished to depart.”

The minotaur took a step forward and froze. “But how? You have no ladder, no rope. …”

Sardal smiled. “None that you can see. It is only a matter, however, of changing one’s perceptions.”

Kaz shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

A sigh. The elf reached out his left hand. “Take my hand. I’ll lead you. I can see that you have dealt with elves before, and also that you have never been to Qualinesti. I know how the arrogant ones in Silvanesti would treat you as an ogrespawn. My people are not much better, but they are better.”

Kaz hesitated. To be led blindly by the elf was bad enough; to remain here, untrusting of one who had saved his life, was worse. Sardal Crystalthorn was indeed far different than the uncaring, haughty elves of Silvanesti, whom Kaz had had the misfortune of encountering once during his wanderings, much to his regret.

He took Sardal’s hand and closed his eyes tight.

“Just keep walking. When I stop, you stop.”

The sensation Kaz felt was akin to walking down a flight of spiraling stairs. With great effort, he defeated the urge to open his eyes and see what he was really walking on. Kaz was no coward, but sorcery always left him feeling defenseless. What if he should open his eyes only to find that there was nothing but empty space beneath him?

“You said you used a battle-axe, did you not?” Sardal’s voice broke into his thoughts. It seemed as if they had walked miles already.

Kaz found he was sweating – and standing still as well. “Why have we stopped?”

“We are at the bottom, of course.”

The minotaur opened his eyes. They were indeed standing at the base of the tree. Kaz turned to face the leviathan, and his eyes followed its growth upward. The true height of the tree became clear to him. His stomach began to churn. “How – No! I have no wish to learn! Your tricks can remain your secrets.” He recalled the question Sardal had asked him. “Yes, I use an axe.”

“I had thought as much when I first saw you.” The elf was suddenly holding a massive, gleaming double-edged axe. The side of the axe head had an amazing mirrorlike finish, and in spite of its tremendous size, Sardal was having no trouble with its weight.

Kaz studied the weapon with admiration. The axe was perfect, from head to handle. The blades could well cut through stone. The minotaur noted some runes on the handle. “What is that?”

“Dwarven. A gift from an old friend, sadly dead in the war. This was his finest work, and he entrusted it to me rather than to his squabbling apprentices. The runes are its name; every good weapon should be named. This one, translated to Common, is Honor’s Face.”

“Honor’s Face? What sort of name is that for a battle-axe?”

“Never try to understand a dwarven mind.” Sardal turned the axe over to his guest. “I think, though, that you have both the strength and the proper spirit to yield a weapon with such a name.”

“Is it magic?” Kaz wanted to keep the blade, but a magical weapon. …

“I think the magic lies more in the skill of the artisan who created it than the warrior who wields it, although I cannot promise that it has no magical abilities. I’ve noticed none. But you will not be disappointed with it, I am certain.”

Kaz tested the axe, swinging it this way and that, performing maneuvers with it that would have left many another fighter without at least one leg and several fingers. At the end of the short exercise, he hooked it into his harness with one graceful motion. His eyes were bright with pleasure, though he tried to conceal his enthusiasm. “Excellent balance.”

Sardal nodded, impressed in spite of himself with the minotaur’s skill. “May you need it as little as possible. I am sorry that I have no horse to lend you, but I can lead you along a path that will make up some of the time you have lost.”

“Lead me? You’re going with me?”

“Only to the edge of the forest.” Sardal pointed in a northerly direction. “Beyond that, you will be in the desolation of northern Solamnia. Since you have been kind enough to take that scroll to Argaen, I see no reason to enter that unclean land myself.”

“Is it that bad?”

The elf gave him a curious look. “How long has it been since you were last there?”

“After the death ceremony for my companion, Huma, I rode south and have not since ridden back. I have visited the lands east, west, and south of Solamnia, save that part of Istar my people call home, but never have I come within a hundred miles of that region again.”

“You respected Huma greatly.”

“Do you know the Solamnic phrase ‘Est Sularus oth Mithas’?”

“‘My honor is my life.’ Yes, I have heard it before. It generally precedes the Oath and Measure of the knighthood.”

A somber look crossed the minotaur’s bullish visage. “Huma of the Lance embodied that phrase; he was that phrase. I’ve tried to live up to his memory since his death. I don’t know how well I’ve succeeded, if at all.”

“You’ve been unwilling to return to Vingaard solely because of that.” There was no mockery in Sardal’s voice.

Kaz gathered up his things. “I have. If you’d ever met Huma, you’d understand. We met when he rescued me from a band of goblins who had trapped me by surprise. To say that he was shocked at what he’d rescued would not be far from the truth, but that didn’t deter him. Minotaur, human, or even goblin, Huma always sought the best in a being.” Kaz paused. “I think he cried inside for nearly every foe slain. I rode beside him long enough to see that. From our first encounter with the silver dragon to the final confrontation with Takhisis, he was a human who embodied the good of the world. He dared the unthinkable, too, whether that meant defending a minotaur against his fellow knights or seeking out the Dragonlances, which were our only hope.”

Crystalthorn remained silent as Kaz paused again briefly to organize his thoughts, but his eyes glittered as he listened.

“We were separated time and again, but each time I met a Huma who, despite the adversities fate had placed before him, refused to give in. He was the first to make use of the Dragonlances, and he led the attack when there were but a couple dozen of us, mounted on dragons of our own, to face the dragon hordes of the dark goddess. I say us, elf, because he allowed me to be one of the select, an honor like none I shall ever know again. Most of the riders and their dragon companions died before it was over, and a braver group I’ve never met, but the greatest was Huma. He faced Takhisis with only the silver dragon, whose human form he loved dearly, at his side and defeated Takhisis, though it cost him his life.” Kaz shivered. “I arrived as he completed the pact with the Dragonqueen, her freedom for Krynn’s. By then, Huma was almost dead. He asked me to pull the Dragonlance from the goddess’s thrashing body – she wore the form of the five-headed dragon then – and despite my overwhelming fear – fear I still recall to this day – I performed that horrible task because Huma had asked it of me. I don’t think I could have done it for anyone else.”

Sardal waited, but after Kaz had not spoken for several seconds, he prompted, “And?”

The minotaur looked at Sardal with reddened eyes. “And he died, elf! Died before I could get back to him, find help for him! I’d sworn my life to protect his, and I failed him!”

Kaz busied himself with rearranging his equipment. Crystalthorn hesitated and finally, quietly, commented, “I think you find it harder to face your companion’s spirit than you do your own people.”

The minotaur, his things in hand, was already walking in the direction the elf had indicated. His response was low, almost muffled, but Sardal’s sharp ears still made out the single word as the elf moved to catch up.

“Yes.”

*

They had come to a blighted section of the forest. Some of the trees ahead of them were dead, and it reminded the minotaur of the war.

“When I was with Huma,” Kaz was saying, “we thought that all Ansalon must be like this – dead or dying forests and little, if any, wildlife other than carrion crows and other scavengers. It seemed amazing that so many areas had not suffered nearly the damage we thought they had during the war.”

Sardal agreed grimly. “The northern portion of the continent suffered most, but there are areas in every corner of Ansalon that will not be normal for years to come – even in Qualinesti or Silvanesti. Our much vaunted solitude gave us nothing. Men won the war for us, though some remember only that men also fought for the forces of darkness.”

They camped in the forest overnight. Kaz had, at one point, assumed that Sardal was going to lead him along some magic path, but the only magic lay in the fact that only an elf could have ever found this obscure trail.

The night passed without incident – Kaz could scarcely believe it – and the two continued on. They were beyond the point where the minotaur had been thrown into the river, but Kaz paused this day to stare at the rushing water anyway.

“I lost a good comrade here as well.”

“I see no reason why you might not meet up with the kender once more.”

Kaz laughed. “It was not Delbin I was thinking of, though, horrible as it is to admit, I grew used to him. No, elf, I was referring to a strong, loyal horse I’d ridden for five years and never even given a name.” He touched the axe handle. “If some give weapons names, a good steed certainly deserves one.”

“Give him one now.” Sardal smiled. He had never met a minotaur like this!

The minotaur nodded. “When I think of a worthy one.”

They continued on, and early the next day they finally reached the last of the trees. Beyond, the ghost forest began.

“Astra’s Harp!” cursed Sardal. The elf was visibly shaken.

Kaz, meanwhile, found himself caught in the past. Before him stood a nearly dead land, seemingly untouched since the war. He remembered the goblins and the dragons, the piles of dead, and the curses of the ogre and human commanders as they drove the minotaurs forward. The battles gave him a moment of pride, until he recalled that it was Huma’s comrades he had fought much of the time. There had been other battles, this time alongside the Knights of Solamnia, and about those he felt better.

Five years. By now he would have expected to see at least a few tender shoots, a blade of wild grass or two – not this barren deathscape before them.

He heard what sounded like thunder and looked up into the sky, only to understand belatedly what it was he was actually listening to.

“Riders!” Kaz pulled Sardal back.

Some distance away and riding as if the Dragonqueen was on their tail, could be seen a band of knights, twenty, perhaps. As the two watched, the party rode unhesitatingly through the dead forest. They could have only one destination in mind, Kaz knew: Vingaard Keep.

“Those knights come from different outposts and keeps,” the elf commented.

Kaz wondered how he knew and then recalled the tales of how superior the vision of elves was. “They come from different places?”

Sardal nodded. “I was able to glimpse some markings. Each knight has an insignia that represents the keep or outpost he is attached to. Most of the southern forts are represented in that group. It is curious. I am almost tempted to go with you, if I did not have other important matters. …”

The elf quieted, as if he had said too much. Kaz pretended his attention was still totally focused on the vanishing riders. “They should get there days ahead of me. Perhaps the Knights of Solamnia prepare for yet another war.”

“Against whom?”

“I can’t say,” Kaz muttered. “But it would explain in part why they seem to have turned their backs on their people. It may be that the remnants of Takhisis’s armies are gathering together. I could have misjudged them.”

“Do you think so?”

“I won’t know until I get there.” Even to Kaz, the words sounded lacking.

Sardal straightened. “I will leave you, then.” He held out a hand, palm toward the minotaur. “May E’li and Astra guide you – also Kiri-Jolith, who I think would particularly care what happens to you.”

Kiri-Jolith was the god of honorable battle and resembled a man with a bison’s head. Typical of some of the contrary ways of the minotaur race, he was held by some in as high regard as Sargas, Takhisis’s consort, despite the fact that, if they met, the two gods would have fought a battle royal. Kiri-Jolith was E’li’s – Paladine’s – son.

The minotaur returned Sardal’s hand sign, then turned his eyes briefly to the ghostly forest he was about to enter. “I think my easiest route would be to follow the knights. They’ve left me a fairly obvious trail. What do you say, Sardal Crystalthorn?”

When Sardal did not answer, Kaz turned back to where he had last seen the elf. There was no sign of his benefactor, not even a footprint. Kaz knelt down and studied the ground. He could follow his own footprints for as far as he could see, but of Sardal’s, there was no trace. It was if he had never been there.

Kaz grunted and rose. “Elves.”

He turned back to the bleak lands of northern Solamnia, and shouldering his pack so that it would not interfere should he need the services of Honor’s Face, he started walking. Before he was a hundred paces into the wasteland, he became aware of the sudden absence of all the normal sounds of the forest save one – a familiar one from the war.

Somewhere a carrion crow was calling to its brethren. Kaz knew that the only time they cried like that was when a feast was imminent. Somehow the birds were always there when warriors were about to die; then they would perch and wait for the feast.

The minotaur hoped it was not the crows they were expecting.

Chapter 7

Though there were few clouds in the sky, the sun did not shine as brightly in this bleak region. Kaz could not come up with any suitable explanation. Perhaps the entire land suffered under some affliction, or perhaps it would take years for the Dragonqueen’s curse to fade. He only knew that he would be very happy to be away from this land.

Occasionally there were signs of life. The minotaur’s first glimpse of a wild green plant brought him more pleasure than he would have thought possible. Northern Solamnia was not quite a corpse, then. A struggle for existence was going on.

Night came swiftly and, with it, a relief of sorts. In the darkness, most every land looked the same. The dead trees might have been live ones merely waiting for spring to come, although Kaz knew otherwise. The only things missing in the night were the sounds of the forest. Once he did hear a scavenger cry out to the moons. Somehow those creatures always managed to survive in the desolate areas. A few insects made their presence known, but compared to the usual cacophony of night, the forest seemed empty.

Almost empty. As he was bedding down, something huge and incredibly swift flew over him but vanished before he could even look up. Kaz had only the impression of a massive creature with long, wide wings. His first thought was that it was a dragon, until he recalled in irritation that the dragons – all of the dragons – had vanished at the war’s end. The dragons of darkness had been cast out by Huma. The dragons of light had departed voluntarily, so some said, in order to preserve the balance. No one really knew for certain. Whatever the night flier was, it did not return. Unnerved, Kaz ate a modest meal and settled down.

The minotaur slept uneasily that first night. It was not a feeling he could put his finger on. During the night, he tossed and turned. By morning, Kaz had awakened at least seven times, each and every such moment vivid with the expectation that some goblin was about to cut his throat or some ghoulish horror was rising from the dry earth to claim him. Once Kaz dreamed that the dreadwolf was back, its burning, dead eyes staring at him, demanding answers to questions he could not recall, mocking his ideals.

He continued to follow the trail left by the party of knights. Vingaard Keep was their destination; of that, there was no doubt. Judging by the tracks left by their horses, they were continuing at as fast a pace as they could manage. They would arrive in Vingaard several days before Kaz, which suited him perfectly. Kaz wanted no more confrontations before he reached the keep.

The second day gave way to the third, which gave way region – that could destroy so many trained warriors with so little difficulty?

Kaz reached back and pulled his battle-axe free. Cautiously he approached the first of the dead. This one had been crushed to death by the body of a horse as it fell. He was a young knight, a Knight of the Crown, as Huma had been. His sword lay just beyond his twisted hand. The minotaur glanced momentarily at the weapon and then returned his gaze to it when he noticed peculiar marks and abrasions. He reached down and, with his free hand, picked it up.

The sword was chipped, dented, and scratched beyond belief. Kaz had never met a knight who did not pay careful attention to the condition of his equipment. Soldiers in general learned early to take care of their personal possessions, especially their weapons. This sword, however, looked as if the knight had been beating it against a stone wall. And the stone wall had won.

He returned the sword to its rightful owner and moved on. The next knight had fared no better; half of his body lay elsewhere. Kaz snarled and quickly walked past. In the main group, he counted the corpses of sixteen men and eighteen horses. There was some indication that at least a couple of horses had ridden off, but whether there were riders as well as horses that escaped was a question with no foreseeable answer. Kaz found two more bodies beyond the camp, one with his head and helmet squeezed into a single mass and the other wrapped around a tree. All had been dead for at least a day, probably more.

Under other circumstances, the minotaur might have tried to give the knights proper burial. However, that would take far too much time, and it would be just his luck if another band of knights came along while he was in the midst of things. Kaz swore that, at the very worst, he would tell Lord Oswal what he had found. The knighthood would avenge its own, wouldn’t it?

He found another horse and two more bodies half a mile beyond the last ones, plus brand-new sets of prints to the fourth and fifth. Kaz was slowing down. The trail left by the knights avoided any villages, which possibly indicated that the riders were going out of their way to avoid other people. The minotaur dared draw no conclusion just yet.

Just after midday, he saw the birds again. Carrion crows.

By his estimate, there had to be several dozen. He could only make out the ones in flight at first, but as he continued on, Kaz spotted them perched in trees as well. Carrion crows were scavengers, and it was likely that they were feeding on the refuse left by the knights.

Somehow, though, Kaz felt otherwise. His pace quickened. A scent long familiar to him wafted past his widened nostrils. He snorted in open disgust.

Soon the number of birds had grown so great that Kaz began to wonder if they were preparing to attack a living creature such as himself. When he saw the extent of the carnage, however, Kaz knew that they need not be concerned with him.

As far as he could see, no one had been spared. The bodies lay spread out for some distance, as if whatever had killed them had heaved them into the air in every direction. Some of the riders had been torn apart, others crushed. There was blood everywhere, so much blood that even Kaz, who had fought in many violent battles, grew nauseous. Here indeed was a vision out of his worst memories, his worst nightmares. The carnage here was comparable to anything he had ever witnessed or heard tales about. The group hadn’t had a chance against whatever had attacked. From the looks of things, the knights had been caught unaware after bedding down for the night. One victim was mangled in his bedroll.

These were the selfsame knights who had ridden past Kaz and Sardal only days before. Twenty or so men, all dead. Not cut down in battle, but torn apart as if by some huge, ravaging beast, though how could that be possible? What still existed in this region – or any in the dry, dusty soil. These he did not recognize. They were neither human nor horse, but too vague to be identified as anything else.

There were several sets of prints, and it appeared that these intruders had dragged two heavy objects. Kaz had a dawning suspicion of what he might find and quickened his pace, hoping he was not too late already.

In this area, there was little cover save the trees themselves. The minotaur, being as large as he was, had a difficult time concealing himself. Kaz suspected that there was a phalanx of guards around somewhere. Axe in hand, he was forced to crawl through rotting underbrush as he searched. Judging by the prints, there were at least seven or eight members in the group he was following.

A breeze brought the smell of burned meat to his nostrils, causing Kaz to snort in disgust. The smell he recognized as that of horseflesh, a disgusting odor for an even more disgusting meat. The minotaur had survived on such flesh several times during the war, and he had never learned to accept the taste.

With the scent of burning meat came the first snatches of conversation. The group was both amused and wary. They were goblins.

“Stick him again, Krynge!”

“Got nothing to say, shellhead?”

“Feed him to the flames, Krynge, and let us listen to his screams!”

“Naaa. Not till we know there ain’t more coming,” the one known as Krynge called back.

Kaz froze momentarily, feeling an awful sense of displacement. This was beginning to sound too much like his own life, only that time it was the minotaur who had been a prisoner of the goblins. Huma had risked his own life to save his, and Kaz knew he could do no less now.

The memory fled as footsteps warned him of a sentry.

The ugly, squat green creature was dragging a long, slightly bent spear. He was fat, even for a goblin, and probably had been stuck with sentry duty because he was at the bottom of the ranks. He looked ready to take a nap. Kaz began to rise slowly, only too happy to help him on his way.

Obligingly, the goblin sat down on a rock and, with a dark look toward the direction of the camp, began to chew on a piece of old meat, probably from the slaughtered horse. So indifferent to his duty was the lazy creature that Kaz was able to sneak up from behind and, with the flat of his axe, lay him low with one blow. The axe struck with a hard thud, and the goblin’s head snapped forward, burying his six or so chins into his fat chest. The minotaur leaned over and checked the still form, grunting in mild surprise that the blow had broken the creature’s neck, killing him instantly. Kaz had no qualms about it. Under the same circumstances, the goblin would have run him through without hesitation.

The others were still getting their amusement out of the leader’s question-and-answer session with the prisoner. So far, Kaz had heard nothing from the prisoner, and it was possible that the goblin chief had already pushed his prey over the limit. The minotaur’s grip on the axe handle tightened until his knuckles turned white.

Cautiously Kaz circled around the general area of the camp, hoping that he would not crawl right into the scabby arms of another overly zealous guard. But knowing the race as he did, he suspected there would be only one or two at most.

Kaz need not have worried, for the second sentry was no more diligent than the first; this one was asleep. Kaz debated using the axe, but instead he punched him in the jaw. With a surprised but stifled grunt, the goblin rolled over with his face buried in the parched soil. Kaz felt an odd stirring of satisfaction. It was like paying one of his own captors back.

Now came the difficult part. He hazarded a guess, based on the mocking voices, that there were five more. There might be a way to separate them, but would it be too much of a risk?

His decision was made for him.

“I told you not to do that, Skullcracker! You so jumpy, go out and take Mule’s place on guard!”

“But, Krynge …”

“Get going!”

Kaz quietly cursed several gods. He could make out a brutish figure slowly picking his way toward the spot where the minotaur had slain the first guard. Judging by the goblin’s turtlelike speed, Kaz had a few minutes, but no more. Right now, the goblins were relaxed, off guard. …

Off guard?

There might have been better ways, and had the situation been different, he might have thought of a better plan. Still, in his opinion, it was always the simple plan that was best.

Kaz continued on in the same direction. The path would take him farther around the camp and almost opposite where the first guard had been killed. In one thing, the minotaur had been correct; the goblins, not really expecting any trouble, had posted only two guards. Had there been a third, there might have been more trouble.

His movements brought him very, very near the goblins themselves. He also managed to get his first glimpse of the prisoner.

The prisoner was, of course, a Knight of Solamnia. He was staked to the ground, and some of his armor had been torn away and tossed to one side, but there was no doubting that he was a knight. His condition was questionable. Kaz tightened his grip on the axe and raised himself up into a crouch.

“Krynge!” Skullcracker shouted from the opposite side of the camp.

The five goblins – Kaz cursed his miscount – turned as one. The leader, Krynge, a bulky goblin carrying a barbed spear, took a few steps in the direction the other had gone. The rest began to follow.

Kaz burst from his hiding place. He gave no war cry, merely shouting “Goblins!” just as he reached the first of them.

His opponent had only enough time to stare goggle-eyed before the minotaur’s axe sliced through his sword arm. The creature shrieked and dropped to his knees in a bizarre attempt to catch the falling limb. Kaz turned from him and took on the next. This one was slightly better prepared and met him with a heavy club. Unfortunately for the goblin, his eagerness proved a great mistake, and Kaz brought the axe down into his chest, splitting him open. His adversary fell backward, dead before he touched the ground.

Now the minotaur found himself confronting three goblins, one of whom had a spear.

Krynge poked at Kaz with his spear. The other two goblins carried different weapons. Reach was on the side of Kaz, however.

The lead goblin seemed to realize this, for he waved at the other two, indicating that they should encircle their attacker.

The one called Skullcracker appeared in the distance. Kaz knew that he would not survive four-against-one, especially since Skullcracker carried an axe almost as large as his. The minotaur glanced around. The weak point in the trio before him was the goblin who carried the club. This one seemed to be more hesitant.

Kaz feinted toward Krynge, who stumbled back a few steps. The other two moved in, thinking to take advantage of his nearness, but Kaz twisted out of the reach of the sword and turned the downward arc of his swing into an attack to his opponent’s left side. Completely caught by surprise, the goblin could only manage a feeble defense with his club and was felled by a slice that almost cut him in two.

However, Kaz had underestimated the leader, Krynge. After backing up, the goblin immediately moved in again. Before the minotaur could dodge, the tip of the barbed spear caught him in the shoulder. The upper barbs hooked his flesh, and for a brief moment, Kaz was certain his arm was going to be pulled off. His hold on the dwarven battle-axe nearly slipped, but he knew that would be the death of him. Ignoring the agony, he rolled to his left.

The chieftain tore the spear away, taking a good portion of the minotaur’s shoulder with it. By now, Skullcracker was near enough to be a threat, and Kaz surmised that his odds had gotten no better and perhaps worse. The pain of the wound coursed through his entire body. But he gritted his teeth and managed to hold the goblins off with a mad swing that nearly knocked the axe from Skullcracker’s hands.

It was the spear that was proving the stumbling block. Kaz had a reach advantage over the other two attackers, but Krynge’s spear was at least as long as the minotaur, and the goblin knew how to wield it. Even if the chieftain did not make a direct strike, the barbs on that weapon would still catch and tear. …

They were slowly forcing him back, and the pain in his shoulder was breaking his concentration. The goblin with the sword almost got under his guard, but a quick twist of the axe sent him scurrying back. Unfortunately, Kaz lost more ground. Eventually, he knew, they would run him into a tree and ring him tightly until he tired. It was what he would have done in their position.

With time running out, Kaz suddenly raised the gleaming battle-axe over his head and, with a Solamnic war cry that startled his foes, charged forward.

The goblins with the axe and the sword instinctively stepped back, fully aware that in both strength and reach they were at a disadvantage. Krynge, however, moved to meet Kaz, secure in the belief that his spear would enable him to blunt the mad assault. He would have been correct if, as he assumed, Kaz was trying to strike him.

The axe came down in a long arc. One edge hooked on the barbs of the spear. Krynge realized what was happening, but it was too late. Summoning strength that no goblin could hope to match, the minotaur used his weapon to rip the spear from the hapless goblin’s claws. The spear went clattering to the ground behind Kaz.

Krynge, now unarmed, did the intelligent thing and backed away, desperately seeking some other weapon. The goblin with the sword, knowing full well the inevitable outcome of a duel with a minotaur – sword against an expertly wielded axe – turned and fled. Krynge shouted something venomous at his retreating form, then decided to follow. Skullcracker, out of either sheer stubbornness or madness, lunged at Kaz. His reach was shorter than the minotaur’s, and he swung wildly. While the goblin was still following through with his attack, Kaz swung at his unprotected torso.

Skullcracker spun around once from the momentum of his own swing and then collapsed on the soil, a deep hole in his chest releasing his life’s fluids.

Kaz wiped the axe blades clean and, confident that neither of the two survivors would return to bother him, turned his attention to the prisoner.

Huma stared back at him.

The minotaur blinked and found himself meeting the worn gaze of a face that now looked nothing like his legendary comrade. This one was older, in years if not experience, with a slightly rounded nose and one of the great mustaches common among the knighthood. His hair was light and not quite blond, something that might change if the dirt and blood were washed out of it.

The man’s lips were cracked, and Kaz knew that he had not had a drop of water to drink for some time. He undid his water sack and brought it to the mouth of the knight. Despite a look of distrust that flashed over the human’s features, the knight drank steadily.

Kaz pulled a knife from his belt and freed the knight’s hands and feet.

“I … will tell … nothing, monster!” the man gasped.

Kaz snorted. “You have nothing to worry about from me, Knight of Solamnia. I am no friend of goblins, as you can plainly see. I follow Paladine and Kiri-Jolith, not Sargas or his dark mistress.”

The man’s eyes revealed that he was not quite convinced, but he understood that, at least in Kaz’s hands, he would be treated better.

The knight could barely move at the moment. Kneeling, Kaz did what he could to make him more comfortable. From his cursory examination, he saw that there were bruises aplenty, and the armor on the human’s right leg looked bent and twisted, indicating a broken leg. He wished the healer, Tesela, was accompanying him still.

As he did his best to soothe and bind the injuries, Kaz tried to convince the knight of his safety.

“I am called Kaz. You are a Knight of the Crown, I see.” He pointed at the battered remains of the human’s helmet and breastplate. There were odd marks, like those made by giant talons, across the breastplate. “You are also from an outpost near southern Ergoth, I see. I briefly knew someone from another outpost in Ergoth itself. Buoron?”

The knight shook his head carefully. Kaz shrugged. Buoron had been a good knight, in some ways like Huma, who had died in the first battle utilizing the Dragonlances. The minotaur had known Buoron only briefly but had found him trustworthy and brave.

Kaz shifted, aware that his new companion was speaking. The man’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Darius. My name is Darius. You said … Kaz?”

“I did.”

Darius pointed a feeble finger at the minotaur. “You are … the one wanted by … the Grand Master.”

The minotaur laughed bitterly. “And do you plan to capture me for him?”

The knight shook his head weakly from side to side. “Not … after what … we have heard. All commands are … suspect.”

“Suspect?”

“We were coming to … present our grievances. Our first messenger … did not return. His name appeared on a … proclamation. The same as you.”

“Indeed. And now your companions have been conveniently massacred by goblins.” Kaz shook his head. “I’ve come not to believe in coincidence.”

Darius somehow succeeded in looking even more pale than before. “All dead?”

The minotaur nodded. “I believe so. I’m sorry, human. I have counted some good knights among my friends in the past. …”

“All dead …” The injured knight was babbling. He tried to rise.

Kaz held him down. “You’ll kill yourself if you don’t rest! I’m no healer, knight, and your injuries are going to be a part of you for some time, so relax!”

Even well, Darius would have been no match for Kaz. He settled back down, and the minotaur quickly checked him over again. It was always difficult to tell. There might be internal damage. …

“It killed them all,” the knight whispered, half-unconscious due to the strain of his own outburst.

“What?” Kaz froze. He looked at Darius, but the knight was nearly asleep. “What do you mean, ‘it’? The goblins did this, didn’t they?”

The knight’s eyes flickered open, but they looked beyond the minotaur. “Not the … the goblins. They found me … after it threw me. I was lucky; it … it seemed anxious to leave. Paladine! Its skin was as hard as stone! The wings! They —”

“Wings?” Kaz shivered, recalling the thing that had flown over his head one night. He had been that close to it! “What sort of beast was it?”

Darius succeeded in focusing on his benefactor. “Not a beast … not exactly. The lords of the earth. The children of light and darkness.”

The litany was familiar to Kaz, something that he had heard countless times during his life. It was how some ancient bard had described … No!

“You can’t be saying” — Kaz forced the words out — “a dragon?”

Darius grimaced as pain shot through him. “A dragon, minotaur – or something akin to a dragon! Something with huge claws, sky-encompassing wings, and jaws big enough to swallow a whole man!” The knight’s face clouded over. “But … but it left their bodies … what it hadn’t torn apart. I don’t understand. It was and it wasn’t a dragon.”

Chapter 8

Feeling the lancing pain in shoulder, Kaz lifted the gruesome burden he was carrying. With the utmost care, he placed the body of the last of Darius’s dead comrades in the makeshift funeral pyre. The injured knight watched from a distance, his back against a gnarled tree. Darius lacked any strength for the task he kept insisting must be done. It was unthinkable to leave the bodies of so many brave men to scavengers like the carrion crows or, worse, goblins. Kaz had used up an entire day for this business, but he knew that Darius would not have moved on without giving his comrades a proper burial, even if he could.

There had been no further signs of the goblins. Kaz doubted they would be back, but he kept careful watch nonetheless.

The knight, more coherent than yesterday, still insisted that his band had been attacked by a dragon or something very similar. Kaz could not get the thought out of his mind. Everyone knew that all the dragons had disappeared.

“Your wound needs binding again, Kaz,” the knight pointed out. “You don’t want dust getting into the wound.”

Grunting, Kaz squatted down next to his companion and let Darius do what he could for the binding. It was the only thing the knight could do in his present condition, and the minotaur knew that he desperately wanted to be useful.

“I thank you.”

Kaz grunted. “I doubt I would’ve left your companions’ bodies after all. I would’ve never forgiven myself, I think.”

Though it was past noon, as well as one could tell in the overcast sky, there was a chill in the air uncommon for this time of year. The fire was to prove doubly useful. The knight needed the warmth, and Kaz needed something with which to light the pyre.

The minotaur rose and reached for the dry branch he had set aside for this purpose.

“Are there any words you wish to say?” he asked as he lit the branch.

Darius shook his head. “I said what needed to be said as you gathered the dead.”

Kaz nodded and grimly stepped toward the pyre.

*

It started to rain just at the point when it became apparent that the fire had served its purpose. Kaz had calculated that the fire would burn itself out, but the rain allowed him to forego keeping an eye on it. By the time the last flame had perished, the rain had ceased.

“Praise be to Paladine,” a somewhat damp Darius said quietly. He held out his hand to Kaz, an indication that he wanted to stand, and the minotaur helped him to his feet. “We should go now,” the knight said.

“Don’t you think we should wait until tomorrow? The rest can only help you.”

A look of pain crossed the knight’s pale face. “I fear that I have some wounds that only a cleric of Paladine or Mishakal can cure properly. I don’t know about the latter, but Vingaard Keep’s lords have always included the former.”

Kaz disliked the thought of depending on anyone in Vingaard Keep for such aid, but he could not think of any better plan. Perhaps they would come across another cleric of Mishakal on their way to the stronghold of the knighthood. There certainly had to be some call for clerics in this desolate region. Someone had to be helping the villagers if the keep was not.

“We don’t know what goes on at the keep now.”

“But we will,” Darius said with the imperious tone that Kaz recalled as being typical of many knights. Even Huma had adopted it now and then. It was the expression of someone who believes his cause is just and, therefore, one that will prevail.

With the crude, wooden staff that Kaz had made for him in one hand, the knight leaned against the minotaur. Kaz put an arm around his companion, and in this way, they started their journey together. It was awkward going, but they made progress.

The first village that Kaz had seen in some time peeked over the horizon near evening. Neither the minotaur nor the knight were familiar with this region, though both knew that Vingaard could only be two or three days ahead. Whether or not they should continue on to the village this very evening was a question.

Darius wanted to avoid the village entirely. He reminded Kaz that they were well within the range of Vingaard’s patrols, and that there was still a bounty on the minotaur. “One sword stroke and you will never live to tell your side.”

“I don’t think I have to remind you, Darius of the Crown, that you are badly injured. We can feel fortunate that you haven’t collapsed by now.”

“I will do no such thing.”

Kaz snorted wryly. “Even noble Solamnic knights have their physical limits. There may be a healer in the village, and I have yet to see a sign of a Solamnic patrol.”

That bothered Kaz. When he had been in the general area last, the knighthood had patrolled the land with consistency. They ranged for miles around, far beyond the location where Darius and his fellows from the south had been mauled by the supposed dragon. Yet not only had that massacre gone unnoticed, but also goblins seemed to be wandering freely about in fair-sized bands.

What was happening at the keep? What was happening to Grand Master Oswal and his ambitious nephew, Bennett?

Darius was talking. “The decision is yours, minotaur. I do not claim a clear mind at the moment.”

Studying the young knight’s sickly visage, Kaz knew that Darius was understating his condition. That settled the situation as far as he was concerned.

“A few minutes of rest and then we move on. If there’s a healer in that village, Darius, or even someone with more skill than I at cleaning and rebinding wounds, you will be taken care of immediately, or they’ll learn how angry a minotaur can become.” At the knight’s anxious expression, Kaz smiled widely, displaying all of his teeth. “Rest easy, Darius. I’ll only frighten them.”

Though not entirely reassured, the human let himself be led along. The village proved to be nearer than they first thought. It was only a little after dark before they reached it. Most of the buildings were in sore need of repair, and refuse lay rotting in the streets. The place stank of unwashed bodies, yet mysteriously there seemed to be no one about. Kaz would have been of the opinion that the village was abandoned had he not noticed a dim light down the path. Their route, which ran through the center of the settlement, led directly to it.

“I see an inn,” Kaz whispered. Darius nodded wearily.

As they followed the path, the minotaur became aware of the fact that, though the village seemed deserted, unseen eyes watched from virtually every building. With his free hand, he began to softly stroke the handle of his battle-axe. Next to him, he felt the knight tense. As injured and beaten as he was, Darius, too, felt the presence of watchers.

Whatever name the inn once bore, it had faded away so badly that the sign was unreadable in the torchlight. Kaz hesitated only long enough to assure himself of his grip on his companion, then pushed the door open. Without waiting for any reaction from those who might be inside, he stepped through, Darius practically dragged along by his momentum.

“I come in peace,” he announced in a stentorian voice – and immediately thereafter blinked, noticing that there were only three figures in the room, and one of them was lying on a nearby table in a position indicative of death. The other two figures were known to him, which provoked a surprised expression on his face.

“Kaz!” A nimble little figure rushed forward and hugged the minotaur.

“I’m very much alive, Delbin, but you won’t be for very long if you don’t let go!”

The kender leaped back, that omnipresent grin aimed at the huge figure he had thought was dead and gone. “It’s good to see you, Kaz! How did you survive? The minotaurs abandoned us when they saw you get washed down the river, and I guess they went to claim your body, but Tesela thought that they would never find it because the river becomes really deep and wild a little farther south. In fact, if we ever get down that way I wouldn’t mind —”

“Take a breath, Delbin,” the little one’s companion said in amusement. Tesela, a beatific smile across her face, moved away from the prone figure and greeted the minotaur. “We searched for you ourselves for a few days, then the kender said that he had to journey to Vingaard to speak for you, since if you were dead, then you would never be able to complete your quest.”

Kaz, brow creased in puzzlement, glanced at Delbin. The kender, suddenly shy and speechless, mumbled, “You’re my friend, Kaz.”

Despite himself, the minotaur gave his small companion a short, encouraging smile. Delbin beamed.

“I was traveling in this direction anyway, so I stayed with him.” Tesela eyed the kender. “Aside from a few occasions where people’s belongings somehow ended up in his pouch, things went without incident, praise to Mishakal.” For the first time, her glance fell directly on Darius, who tried in vain to bow. Tesela’s expression turned to one of great concern.

“Get him over there,” she said, pointing at another table. “Forgive me, knight, for being so preoccupied that I did not notice the extent of your wounds.”

“I take … n-no offense, cleric, but what about … that other?” Darius gasped as they helped him onto the table. “Milady, continue with him, please. I can wait.”

Tesela looked sadly at the other man, a haggard old beggar. His hands were clasped across his chest. “He is beyond my powers, Knight of Solamnia. He was beyond my powers when he came to me, the poor, frightened man.”

“Frightened?” Kaz asked, his eyes on the corpse.

“Frightened.” Tesela began removing the battered remnants of Darius’s armor. “You actually walked around in this pile of scrap?”

The knight looked both embarrassed and insulted. “This suit is almost all I have in the world and the only remembrance of my family. Our estate is now as barren as these lands, and I am the only one to survive the war.” He swallowed hard. “Until my companions and I were attacked, it served me quite well.”

The cleric inspected some of the wounds. She touched her patient near the lower left ribs, and Darius cried out. “By the Three, woman! Do you intend that I join the old beggar in the beyond?”

“I have to know a bit about what is hurting you before I pray to Mishakal,” she snapped. “Mishakal trusts her clerics to know what they are doing, so you had better let me continue. Depending on your injuries, I may have to pray over you for as much as a full day, although I doubt you are that badly off. And Mishakal also does not give something for nothing. She is not to be taken for granted, knight.”

“I apologize, milady.”

Kaz leaned over and looked at Tesela. “Is there anything that I can do?”

She glanced up at him. “You might get something to drink for yourself, and then take a rest. I don’t doubt you’ve taken most of the burden today.”

The minotaur looked around. “Where is the innkeeper?”

“Gone. At least a week. I doubt he’ll ever come back. People do that here, I’m told. Just walk off and leave everything. I guess even these souls have a breaking point.”

“What do you mean?”

She took her medallion in her hands. “I’ll tell you later. If both you and Delbin wouldn’t mind stepping into another room, it should make my task easier.”

Kaz grunted assent and walked over to the counter, Delbin trailing behind. The kender had remained silent for too long. Now he was brimming over with questions.

“What happened to the knight, Kaz? Did you meet any other people? It seems that everyone fears strangers, especially knights. No one’s gone near the keep for weeks, they say. Why d’ya suppose that is?”

The kender quieted momentarily as Kaz handed him a mug of something drawn from a barrel under the counter. They both drank a deep draft, then grimaced at the sour taste.

“Bad,” Kaz muttered and put the mug down. He pulled out his water pouch and drank from it. The water, which came from a stream he and Darius had passed earlier in the day, was brackish, but it still tasted better than the unidentifiable liquid from the barrel.

“The people, Delbin – I sense their presence. They watched as we walked by. I felt it. They are frightened of something.”

“Tesela says they are, and she oughta know, because they’re surely afraid of her. That old man was only the third one to come to her since we arrived here five days ago. Death was ready to claim him, Tesela said. He was afraid she would demand payment or hard labor from him before doing any healing. He was also afraid she might send him away or beat him like —” Delbin hesitated and looked over toward the room where Darius lay — “like one of the knights had already done.”

“What?” Kaz cursed silently. “Come in here with me,” he added, indicating a door that probably led to a back room for storage.

Such was the case. Kaz found a box that smelled slightly of rotting oak and sat on it. It creaked but held. Delbin found a small stool and planted himself with great eagerness.

“Go on,” Kaz said grimly.

Delbin’s story confirmed the rumors the minotaur had been hearing. In this territory, the knighthood’s actions had grown to resemble the very cruelties that had led its founder, Vinas Solamnus, to turn on his master, the emperor of Ergoth. Solamnia now faced ruin and panic. The knights of Vingaard Keep, heart of the Orders, no longer even pretended to patrol the land, and now goblins and other vultures were stealing into the area to raid those too weak or too listless to defend themselves.

“This is madness; this is evil,” Kaz whispered angrily.

Delbin cocked his head. “Are you still going to Vingaard Keep? It could be dangerous, but if you go, I’m going, too, because I was worried about you, and when I thought you’d died, it was awful. Don’t you dare die for a while, promise? Say, I should write down what happened to you!”

The kender reached into his pouch and pulled out something out that in no way resembled his cherished book, although it was made of paper. It was a scroll, to be precise.

“Hmmph! Look at this! It’s got funny writing on it, Kaz – and it mentions you!”

“Let me see!” Kaz tore the paper from the kender’s hands and read the scroll. “My name’s on it. ‘… has been found guilty of the dishonorable and heinous crime of murder, and thus, by order of the emperor’s council, this oath breaker is proclaimed criminal in all lands. Those who bear this document are servants of the emperor of the minotaur race and have been granted whatever power necessary to obtain the capture or execution, if necessary, of the murderer. Cooperation with the bearers of this proclamation is requested.’ Very polite and formal.” The minotaur crumpled up the paper in a sudden rush of fury and threw it at his companion. “‘Emperor’! An ogre toadie still clinging to power! How did you get this, Delbin?”

The kender’s eyes grew wide. “That’s what I wanted to tell you! The short minotaur, the leader – remember how he threw the spear?”

“I could hardly forget, Delbin.” Kaz frowned. “Only, I remember something else. They seemed to be fighting amongst themselves. …”

Nodding in excitement, Delbin cut him off. “That’s right, Kaz! One of the other ones came up behind him, and when he saw what the shorter one had done, he hit him hard. They fought, and another of your people, I guess it was a female, stood nearby watching. The shorter one had a knife, and he tried to cut the bigger one’s throat with it, but the bigger one finally got his arm around the shorter one’s neck and twisted his head. I guess he broke his neck. The female, she came over and helped him throw the body into the river, and then they ran off together into the woods. A little later, I found a nifty-looking pack on the riverbank, and I thought it was yours, only there was nothing in it but some food and that scroll. I guess I forgot all about it till now.”

A fight among his relentless pursuers? A fight that left Greel dead? Curious.

A loud crash from the front of the inn brought Kaz to his feet. He burst into the main room and saw Tesela moving toward the door. One of the windows, which previously had been shuttered, had been broken open by a large and very heavy rock.

“What happened here?” the minotaur demanded.

“I think that the townspeople want your companion,” the cleric said quietly, indicating the unconscious Darius. “The knights are not loved here.”

“We have to stay the night, healer.”

“I know.” She glanced outside, but there was no one there. Closing the door again, Tesela walked over to the window and managed to fix the shutters. “I need more time with him. Why don’t you two get some sleep? We’re safe. I don’t think these terrified villagers can cause much trouble, other than throwing a few stones and running away.” She glanced at Kaz. “All the same, I think we should be away from here before sunrise.”

“Agreed.” Kaz watched her return to her meditations. Grabbing a curious Delbin by the scruff of his collar, he retired to the far end of the room. Kaz deposited the kender on one bench and, after removing his axe from its harness, stretched out on another bench nearby. He closed his eyes just as the kender decided he could remain silent no longer.

“Where’d you get that neat axe?” Delbin whispered. “Is it of dwarven make? How come it shines so brightly? I bet it’s magic! Who gave it to you? Or did you win it in a fight?”

The prattle went on and on until the kender looked more closely at his friend and decided that Kaz had fallen asleep. Delbin itched to see what Tesela was doing or to explore the village outside, but he had promised the human that he would behave himself, and now Kaz was here and he would expect only the best of his small companion. … The kender fell asleep only seconds later, snoring lightly.

Kaz opened his eyes a fraction. Delbin could be predictable at times, and the minotaur knew the kender must have been exhausted. Carefully Kaz’s fingers stroked the handle of the battle-axe. Tesela might think they need fear little from the locals, but Kaz had learned that even the most apathetic group could be turned into an angry mob in an instant if given an excuse to vent their frustrations.

Closing his eyes slowly, Kaz allowed himself to fall into a half-sleep. All around, he could sense something happening, but at the same time, he could not discern what it was. It was a respite of sorts, therefore, but not a restful sleep. There would be time for real sleep when the matters of Solamnia, Vingaard, and his own dilemma were settled.

*

Kaz woke with a start as he detected the sounds of a pair of feet moving lightly across the inn floor. Kaz gripped the axe and raised his eyelids a crack. The healer was standing by the inn’s entrance. She seemed to be looking for someone or something outside. Kaz rose slowly and, without disturbing Delbin, joined her. In one huge, clawed hand he held the axe.

“Did you hear something?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t … know. It might have been just the wind, but …” Tesela had lost her mask of confidence, and once more she seemed to be an ordinary, frightened person. She had probably heard nothing more than one of the locals daring to spy on them. Probably …

Something heavy bounced off the roof of the inn, shaking it to its foundation. Delbin rose, blinking. Outside, a violent wind tore objects loose. There was another sound, but the howl of the wind rose to smother it.

“What’s happening out there?” Kaz snarled.

“What is it, Kaz? Is some kind of tornado? Do you think it’ll tear the inn down, and if it does, shouldn’t we get out of here before —”

“Take a breath, Delbin,” Kaz muttered automatically. He nudged Tesela aside and peered out into the gloom. It was still not yet dawn, but the moons were not visible, either.

Somewhere nearby, Kaz heard the crash of wood and a very human scream. Tightening his grip on his battle-axe, he tore out of the inn and followed the dying arc of the noise. Around him, he could hear the inhabitants of the village as they scurried to cower in their homes.

“Fools! Cowards! One of your own is dying!” His words had no effect. These people had little spirit.

Kaz stumbled. A building that had suffered a mysterious disaster was suddenly before him … as was something else, something very large, very powerful, and very vicious.

The thing that was in the process of reducing the building to splinters rose, revealing itself to be more than twice the minotaur’s height. As Kaz retreated hastily, he heard a beating noise, identical to the flapping that had passed over him days earlier – the beast, he had no reason to doubt, that had killed an entire band of knights save one.

The beating of the wings was in his ears, and Kaz knew the creature was practically right on top of him. If he was to die a victim of a dragon, if a dragon was what it truly was, then the minotaur wouldn’t die without striking at least one great blow.

Even as Kaz whirled, his dwarven axe swinging in a vicious arc, massive talons passed over his head, missing by mere inches. The skillfully crafted battle-axe struck harshly against the flank of the behemoth and bounced off with a loud ringing sound. Kaz stumbled around, waiting for the next attack, but it never came. The creature was flying away as if Kaz were nothing but a momentary obstacle.

Kaz felt the edge of the axe head. It was chipped.

“Come back here, dragon … or whatever pit-spawned creature you are! Face me!” What the inhabitants of the village might think, he did not care. He only knew that he wanted that thing.

It did not return, but Kaz realized that the monster, dragon, or whatever it was had come from the north and now was returning in that direction. If it kept to its present path, it would fly over Vingaard Keep itself. …

Kaz cursed and swung the damaged axe into its harness. Ignoring the whispers and whimpers rising from within the various houses and huts, he rushed back toward the inn. Whether alone or not, he knew that he had to reach Vingaard as soon as possible. Vingaard Keep was the key to everything. There he would find the answers he was seeking …

… and possibly a dragon as well.

Chapter 9

Kaz burst through the doorway of the inn, looking much like a demon from the Abyss. Delbin gave a squeak, and Tesela’s hands clutched tightly around the medallion she wore. Darius still slept, but he seemed to twitch momentarily as the minotaur strode over to the human cleric.

“You have a horse, Tesela. Can it carry me?”

“Carry you? Why?”

If Kaz could have seen himself, he might have hesitated, for the cleric and the kender gazed upon the frenzied eyes of a berserker. His eyes said he would accept only one answer, regardless of the consequences.

“Can … it … carry … me?” he repeated through clenched teeth.

Tesela nodded, pale. “I – I think she should be strong enough, but —”

“Where is it?”

“Around back! Kaz …”

He was through the inn and out the back door in seconds. Tesela’s horse was tied up next to Delbin’s pony. Both animals were nervous, and it took a little doing to get the cleric’s mount to hold still long enough for him to mount. Kaz climbed into the saddle – and abruptly fell off as the horse sat down.

“Sargas take you, you blasted beast! Stand up!”

The horse refused to do so. Kaz tried to pull it to its feet, but the animal’s front hooves dug into the ground, and the minotaur only succeeded in losing his grip and slipping to one knee.

“Kaz!” Tesela came rushing out. “Stop that!”

“Is this thing part mule?” Kaz grumbled. He was certain the horse was mocking him.

Tesela laughed nervously. “I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. She only lets me ride her.”

Kaz muttered something and rose to his feet. “Is there a stable? Where can I find another horse?”

“You won’t find anything here. These people don’t have any horses.”

“Kiri-Jolith’s horns, human! I have to get to Vingaard Keep!”

Folding her arms, Tesela said with authority, “Then you will wait until we are ready to go. You cannot go alone, Kaz, and we will not let you. Give me a chance to see if the knight is healed, and then we will prepare to depart this place together. It will mean a much slower pace, I’m afraid, but you can put that time to good use thinking about what you intend to do once we arrive. I mean really think about it.”

He let out a great breath. “You confuse me, cleric. You are so contradictory at times.”

She smiled slowly and moved to take the horse’s reins from him. “You should try dealing with a minotaur.”

Kaz nodded slowly, thinking to himself that she might have a point.

*

Darius was awake and feeling much, much better. He stared at his hands, flexed his arms and legs, and stood. “Praise Paladine!”

“And Mishakal,” Tesela reminded him.

“And Mishakal, of course. My thanks, cleric.” He bowed nervously to her and she reddened a bit.

“Does this mean we can go?” Kaz asked impatiently. He was happy for the knight – no warrior likes to be helpless – but each second of delay tore at him, especially since he knew that they only had two mounts for four people and would have to travel at a slow pace.

The knight forced his eyes away from Tesela. “Go where?”

“To Vingaard Keep, of course. Your dragon was here only a short time ago, and now I think it flies in the direction of the keep itself.”

“The dragon?” exclaimed Darius. “Attacking Vingaard! We have to leave!”

“What can you possibly do that all the knights in Vingaard could not do?” Tesela asked.

“That is not the point, milady! I am a knight —”

“Who should know better than to go rushing into battle —” she glanced at Kaz — “like a minotaur. You might try putting on whatever still remains of your armor. The sword would come in handy as well.”

It didn’t take long for the group to ready itself. Only Darius really had any difficulty, and that was due to some of the dents and bends in his armor. Kaz helped there, taking some of the pieces and utilizing his astounding strength to straighten them out as best as possible. The knight, who had never fought a minotaur, automatically uttered an oath to Paladine. Tesela shook her head in amazement. Delbin, who had seen Kaz do similar things in the past, tried to tell everyone about each and every such incident. By unanimous consent, he was told to take a deep breath and get the horses ready.

They departed the village – none of them had ever discovered its name – just as the first sunlight spilled over the horizon. Kaz had little hope that they would actually have a sunlit day. Beyond a certain point in the morning, the orb would find itself hidden behind a thick mass of clouds. This weather was not right, the minotaur knew. It reminded him too much of the war and of the lands about to fall to the servants of Takhisis. Where evil ruled, the sun rarely shone, it was said, and evil could not prevail in Solamnia. Not in the homeland of Paladine’s earthly champions.

Could it?

Kaz buried the thought deep in his mind as they traveled. Vingaard Keep would be visible before day’s end. He would have his answers soon enough.

The trek was hardest on Darius, though not because of his injuries. Those the power of Mishakal had healed completely. Rather, it was the land itself that seemed to affect the knight. Like so many others, he had expected Solamnia to be well on its way to recovery by now. This – this was a wasteland.

“How do so many survive here?” he asked Kaz in horror. “How do they survive?”

“The land’s not completely dead, human, but I agree it must be near impossible.”

No goblins harried them; no dragon or other beast swooped down to throw them about like toys. The day would have actually been pleasant, if not for the specter of the land itself. Kaz noted that Tesela constantly fingered her medallion. Thinking of Delbin, Kaz glanced at the small figure perched atop the pony next to him. Delbin was growing very moody, an odd reaction for one of his kind. Kender were habitually cheerful. Kaz thought of asking his companion what was worrying him. The thought of a kender trying to explain such a complicated emotion made him hesitate, however, and the matter slipped away.

With the early evening came a distant, mist-enshrouded surprise.

Darius was the first to recognize it as more than just another indistinct speck on the horizon. Only he made the connection between where they were and the relative size of the thing.

The one word he uttered was barely more than a whisper. “Vingaard!”

Kaz narrowed his eyes and tried to make out anything more than a blur. “Are you certain?”

“What else could it be?”

“True.” Even though they had made far better time than Kaz would have thought possible, the citadel of the Knights of Solamnia was still a goal they would not reach until tomorrow. Kaz hated the thought of stopping when they were so close, but reminded himself that this land had both goblins and some great unnamed beast wandering about. Let the enemy come to them. Better that than walking into an ambush. Besides, although they had not as yet seen any Solamnic patrols, who was to say there was not one nearby even now?

It was an uneasy group that made camp that night. Both Kaz and Darius searched the skies continuously. Delbin, as moody as before, fell asleep almost immediately after finishing his meal. Tesela, having slept the least the night before, soon joined him.

Darius offered to take first watch. Kaz argued with him briefly, but gave in. It turned out not to matter very much. Neither one could sleep well that night, and each spent the other’s watch period waiting impatiently for the dawn.

The night was so uneventful that Kaz had to wonder if he, too, should carry a blank book, much like Delbin’s, to record such rare nights. Yet despite the calm of the evening, the minotaur rose at dawn with such anxiety that his hands were quivering in anticipation of … what? He could not say for certain. It was the same feeling that had been growing inside him for days. He both needed and loathed the impending confrontation with Lord Oswal.

They passed a few more poor settlements where ragged people lived phantom existences. One or two hardy souls cursed at them, but no one attempted to do them any harm. Kaz could not say what disturbed them more, his presence or that of the knight, Darius. It was apparently evident to Darius as well that some of the folk were glaring at him. He gave Kaz an agonized look. For one who had decided to devote his existence to the glory of Paladine, this was a slap in the face. The Knights of Solamnia were supposed to be the benefactors of the people, not their cursed enemies.

Vingaard Keep grew ever larger on the horizon, seeming to take on a slightly different form as they neared. There was something ominous about its appearance, not to mention the fact that they still had not been intercepted by a single patrol. Such a thing was unheard of. Kaz began to fiddle with his axe, eventually pulling it out of the harness completely. He noted that Darius had his hand on his sword, and even Delbin stroked one of the daggers he wore. Tesela, weaponless, was muttering prayers under her breath.

“The banners are missing,” Darius pointed out.

Kaz shrugged. “Perhaps they only lie limp because of the lack of wind.”

It was true. There was no wind, no sound. Even the chatter of the carrion crows would have been preferable to the oppressive silence overhanging the land.

They passed more buildings, some of which showed signs of needing repair, but all were empty. It was as if the people had simply abandoned them.

“No one wants to live too near Vingaard Keep, it seems,” Kaz grumbled.

In some places, attempts at farming caught their eyes. Sad-looking cornstalks, no higher than Delbin, and wild patches of oats dotted the landscape. Being so close to the knighthood, this area had gone the farthest toward recuperation. Had something not occurred to bring that revitalization to a halt, there might have been tall fields by now.

“Will we have any trouble gaining entrance at the gates?” Tesela asked Darius.

Kaz, who had been wondering the same thing, stared at the gates. He blinked, thinking that his eyes played tricks. The vision did not change. He snorted in puzzlement. “I don’t think we need worry about being barred from entering.”

“Why is that?”

They were now close enough that Vingaard could be given more scrutiny. Kaz pointed at the gates. “Unless I miss my guess, the gates are already partially open.”

Darius froze in his tracks and squinted. It was true; even from here, it was possible to tell that the gates stood wide open.

“Impossible!” the knight muttered. “This is a dereliction of duty!”

“It may be more than that,” Kaz grunted. “It may be much more than that.”

Their pace had been as swift as possible, considering that two of their members had to walk. Now, however, the group slowed, uneasy about the odd signs. Tesela brought up another observation, one that they had all noticed, but feared to mention.

“Where are the sentries, Darius? Where are all the knights? Shouldn’t this place be brimming with activity?”

The knight nodded uneasily. “It should, but it may be that they are in a war situation somewhere, or perhaps they are at prayer.”

Neither of his suggestions satisfied anyone in the least. Vingaard continued to loom. Its walls seemed impossibly high and long. There were slits for archers, but little else marked the walls. The two massive doors, more than twice the height of Kaz, were the only decorated parts that they could see. They were each emblazoned with the symbol of the knighthood, the majestic kingfisher that stood, wings outstretched, holding a sword in its talons. A rose was centered on the sword, and a great crown seemed to float above the kingfisher’s head.

“I see someone!” Delbin suddenly cried, lifting himself up and down in his saddle and pointing in the direction of the battlements of the keep, much to the annoyance of his tired pony.

The other three all looked up but saw no one. Kaz turned and glared at the kender. Delbin shook his head in protest. “I did see someone, Kaz. I think it was a knight; that is, he wore armor, and who else but a knight would be in Vingaard Keep?”

Kaz waved him silent. “Don’t explain. If you think you saw someone, then you saw someone.”

“Then the keep is not abandoned,” Darius said with some relief.

“Which doesn’t mean it’s the knighthood that now controls it,” Kaz added darkly.

“True.”

As they drew closer and closer, the vast, silent keep grew, like some patiently waiting predator. Despite their utmost vigilance, they spotted no other inhabitants. Nevertheless, Delbin insisted that there had been someone.

Gazing down at the ground, Darius studied the tracks of the many animals that had traveled to and from the keep. There was something amiss with the prints in the dust, and he asked Kaz about them. The minotaur stared at them briefly, recognizing what was disturbing the knight.

Kaz kicked at some of the prints. The dust scattered, obliterating several prints. He put one foot down so that his toe touched the front of one of the unburied hoof-marks. “This horse – all these horses – are riding from Vingaard Keep. With this dust, these prints should not have lasted if they had returned. We should see signs of horses entering. I only see a couple.”

“And there are so many departing.” Darius said nothing more, but his eyes swept across the plain before them. It was covered with tracks, nearly all leading away from the keep. Kaz could see that the knight was trying to convince himself that his fellows had entered from some other direction, or that the tracks meant nothing whatsoever. That was always possible.

When at last they stood at the gate, they were somewhat confused as to what to do. No one had hailed them, and there was an open gate. The space was wide enough for the horses to pass through with ease.

“We will announce ourselves,” Darius said stiffly. He stepped in front of the others and looked upward.

“Darius of Trebbel, Knight of the Crown, assigned to the keep in lower Wystia, requests entrance into Vingaard Keep, most noble home of the fighting arm of Paladine and residence of the Grand Master —”

Kaz snorted in frustration, leaned his battle-axe on his shoulder, and stalked toward the open gate. After a moment’s hesitation, Delbin urged his pony after the minotaur. Behind them, they heard Darius break off as he realized what the two were doing.

Feeling somewhat like an offering to a quiet, cold god, Kaz led the way through the gates and into the keep itself.

*

South of Vingaard Keep, near where Kaz had rescued Darius, a group of riders paused while one of them climbed off his horse to investigate something on the ground. After several moments, he looked back toward the others.

“Two sets of footprints … this way, milord.”

A visored figure clad in the armor of a Knight of the Rose joined the ranger. The ranger, a man preferring the woodland regions to the southwest, shivered. Like many, he had come to distrust any who followed the Solamnic Order, especially here in the war-torn north. Worse yet, the knight kneeling beside him was a lord of the Order of the Rose, and at his beck and call were nearly two hundred other knights – two hundred knights and one nervous ranger.

“A survivor of the massacre and his rescuer.” The knight’s helm gave his voice an echoing quality. “At least, that seems likely, considering someone went to the trouble of destroying this filth.” He indicated what remained of the goblin whose arm Kaz had completely severed. The goblin had crawled away and eventually died.

The knight rose and the ranger quickly followed suit. Gauntleted hands removed the helmet, revealing a handsome, somewhat arrogant man with fine, hawklike features. As was the custom of the knighthood, he wore a tremendous mustache. Dark hair flowed loosely now that the helm was gone. Despite an air of command and experience, he was young for one in his position.

“Young but getting older by the second,” Bennett, Lord Knight of the Order of the Rose, would have replied. He noted that the pair of tracks moved northward, the same direction his band was even now headed. Vingaard Keep lay that way. Vingaard Keep, home to the knighthood itself. A place where he had virtually grown up, being the son of one Grand Master and the nephew of another.

He shivered at the thought of returning to that place now that the curse had been lifted from his mind.

“Two days,” he muttered. The ranger looked at him blankly. Bennett explained. “In two days, I want us in sight of the keep. Not there, but in sight of it.” What is the range of that … whatever it was? he wondered. Will we fall prey to it immediately? Will it strike us in stages, one by one, until we are mad once more?

The memory of one knight, a good knight, turning mad without warning and running himself through with his own sword made Bennett almost reconsider. They could not turn back now, however. Not while Vingaard Keep was becoming warped and twisted, a mockery of its own tradition.

Not while his uncle, the Grand Master, a victim of the spell of madness that seemed to linger over Vingaard, sat in his chambers and fought a war against enemies who likely existed only in his own mind.

Great Paladine, is this a test of our faith? Of mine?

A flash of white in the distance caught his attention. He wiped the dust of a long journey from his eyes and looked again. Has the madness returned so soon?

“What is it, milord? Did you see something?”

“No.” Bennett disliked the lie, but he liked the truth even less. An albino wolf? Am I seeing memories?

He quickly replaced the helm, the better to hide his uncertainties, and turned toward those who had put their lives in his hands. Not all were of the Order of the Rose, but all were his to command as senior knight in this crisis situation. Six years ago, he would have accepted that fact with no anxieties. Likely, he would have also led these men to their deaths – if indeed they were that fortunate. Times changed. Outlooks changed.

May I have your strength, Huma of the Lance.

At Bennett’s signal, they mounted up. Nearly all of them had suffered through the same madness as he had. There was the elf, too. He wondered what had become of him.

Mounted, he turned to the ranger, who was staring uneasily around them. “What ails you?”

“The goblins did not attack the party from the southern keeps, milord. Whatever it was, it was huge.”

“The days of dragons are long past us, man, and I know of no creature so large and vicious in this part of the country. Rest assured, our danger lies in Vingaard Keep, not in the skies or in this desolation around us.” Bennett believed that wholeheartedly. Goblins and raiders were incidental compared to what lay in – under? – Vingaard Keep.

As the column began to move, his thoughts drifted to the two who had taken the time to give the dead knights a decent pyre. At least one, he was certain, was a knight. The other? The footprints looked inhuman, more like an ogre or goblin, but neither of those races would have any respect for human dead. It was not an elf, either. Could it be … Hardly. Only a fool would dare journey into the heart of a land that had named him villain. Even a minotaur was not that simpleminded.

Whoever they were, Bennett hoped they would somehow have the good sense to avoid Vingaard Keep.

Chapter 10

Stepping into Vingaard Keep reminded Kaz of stepping into one of own his nightmares. There was an unreal quality to the place, encouraged by the lengthening shadows as the day slowly died. Every second, Kaz expected some ghastly figure to leap out from a hiding place.

“Where is everyone?” Tesela whispered. There was no real need to whisper. Darius’s shouts should have alerted any within these walls that the party was there. On the other hand, it still seemed somehow proper to whisper.

“Paladine preserve us,” the knight muttered. He was staring at the refuse scattered about the courtyard. Several great piles, taller than Kaz, were spread about the open areas of the keep. They appeared to be lined up in some sort of pattern, but for what purpose no one could say. Everything seemed to have been included: chairs, armor, tools, and much more.

Kaz narrowed his eyes as he scanned the interior of the keep. Lack of maintenance had taken its toll on the buildings. Moss and ivy grew unchecked. Everything had a thin layer of grime and dirt.

Darius took the reins of Tesela’s mount – and Delbin’s, as an afterthought – and led both animals to the stable. After peering inside, he tied the horses to a post rather than leading them into the stable itself. When he returned to the others, he explained. “As near as I can see, no one has cleaned that place in months. There are no horses in there, and I would never forgive myself if I put ours in that sty. It’s a breeding ground for disease.”

“Evidently it’s seen recent use, then,” Kaz commented.

“A month, perhaps two months ago. The cleaning stopped long before that, though.”

The minotaur leaned lightly on his battle-axe. “Delbin saw someone – or something – while we were riding up to the gate. A knight, possibly? I say we continue to look around.”

“I don’t think I’d like to separate, if it’s all the same to you,” Tesela said quietly. Her right hand had not left her medallion. No matter the powers bequeathed to her as a cleric of Mishakal, Kaz knew that she was no trained fighter. Bravery counted only so much against what they might find lurking in the keep.

“We’ll stay together.”

“It will take longer to search,” Darius pointed out.

“And if one of us falls into trouble, it’ll take forever to find that one. Better to stay together. Vingaard Keep is no longer what I would consider a safe haven. Goblins might have very well set up camp in some part of it.”

“Perhaps you would rather we depart.”

Kaz shook his head. “I’ve come all the way here to confront the Grand Master, and I won’t leave until I know for certain whether he’s here or not. If he is, I have business with him.” He looked at Delbin and Tesela. “You two might be better off waiting for us outside.”

He already knew Delbin’s answer and was not surprised when the cleric also refused. “You yourself said we should stay together.”

Necessity made for strange companions, Kaz thought wryly.

It seemed likely that Lord Oswal, if he still ruled here, would be found in his quarters, which were situated in the middle of the keep. Vingaard, however, could be a great maze to the uninitiated. Darius, who had not been back to Vingaard in more than two years, found his memories oddly vague, to the point where in fact Kaz, who had not been there in five years, was able to recall some things in more detail. Kaz ended up leading the tiny group as they made their way deeper into Vingaard. Even he, however, found his mind go almost blank at times. The minotaur grew even more unsettled, for he was certain that the lapse was not entirely his fault. There was a feeling about the place that ate at his nerves.

Shadows lengthened and swelled, enshrouding complete sections of the massive fortress. The only one seeming to enjoy their trek was the kender. Delbin’s earlier gloom had given way to curiosity. It was hard to keep him from rushing off to investigate some little interesting nook. The last thing Kaz wanted to do – and he reminded Delbin of that – was to go searching for the kender in a structure as large as Vingaard. Nevertheless, Delbin continued to range farther and farther afield.

Kaz caught the flicker of a torch as what little sun there was vanished over one of the outer walls. “Look there!”

It was gone after only a moment, not as if someone had tried to hide it, but rather as if the bearer had simply walked away. Kaz suddenly had the vague feeling that the party was not so much alone as being ignored by whoever still inhabited Vingaard.

“It leads away from where you wished to go, Kaz,” Darius pointed out.

“Makes no difference. If someone else is in here, I want to know who it is.

Wordlessly, they weaved through the alleys and paths as best they could, hoping to catch some glimpse of the elusive torchbearer or some other inhabitant, yet they well knew that they could be walking into a trap.

A quarter of an hour passed, and Kaz called a halt. Tesela and Darius, lacking the incredible stamina of a minotaur, were only too happy to oblige. The minotaur took a deep breath. The torchbearer was gone, to only Paladine knew where.

Cursing quietly, Kaz was about to inform the others that they should turn back when he discovered another problem. Delbin was missing. In fact, he could not recall when last he had seen the kender. Neither could the two humans.

“Sargas take that runt!” Kaz swore. He was beginning to have a terrible dream in which they all became separated and spent the rest of eternity wandering through the mazelike alleys of this keep. “I warned him!”

A huge shape flitted overhead. It was gone before any of them even had a chance to look up.

“Perhaps the kender did not leave of his own free will,” Darius suggested grimly. He turned in a circle, as if expecting enemies from all sides.

“I think that we’d have noticed if a dragon – or whatever it is – swooped down and made off with Delbin. Let’s backtrack.”

“Do you think that is a wise idea?” Tesela asked.

Kaz shrugged. “I don’t really know. I just suddenly don’t like the thought of standing around here.”

They had not even taken a step when a bell began to ring. Kaz and Tesela peered through the gloom at Darius, who was listening intently.

The bell stopped tolling.

“Odd. Unless I am totally mistaken, that is the bell for evening prayer. I suppose it would be the proper hour.”

“We passed the bell tower some time back,” Kaz reminded them. “It could be Delbin, I suppose. …”

“Delbin is hardly that foolish,” Tesela stated resolutely. The minotaur could not argue. Kender were adventurous, not stupid.

It was difficult going now. Darkness had almost entirely claimed the keep. The trio stumbled around, vaguely nearing the bell tower.

Darius, momentarily in the lead, nearly ran into a tall object suddenly blocking their path. It took several seconds for them to realize that this particular object was a Knight of Solamnia, fully clad in mail and carrying a sturdy longsword. The knight wore a face-concealing helm. Despite the near accident, he had not budged one step.

“Did you not hear the bell?” the newcomer rumbled within his helm. “All save the dragonwatch are to be in prayer, as the Grand Master commands.”

Sheathing his sword, Darius began, “We’ve only just arrived in Vingaard Keep, friend, and we —”

The other knight leaned forward, as if seeing his counterpart’s companions for the first time. “Demonspawn!”

Without explanation, Darius suddenly found himself backing up before a sword strike intended to lop his head off. Kaz, seeing that his comrade would not be able to free his sword in time, charged forward, battle-axe thrust out before him. The longsword’s blade bounced off the side of the axe head with a sharp ting! and the attacking knight lost his grip on the weapon. It fell to the ground even as Kaz continued his charge, barreling into his adversary before the man could recover. As the two of them collided, the minotaur was nearly overwhelmed by an odd stench emitted by the knight. The two of them fell to the ground, Kaz on top.

Kaz had always considered his strength far superior to that of most humans. Even among his own kind, Kaz’s strength had won him renown in the arenas where he had vied for rank among his fellows. Now, though, he found himself struggling to maintain his advantage. The knight not only matched his power, but he also began to overcome the minotaur.

“Darius!” he succeeded in grunting. His companion hesitated, caught between loyalty to the order and his growing friendship with the minotaur. At last he moved to aid Kaz.

“Take … off … his helm!”

The unknown knight struggled in vain as Darius worked the helm off. Darius almost dropped it when he saw the face of the knight.

“Hit him!”

Gritting his teeth and praying to Paladine for forgiveness, Darius struck his brother knight hard across the jaw, and then struck him again when the other did not flinch. This time the man was stunned. The trapped knight continued to struggle mindlessly, however, and Kaz was forced to administer a final punch to the jaw.

“The first soul we run into in Vingaard, and it turns out to be a berserker,” Kaz muttered, rubbing his own throat. There was some bleeding, he could tell, and no doubt there would be marks of the struggle for the next few days.

Thinking of the cleric, Kaz whirled around, almost expecting to discover that she, like Delbin, had vanished. Instead, he found her watching them with some relief.

“I’m sorry, Kaz, Darius. I tried my best, but he wouldn’t react.”

“React?”

“I was trying to put him to sleep. His resistance was incredible.”

“Not surprising,” Darius replied softly. He was kneeling next to his counterpart, examining his armor and face. “He is a Knight of the Rose. They have some power of their own in matters of faith.”

Kaz stood and sniffed in disgust. “Evidently he does not have much of a sense of cleanliness.”

The minotaur had confronted many knights in his time, and unlike some orders, the Knights of Solamnia believed in the virtues of fastidiousness. Not so, apparently, this knight. His armor was old, dented, and covered with grime. His mustache was unkempt, almost wild, and his hair was a tangle that had not seen a brush or any care in quite some time. He also stank like someone who had not bathed for over a month.

“What do we do with him?” Tesela asked.

“He is a Knight of Solamnia,” Darius reminded them needlessly. He looked up at the others. “As such, he should be treated with respect. If he is ill, then perhaps you could help, Tesela.”

“I’ll try my best.”

The bell sounded again. Darius rose, and all three looked toward the tower.

“Mishakal!”

Kaz and Darius glanced at the cleric, who pointed to where the other knight lay – or, rather, had lain. There was no sign of him, not even the helm that Darius had removed. Kaz sniffed the air. There was a strong odor, but it seemed a general smell and nothing like what he had noticed emanating from the fallen knight.

“I don’t like this.”

The bell had ceased ringing after only one strike, but now another sound replaced it – the sound of great wings beating slowly.

“If only we had a torch,” Darius muttered.

“I can create an aura if you think it would be helpful,” Tesela offered.

The minotaur shook his head. “Right now light would only make us a better target for whatever that is.”

The noise grew. Pieces of roof and clouds of dust descended upon them.

“It’s directly above us!” Darius whispered. Quietly he unsheathed his sword.

“That won’t do us much good. I chipped my axe on that thing back in the village.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

It was Tesela who supplied an answer. “There!”

The other two turned but saw nothing. Then Kaz caught a glimpse of a familiar, childlike face peering around a corner. It did not strike him as odd that he could see Delbin so clearly in the dark. The kender had a finger to his lips and was smiling broadly. With a wave, he indicated that they should come to him.

“He must have found something,” Tesela suggested.

“A place of safety, I hope.”

With Darius first and Kaz guarding their rear against a creature he already knew to be invulnerable to his axe, they followed the walls to where they had seen Delbin. Around them, they began to hear sounds. They were not the movements of the unknown beast above them, but the sounds one might expect in Vingaard Keep: knights marching closer and closer, the cries of war-horses as their riders brought them to rein, the ring of steel against steel.

The unnerving part was that there was still no one to be seen in the deserted keep.

“Vingaard is cursed!” Darius muttered bleakly. “The specters of the dead have risen!”

“If noise is all they can make, we’ve little to worry about. If they become solid, like that one back there, then we have a problem.” Kaz wished his voice carried more confidence.

“Where’s Delbin?” Tesela asked abruptly.

“Sargas – no! If we’ve been following another spook. …” He cut off as Delbin reappeared.

“He says you have to hurry!” the kender whispered as loudly as he thought safe. Delbin no longer seemed interested in exploring the citadel.

“Who is he?” asked Kaz as they reached the kender.

“No time for that now, because there’re knights here, not to mention other things that he said we’d be better off not running into because the whole place has gone mad, and unless we get to the library —”

At least some things stay the same, the minotaur thought sarcastically. “Take a breath, Delbin.”

The bell rang again. Only once.

Darius bent down by the kender. “Delbin, are there actually knights at the bell tower? Do you know where the Grand Master is? Is he —”

“He’s waiting!” Delbin scurried a few paces. “He said it would really be bad to be caught out here. The knights are likely to kill anything that moves. He says they can’t help themselves.”

Kaz grunted. “If someone has answers, I’m all for meeting him.”

“It could be a trap,” Darius countered.

“Then we’ll have to break out of it.” The minotaur hefted the massive battle-axe.

In retrospect, Kaz would come to realize that Vingaard Keep was not half the maze it seemed. There were not even many separate buildings. Tonight, though, it was different, as if not all of the keep existed in the same confusing world. He was certain at one point that Delbin was leading them in circles, until it became obvious that the route was chosen to avoid certain “other things” wandering Vingaard.

Now and then they spotted ghostly armored figures moving through the center region of the keep, where the Grand Master’s quarters were situated. Each carried a torch and moved at a slow pace. Not once did the unknown others, who were possibly Knights of Solamnia, seem to notice them. Still, the kender never led them too close to those dark forms.

Delbin came to a dead stop. “There it is,” he whispered. “He’s in the library. Follow me!”

The library stood out from the rest of the keep by being the only building in this area lit by torchlight. A massive set of steps led up to a tall, wooden door. On each side of the steps was a pedestal, on which sat a huge bird of some sort. Kaz finally identified it as a kingfisher, which was only logical. Undoubtedly a closer examination would reveal that it not only wore a crown, but also held a sword and rose in its talons.

Dawdle awhile, minotaur. Come and speak with me. It has been soooo long.

The hair rose along Kaz’s backside. His blood grew cold, and his knuckles whitened as he tried to grip the dwarven battle-axe even harder. What was he hearing?

What do you know, minotaur? What secrets do you know?

Tesela was the first to notice his strange behavior. She touched him lightly on one arm. “Do you see something? Is something wrong?”

It was as if some great compulsion were upon him, and the only way to free himself was to follow it through to the end. Slowly, his head turned and his eyes sought out – what? – in the darkness.

Shall we let the chase go on a little longer?

A blurry patch of white coalesced into a partially distinct form with four legs and a long, narrow muzzle. Kaz knew that if he could see it up close, it would have eyes of a killing shade of red and that there would not be one patch of fur on its pale, cold body.

“Dreadwolf!” Kaz spat the word out.

“A what?”

“There …” The minotaur blinked as he found himself pointing toward nothing. The murky form had vanished. If it had ever been there …

The bell tolled again. Only once.

“Paladine preserve us, may they cease doing that!” The bell had a mournful sound to it, and lacking any purpose that they knew of, the tolling of the bell disturbed them more each time.

Delbin finally seemed to have lost his patience, an unusual thing for a kender, but then Delbin was proving most unusual for one of his kind. He grabbed Tesela by the hand and started pulling her out into the open. Darius started to reach for the cleric, but she shook her head and began running with the kender. The knight, not wanting Tesela to move without some sort of protection, went charging after them.

Only Kaz hesitated, not because of any fear, but because he still heard the voice of the dreadwolf.

I am wherever you go, minotaur!

“You’re dead,” Kaz grumbled unconvincingly. “You’re dead!”

Kaz was alone. Whatever it was – ghost, illusion, a phantasm of his own mind – it was gone. Kaz turned toward the library. The others stood near the door, anxiously awaiting him. Gritting his teeth and holding his battle-axe ready, the minotaur raced across the open area.

No storm of arrows came streaming down on him, no horde of mad knights charged him. Despite the light of the torches and the relative quiet that made each of his steps sound like thunder, he went unhindered. He nearly slipped in his haste to be up the steps. Darius covered his back as he completed the last few yards of his run.

Kaz huffed and snorted. “Well? Where is this all-knowing benefactor that you’ve supposedly led us to – or are we supposed to wait out here all night?”

“I am standing in the doorway, minotaur, and I would suggest that you and your companions enter immediately. The night is young, and you have seen only the first signs of the madness.”

The voice was very calm, almost matter-of-fact in its tone. How he had come to open the door and be there, none of them could say. In the glare of torchlight, their benefactor looked like little more than dark, swirling cloth and a long head of hair. There was something else in his voice that Kaz felt he should recognize, but what it was he could not say.

Delbin obeyed the suggestion almost instantly. Not to be outdone by a kender, Darius followed, one arm protectively guarding Tesela. Kaz reluctantly followed, pausing only when he thought he heard laughter coming from the darkness out beyond the library. When it did not recur, he tried to convince himself that it was just the wind.

The door was bolted behind them, and they got their first good look at Delbin’s friend and their rescuer. He was tall, almost as tall as Kaz, and he wore robes of silver and gray. Strangely, his hair, stretching long past his shoulders, was silver, with a patch of gray in the center, as if the clothing had been designed to match. The face was inhumanly handsome, with slightly delicate features. It was a young face, until one studied the eyes, green eyes that burned with an age almost unbelievable. Then one realized that this was no human, but an elf.

The elf folded his hands, almost as a cleric would do. His expression held only a hint of emotion, a slight, upward curling of the mouth, which Kaz gathered must indicate a smile.

“Welcome, my friends, to a haven in the midst of insanity. My name is —”

“Argaen Ravenshadow!” the minotaur finished abruptly.

Looking a bit amused, the elf nodded and said, “I think I would recall meeting a minotaur. We have not met before.”

“No, but I did meet one of your kind who knew you well. His name’s Sardal Crystalthorn.”

A stream of emotions flashed quickly across the elf’s visage. “Sardal. How odd to hear his name – to hear any name – after these past three years here.”

“What is going on here?” Kaz almost bellowed. “What’s happened to Vingaard Keep and the Knights of Solamnia?”

Argaen’s face was once more an emotionless mask, but his tone hinted of dark things. “Minotaur, you cannot imagine what you and your companions have walked into, and the odds are against you ever walking out again – at least sane.”

Chapter 11

Once, it appeared, this room had been a place where knights could come and pore over the records of their own past. There was still a wall of shelves containing specially preserved scrolls. The rest of the room, though, had been taken over by the elf and his work.

“There. Do you see it?”

Kaz followed Argaen Ravenshadow’s gaze. They stood on the upper floor of the library at a window that faced into the center of Vingaard.

“I see it. That’s where the Grand Master lives and commands from, isn’t it?” Over five years might have gone by, but Kaz doubted his memory was that hazy.

“It is where he now sits in a world of distorted visions, commanding an ever-decreasing band of men, each as mad as himself, and unconsciously protecting what I suspect is responsible for the insanity and the sorcery you have witnessed so far.”

The elf stepped abruptly away from the window. Kaz remained for the moment, staring out at the circle of torches now surrounding the sanctum of the Grand Master. Darius, who, along with Tesela, had been watching from another window, followed the elf. “What is it? What has the power to turn the Grand Master himself from the path of Paladine?”

Argaen walked over to the single table in the room, where a number of unusual and malevolent objects rested. He picked up the most ordinary, a stick that curled inward at the end, and seemed to contemplate it. He seemed to have forgotten the knight’s question. “Did Sardal mention why I was here, minotaur?”

“With all that’s happened, I can’t really say. I don’t think so.” Kaz looked at the objects on the table. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

“You may not want to, but you have to now that you are here.” The elf held up the stick, still examining it. “Harmless-looking?”

“Since you ask, I doubt it.”

“You would be correct. I will not go into detail, but I can tell you that this tiny item was used by some to distort the weather during the war.”

“That thing?” Kaz recalled the unpredictable weather during his early days in the war and the terrible storm traps created by the dark mages in the final months. He recalled the one great storm that had preceded the darkness, in which the dragons of Takhisis and the monsters of Galan Dracos had passed the tattered remains of a vast Solamnic campsite. The knights themselves had been in full retreat, in what some termed the worst disaster in the history of the orders.

“Galan Dracos either created or stole the spell to make this. It is far stronger than any I have heard of. Fortunately – or perhaps unfortunately – the only one in existence – this one – was sealed inside one of three vaults.”

The elf was playing games, Kaz knew. It was a trait of the elder race.

“Tell us of these vaults, Argaen Ravenshadow, and what they have to do with Galan Dracos.”

The bell tolled again, but the elf ignored it. “The citadel of Galan Dracos, the master renegade who planned to turn even those sorcerers who followed the dark path into slaves of his ambition, was originally situated on the side of a peak in the mountains between Hylo and Solamnia.”

“Really?” Delbin, who had remained unusually silent, perked up. “There’re ruins of a sorcerer’s castle in Hylo? Can we go there sometime? I wonder if any of my family’s been there. I should write this down!” The kender reached into his pouch for his book and instead pulled out a tiny figurine. “Where do you suppose this came from? Isn’t it neat?”

“Give me that!” With a ferocity that stunned Delbin into silence and made the others stare wide-eyed, Argaen stalked over to the kender and tore the figurine from his hand. While the party continued to look on in shock, the elf thrust the tiny item into a pocket of his robe and glared down at Delbin. “Never touch another thing in this room! You have no idea what you might accidentally unleash! I promise you, even a kender would regret it!”

Delbin seemed to shrivel up before Argaen’s burning eyes. Argaen took a deep breath, and for the first time, he seemed to notice the effect his tirade had had on the others. The elf put a hand to his head and frowned.

“My … apologies to all of you! For over three years have I labored here, and while three years is not much in the physical life of an elf, it can be an eternity in other ways. Over three years of struggling to maintain sanity while those around me, already mad, have sunk ever deeper. Over three years of knowing how close the possible solution lay but being unable to do anything about it. Each day I wait for the madness to overwhelm me while I seek in vain for some way to reach the vaults and solve the secrets of the locks. Each day …” Ravenshadow closed his eyes.

“I was telling you of the citadel of Galan Dracos,” he suddenly commented. His eyes opened, and the pain that had racked his visage was no more. The mask was back in place.

Tesela walked over to the elf and put a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to tell us now. Perhaps later, and perhaps you might let me see what I can do.”

“You can do nothing. This is a spell, not a wound. Trust me. I know.”

“Are you sure —”

He waved her away. “I am. Now if you will let me continue …” The elf purposefully stepped away from her and nearer to Kaz. “As I was saying —”

“I’m familiar with the citadel,” Kaz replied quietly. Images still overwhelmed him. “I was there. I rode a dragon, a fighter after my own soul. His name was Bolt. With a Dragonlance, we, along with a few others, followed Huma of the Lance to the battlements. At first we all feared we would never find the place – there was a spell of invisibility or something on it – but Dracos was betrayed by the Black Robe sorcerers, who knew that they, too, would be slaves if he triumphed.”

Ravenshadow’s eyes lit up, but he said nothing, merely indicating with a gesture that the minotaur should go on.

Kaz grimaced as the memories dredged up unwanted emotions. “Huma was the only one to succeed in penetrating the lair of Dracos, and it was he who fought the mage by himself, somehow winning out and shattering the renegade’s schemes.” He smiled grimly. “It seems Dracos intended even to betray his mistress, Takhisis. When he realized, though, that he’d lost, he destroyed himself rather than face the wrath of the goddess.”

“And the stronghold?” Argaen asked.

“Without the power of Dracos to support it,” Kaz concluded to a suddenly intent elf, “the citadel could not maintain its hold on the side of the mountain. It crashed to the earth, and that was the end of it.”

“And there I must take over, although your story fills some gaps and is quite entertaining in itself.” Argaen picked up another object, which looked like a polished black rock. He began tossing it from one hand to the other. “You see, that was not the end of it. Despite the height from which the structure fell, much of it remained intact – a tribute, again, to the powers of Dracos.”

“Dracos deserves no tributes … only curses.”

Argaen gave Kaz a quick look. “As you say, minotaur. Be that as it may, not only did his citadel remain partially intact, but countless items he had either gathered from those under his control or had devised himself survived as well. They were ignored at first as the Knights of Solamnia began the process of systematically crushing the now leaderless armies of the Dragonqueen. Only when news filtered into Vingaard that mysterious happenings were taking place near the site of the ruins did the Grand Master realize the danger.”

“The summoning,” Darius interrupted. “Five years ago the Grand Master requested aid from the southern keeps. He wanted them to help maintain the peace while those from Vingaard and some of the other northern keeps worked on some important project! Dracos’s stronghold!”

“The stronghold,” Ravenshadow concurred. He continued to toss the smooth rock back and forth. “Lord Oswal had men scour the area. More than fourscore clerics of Paladine aided in the search, utilizing their lord’s power to seek out small yet exceedingly deadly instruments that had been buried. They gathered fragments of the more powerful items that had been shattered. I do not doubt that, as thorough as they were, a few pieces escaped their notice.”

Kaz glanced at Delbin, whose eyes were bright. The thought of the kender returning to his people and telling them about the possible treasures in the ruins made the minotaur shiver. Dark sorcery in the hands of kender?

“When the clerics were satisfied that they had done all they could, the gathered remnants of the relics were brought to Vingaard Keep under an armed guard so great in number that one would have thought the knights were marching on their own keep. The caravan arrived during the night, the better to avoid the close scrutiny of any spies, and the artifacts were carried down to the vaults, locked inside, and purposefully forgotten by the Grand Master and the Knightly Council.”

What they overlooked, the elf went on to say, was that the Conclave of Wizards had its own sources of information. The mages were aghast at the thought of so many potentially dangerous objects in the care of an organization that knew so little about the balances of sorcery. In this, all three Orders of Wizardry were in agreement. It was only reasonable, though, that the Knights of Solamnia would be a bit leery about letting any magic-user touch the cursed toys of the renegade. Argument followed argument until the elven members of the conclave proposed that one of their own, a neutral who lived solely for research, study the relics.

Argaen Ravenshadow had jumped at the opportunity.

“More the fool, I,” the elf muttered. “Rather would I trust myself than most of my stiff-necked brethren. They would have passed into madness long ago.”

Argaen said he had been greeted by the Grand Master upon his arrival. Lord Oswal proved to be a formidable man and one that even an elf could admire with ease. The first few weeks seemed to pass easily. While the knights would not give Argaen immediate access to the vaults, they were willing to remove the objects one by one for his inspection. As time passed, however, the elf began to notice a couple of things. The pieces he was given tended to be of lesser power than he would have expected, and it soon became obvious that someone was carefully picking and choosing what he was to study. Also, there was a growing attitude of distrust on the part of the knighthood. Not merely distrust for Argaen, but for anyone. Projects designed to rehabilitate the lands of northern Solamnia were abandoned as the Knightly Council began to see turncoats and raiders everywhere. The locals were pressed and then punished for imaginary wrongs. Most of what little the land provided was snatched up by Vingaard as the knighthood began gearing up for a return to war with a new, imagined enemy.

All the while, the elf worked on, feeling that there was something amiss here.

“They refused to allow me access to the lower chambers where the vaults lie, and my sole attempt to steal past the sentries and safeguards proved for naught. I learned then how well the Knights of Solamnia guarded their prizes.” Argaen had finally stopped tossing the black rock back and forth and now began to squeeze it with his left hand. Kaz, his gaze briefly moving to Ravenshadow’s hand, watched in growing amazement as the rock began to crumble under the surprising strength of the elf. “Yet, I learned one other thing in that attempt – something was alive in those vaults. Not alive in the same sense that you and I are alive, but alive in the sense of being active … as a lingering spell.”

Darius had returned to the window as Ravenshadow spoke, his eyes fixed on the center of the keep, and specifically the building housing the Grand Master, but he turned at this final pronouncement. “Why did you not warn them, elf? The Grand Master surely would have listened carefully to a warning concerning a threat beneath his very feet!”

“Your Grand Master was beyond reason by then, knight. He came very close to accusing me of being a spy for his enemies.” The elf glared at Darius coldly, and it was the knight who finally backed down. Argaen’s expression softened. “I know it is difficult for you to comprehend, human, but such was the case.”

Kaz chose that moment to yawn. “I have one question for you, elf, and then I, at least, must eat and rest.”

“How remiss of me!” Argaen Ravenshadow boomed. He looked over the others. “You all need something! I shall return in a moment.” With an abruptness that caught all of them unprepared, the elf stuffed the remains of the black rock into one of his pockets and departed the room.

For several seconds, the party simply stared at the doorway Argaen had scurried through. Then Kaz spoke quietly. “Tesela, what do you make of our benefactor? Is he as mad as he claims the others are?”

She thought about it and replied, “I think he still clings to sanity, but the longer he’s here, the worse it will become.”

“He seems reluctant for your help.”

“I am a cleric of Mishakal, and I’ve healed people’s minds. Sometimes they refuse help because they don’t want to admit their own failures. Sometimes I must do it without their knowledge.” She looked down at the medallion.

“We are in danger ourselves, Kaz,” Darius pointed out. “If we take what Argaen Ravenshadow says as truth, then each day we are here our own minds are at risk.”

“I know.” The minotaur snorted irritably.

“Kaz?” Darius was staring out the window once more.

“What is it?”

“I must do what I can to save my brothers.”

The minotaur grimaced. He knew that tone well, for Huma had used it many a time. It meant danger. It meant trying to take on the stronghold of the knighthood and possibly dying on a Solamnic blade. “You have only Argaen’s word as to what is going on.”

Darius shook his head. “I have eyes as well, and other senses as sharp as any elf’s. You merely have to look out the window again. You can feel the threat.”

Kaz refused to be moved. “I feel nothing but hunger and exhaustion.”

“Kaz, in the name of the Grand Master, who is your comrade …” The knight turned to him, his eyes burning much as the minotaur’s did at times.

Kaz would not have refused a certain other knight, and the realization made him feel guilty. “Let’s see what the daylight brings.”

The bell tolled … once.

*

The minotaurs sat around a campfire whose embers were dying. They were on their way home after years of chasing what some had begun to believe was a phantom. A search of the river area had revealed neither Greel’s body nor that of the fugitive. Hecar and Helati had described in detail the battle between the two, which, in their version, ended in the drowning of both combatants as they struggled in the raging current.

Scurn was not happy, and neither was the ogre, Molok. In different ways, their lives had totally revolved around the eventual capture and death of Kaz. Their reasons varied greatly, but their obsessions were virtually identical – and now both felt betrayed by the disappearance of their longtime adversary.

Molok rubbed a scar on his forehead, his mind afire. Kaz was supposed to have been his, regardless of the piece of paper the minotaur leaders had given the party. Kaz would have never made the return trek east if it was up to him.

As for Scurn, he couldn’t have cared less whether Kaz died or not, as long as it was he who had bested the coward. Even branded as he was, Kaz was still known for his strength and ability in the arenas, and it galled the disfigured minotaur to think that one like the fugitive was praised still. Scurn wanted the praise, the status, of defeating one of the former champions, a fighter who could have risen high in the ranks if he had not believed those in control to be mere puppets of Takhisis’s warlords.

They were camped on the edge of what one of the others had termed the Solamnic Wastes. A vast military unit had passed near here only recently. The tracks of an estimated two hundred horses cut a path through the wasteland. Knights of Solamnia, Helati had suggested, either returning to or moving on Vingaard Keep. A situation was brewing there that, at one time, might have drawn their interest. Now, however, they only wanted to go home.

A squeal alerted the group to a possible attack. Axes, massive swords, and other weapons were flourished as the minotaurs rose. The squeal had not been torn from the throat of one of their kind; no minotaur would squeal like a pig. But there was a sentry out in that direction.

Even as the first of the minotaurs started to move, the sentry stepped into the dim light of the campfire. In one hand, he held an axe that dripped with fresh blood. In the other hand, he held a quivering, cowardly goblin.

“Two of these tried to jump me.”

The minotaurs grunted, growled, and snorted in disdain. The goblin tried to look as small as possible. No one cared for goblins. Even Molok looked at the sorry sight in disgust.

“Kill it,” was all he said.

“Only in combat.” The sentry spat. “Executing this one would be a loss of honor.”

The other minotaurs nodded. There was no glory in killing unarmed opponents. Outnumbered as he was, Molok knew better than to question the minotaur code of honor.

“Besides,” the sentry went on, “this bag of shaking bones and fat spouted something that sounded of great interest.”

“What was that?” Scurn asked impatiently. He would have killed the goblin there and then. Goblins were not deserving of a combat of honor. They were vermin, like rats.

“Tell them. Repeat what you said to me, goblin!”

“My … name is … Krynge, honorable, wonderful masters —”

Scurn kicked the goblin in the side. “Quit drooling on our feet and get to the point! We might let you live.”

The goblin seemed to take Scurn’s word to heart and began to babble. “My band – it were much bigger then – we found … knights. All dead but one. We have fun and then … and then a minotaur attacks, killing all but three!” Krynge smiled up at the group, revealing jagged, yellow fangs. “Three goblins against one minotaur not good odds, especially since one goblin knocked out. We retreat.”

The minotaur on watch added, “I found the three of them skulking about like dogs. Two of the fools attacked me in panic, and I killed them. They died from one swing.” The sentry, smiling proudly, hefted his axe. The others nodded their appreciation for his skill. “This coward started babbling about ‘another minotaur,’ so I brought him back here for everyone to listen to.”

“Another minotaur? So near?” Molok stepped up to the goblin and took the creature’s ugly head in his massive hands. “What direction came he from?”

“South! Came from south!”

“Kaz!” The ogre turned on Hecar and Helati. “It’s got to be Kaz!”

Scurn stalked up to Helati. To her, his ravaged face was even more disgusting so close. “You said Kaz was dead! So did your brother! Only you two saw them fight, and I wonder about that. Explain!”

Hecar stepped between his sister and the other. “Do you question my honor? Do you call me a liar?”

The other minotaurs were working themselves up for a combat of honor. Many looked sympathetically at Hecar, knowing what he faced. More than a few of them had questioned their own honor in this quest. Hecar was standing up for much more than his sister and himself.

Molok realized this, too, as he scanned the group, noting the reactions of each. Like Scurn, he no longer believed Hecar’s story, but unlike the disfigured one, he knew that every minotaur would be needed if Kaz was truly alive. The ogre was no fool; he had no intention of taking on Kaz by himself.

“Hecar, he be thinking no such thing.” Molok put a hand on Scurn’s shoulder. The minotaur glared at him but did not interrupt. “Kaz’s body was never found. Why? Because he survived and hid – like a coward!”

There was renewed muttering from the other minotaurs. They had reacted as the ogre wanted them to. Speak of honor and cowardice, and they would believe anything he said.

The two minotaurs were still facing one another. Scurn still wanted Hecar, and the other still wanted to protect his sister. Helati was caught between bringing dishonor to her brother by speaking the truth or dishonoring herself even more by remaining silent. She chose the latter.

“What about Greel?” Scurn asked. He was beginning to realize that he would gain nothing by fighting and killing Hecar at this time. The other minotaurs still favored Hecar, and Scurn, like the ogre, knew he could not hunt Kaz alone. Yet he could not bring himself to quit the argument altogether. He would lose some face if he backed down now.

“Greel was not a swimmer,” one of the other minotaurs called out. “His clan is in mountains, where there are only streams. He never learned.”

If not for the muttering this new fact brought forth, the surrounding minotaurs might have heard four simultaneous sighs of relief. Molok quickly took control. “You see? Greel drowned. He be no swimmer. True courage, that Greel. True honor.”

Hecar and Helati exchanged quick glances. Greel had ended up in the river only because they had thrown his body into it after Hecar had killed him. As for honor, Greel had had none. It had been his intention from the first to strike Kaz square in the back with the spear. Only a shout from Helati had saved Kaz. Startled, Greel had succeeded only in mortally wounding Kaz’s horse. As far as Hecar and Helati were concerned, both minotaurs had died there. No trace of Kaz had been found – that much was true. Though their faces did not show it, the news of his survival both relieved and frustrated them.

“Kaz lives. If he heads north, then he heads for the keep at Vingaard,” Scurn decided.

“The knighthood would make him a prisoner,” Hecar protested. “He would not go there.”

“He will.” Scurn looked at the others, his eyes lingering on Molok. “We will go to Vingaard. If Kaz is there, we will demand our right to him.” Some of the other minotaurs looked a bit uneasy at the thought of walking up to the keep of the knighthood and demanding a prisoner. Scurn snarled at them. “Are there cowards among us? Does anyone wish to return home without fulfilling his oath?”

There was no answer. To turn back now would be a great loss of honor and an outright act of cowardice. Better death than that.

“It is settled, then.”

“What about this one?” the minotaur sentry asked. He pulled Krynge to his feet by the back of the goblin’s neck.

Scurn bared his teeth.

“Give him a sword. He will have the honor of fighting bravely for his life. A rare thing for a goblin.”

Chapter 12

He was standing in the center of the arena, unarmed. The crowd of minotaurs roared their respect and approval. Kaz acknowledged them by raising his fists high in the air and turning in a slow circle.

His prowess was such that no one thought him a fool to take on an armed opponent with only his bare hands. Rather, they saw it as the champion’s way of evening the odds. If the challenger did defeat him, however, there would be no lack of honor in the victory. That he had challenged the champion, rather than working his way up in status first, indicated the challenger was either very brave or very foolish. That question would soon be settled.

The overlords – the “outsiders,” as they were called – watched with mild amusement from their special seats on the northern walls. They were ogre and human commanders, one of the latter an aide to the warlord Crynus, leader of the armies of Takhisis. The arena was only a pastime for them; they were here to inspect the new companies of “volunteers” – slave-soldiers, in reality. The ogres and humans were not officers so much as guards. Oaths bound the minotaurs to those who led them into battle, regardless of consequence. A minotaur who had given his oath would die for his ogre captain, or should, if he was a proper representative of his race.

Kaz and the crowd grew anxious as the moments passed. The champion was eager to claim yet another victory, one that would increase his standing. How long before the outsiders’ influence made him one of the ruling minotaurs? Not much longer, surely!

The gate opposite Kaz slowly creaked open. The minotaur readied himself. He wondered if he would know his challenger. Perhaps it was one of the younger ones, fresh from the training session that Kaz himself taught. No, none of them would be so foolish. Each had already been tested and found wanting. They needed some experience before they could hope to defeat their instructor.

Slowly a figure stepped into the arena. A hush fell over the crowd. The overlords leaned forward with interest.

A Knight of Solamnia stood before the crowd. A human against a minotaur. True, the knight had a longsword, but he wore no armor and therefore had little protection against Kaz’s blows. The long mustache, characteristic of his kind, and the experienced manner in which the human carried himself spoke of a training as fierce in its own way as that of the minotaurs. Most definitely a Solamnic Knight.

The man walked toward Kaz. His face slowly came into focus. It seemed to press right up to the minotaurs own. Kaz felt panic rush over him. Not this human! Not this knight!

Not Huma!

“It has to be this way, Kaz,” Huma explained calmly. He raised the sword, but instead of striking, he tossed it before the minotaur. “You carry no weapon; I will do the same.” The knight’s gray-streaked hair, an odd sight in one so young, fluttered in the wind.

Abruptly the face before Kaz was no longer Huma’s but that of the one whom he knew to be Galan Dracos. The long, almost reptilian face leered at him.

“Tell me your secrets, minotaur. What do you know of my power? What do you know of my sorcery?”

“No!” Without thinking, the minotaur lashed out with his left hand, striking the sorcerer’s face and twisting his neck at a sudden and improbable angle. Kaz’s adversary collapsed to the ground. “Sargas take you!” He cried out the name of the dark god of his youth. “I don’t know anything! Leave me be and haunt another!”

In horror, Kaz watched as the head of the corpse turned slowly to stare up at him. The face of Galan Dracos broke into a malevolent smile. “It is true. You do know nothing.”

The face had slowly dissolved back into Huma’s. There was a bitter look on the knight’s face, as if the minotaur had betrayed him.

Somehow that frightened Kaz as nothing else could. The world swam around and around, until he vaguely realized that this was a dream. A nightmare. As the dream ended, darkness began to seep in. Kaz tried to escape from the coming darkness, but could not. It clung to him, wrapping him as a cocoon wraps a caterpillar. He prayed desperately for day to come, fearing for some reason that he would otherwise never awaken. …

*

Daylight provided no relief from the nightmare. If anything, the utter emptiness of the keep proved even more overwhelming than the shadows or the nightmare. In the darkness, there had been the comfort that one might be able to hide. In the dull light of yet another murky day, there was the reality that whatever waited for them did not fear the day, and in fact was no more visible in the light than it had been in the dark. A bodiless, omnipresent thing.

The bell had sounded twice so far this day. There was no set time; the bell ringer apparently acted whenever it suited his fancy – or perhaps it was the fancy of the Grand Master, if Argaen Ravenshadow’s tale was true.

The elf was nowhere in sight when Kaz rose reluctantly. Kaz moved slowly, his muscles sore. The floor of the room proved most uncomfortable for sleeping, but Argaen had said it was the best of bad choices. The library had not been designed for personal quarters. Kaz wondered where the elf was and what he was planning now.

Kaz jumped to his feet. Darius, already awake and performing some exercise ritual, paused as the minotaur turned to him. “Where’s Delbin?”

“I thought —” The knight glanced at the kender’s abandoned bedroll. “He was here when last I looked.”

“He’s a quiet one,” Kaz snarled. “I can’t say how many times he’s done this to me. I should be used to it by now, but I thought he’d exercise some common sense after what Ravenshadow told us last night.”

Tesela sat up, awakened by the talk. “Perhaps he’s with Argaen.”

“Maybe, but I very much doubt it.”

Darius glanced out the window, as if he expected to see the kender perched outside somewhere. He stared off toward the center of the keep. “Do you think that he would dare go to the Grand Master’s quarters? It would appeal to a kender to do something like that.”

“More likely the vaults below!” Kaz roared in anger, causing both humans to eye him with trepidation. He forced the anger down. “Just to be certain, we’ll make a quick search of the library.”

“For what?” Argaen’s calm voice floated from the hall. The elf entered, carrying a basket filled with bread, fruit, and drink. He deposited the basket on the table and faced Kaz. “What seems to be the difficulty, my friend?”

“Delbin. The kender. Have you seen him? Is he in the library?”

“Not that I know of. Kender are troublesome to keep track of. …” Argaen’s voice trailed off. “Astra take me for a fool! I should have known better than to tell all in the presence of a kender, but I thought you had him under control.”

“No one controls a kender completely,” Kaz retorted sourly. “And no one would want to. The problem now is what we should do. He may have sneaked off to investigate the vaults of the Grand Master!”

“Vingaard has other places that would interest a kender,” Darius suggested.

“I’ve – Paladine forgive me! – ridden with that kender for several months. He’s gone to the vaults!”

“This is most distressing,” Ravenshadow muttered. His mind seemed to be concentrating on some calculation. “Do you think he could actually break into those vaults?”

“Whether he can or not isn’t the point, elf! What is the point is that he could just as easily wind up on the end of a sword, if what you told us is true. Sane or mad, I doubt that the Knights of Solamnia have forgotten all their training.”

“True. If anything, they have become even more fanatical. All in preparation for their imaginary foe, of course.”

“Master Ravenshadow,” interrupted Tesela, “how is it that you remain here? Why do the knights not disturb you?”

Argaen seemed annoyed and answered sharply, “I was an honored guest once. That thought seems to have remained with them all this time, although I have also done my best to remain unobtrusive. That is hardly a concern right at this moment. Gather your things and follow me! We must save your companion!”

The elf moved with such impatience that the others barely had the time to react. Darius was forced to leave his armor behind, taking only his shield and his sword. Kaz removed his battle-axe from its harness. As one, they followed after the swift-moving Argaen.

To their surprise, the elf did not leave the library immediately. Instead, he stood in the front hall and removed a blue crystal from his robes. While the others waited, he stared at it intently.

Something blurry formed in the center of the tiny sphere, but no one could make out what it was. Ravenshadow held the crystal before Kaz. “You know the kender better than anyone else. Think of him, concentrate on his location.”

“I dislike sorcery, elf,” Kaz snorted disdainfully. “It tends to be a treacherous, unpredictable path.”

“This is hardly any such thing. Do you want to find your friend, or would you rather we searched the entire keep blindly?”

With a black look, Kaz took hold of the crystal and concentrated on his diminutive companion as best as he could. He recalled the nearly perpetual smile on the kender’s face, contrasted with the odd expression that had been haunting his companion of late. Delbin’s book came to mind and Kaz pictured him writing his latest adventure in it, an adventure that presently had the kender situated …

“There! You see?” Argaen cried.

Sure enough, the blurry image had been replaced by the crisp picture of Delbin. The kender was in a dark room lit only by a small candle. It did not appear to be the vaults, nor did it seem like part of the personal chambers of the Grand Master. The room was narrow and dusty, as if it had been unused for years.

“Where is he?” Kaz could hazard no guess from what he observed.

An unelflike laugh burst from the mouth of Argaen Ravenshadow. It was a laugh tinged with shock, relief, and something Kaz could not put his finger on.

“Do you know where he is?” Darius, anxious, finally demanded.

“He – he is in the library after all!” There was more animation in Ravenshadow’s visage than any of them had noticed so far. He was genuinely thrilled by his discovery. “Follow me!”

As seemed typical of the elf, Argaen turned and rushed off without giving the others a chance to collect their wits.

“Are all elves so quick?” Tesela asked testily. There were limits, apparently, to her kind, cleric soul.

Kaz refrained from replying, choosing instead to hurry after the rapidly diminishing figure of their benefactor.

*

They found the elf in a study room of the library, sprawled over a long, yellowed parchment that Kaz guessed was at least a century old. Argaen was nodding and chuckling, a wild sort of chuckle that disturbed the minotaur. Again he wondered how sane Ravenshadow truly was.

“Come see,” Argaen called out as they entered. Without looking up, he pointed at the center of the parchment. “This is a copy of the original design for this library. Your founder” — the elf glanced up briefly at Darius — “designed more than half of this … the secret half.”

“What?” The knight was completely at a loss to understand what Argaen meant.

“I do not know how your smaller southern keeps are diagrammed, but Vinas Solamnus wanted every building here to have one use other than the obvious one. He knew that Vingaard itself might come under siege and possibly even be broken into someday. Therefore, he had passages built inside the walls, wide enough for two men if they rubbed shoulders. Your kender friend has uncovered some of the passages in this building.”

“I’ve never heard of passages such as you speak of,” Darius argued.

“Most of them seem to have been forgotten. These parchments were located during the war, supposedly after one of your own turned out to be a traitor.”

Darius turned white at the suggestion and would have drawn his sword if Kaz had not grabbed his arm. “He’s right, Darius. I’ll fill you in later.”

The knight let his arm drop. Kaz could see the despair growing in the man again. The minotaur could not blame him. He recalled Huma’s face when told of Rennard. Rennard, despite his pale-white face and lack of humor, had always treated Huma well, and indeed was one of those who had trained him. The knight’s career had proven a mockery, however, for long before Rennard had joined the order, he had surrendered himself to the cult of Morgion, god of disease and decay. The gaunt knight was found to be responsible for the death of Grand Master Trake and the serious illness of Oswal. Worse yet, Huma had discovered that the fiend was his own uncle.

“Here, here, and here,” Argaen said calmly, pointing at the map as if unaware of Darius. “These are the most likely entrances your kender friend will be near. If we each cut him off and converge, one of us is bound to catch him.”

“He better pray it’s not me!” Kaz rumbled. “I’ll hang him from the top floor of this building by his shirt collar!”

*

Delbin was having the time of his life. Secret passages and locks were the things a kender lived for. He thought about how jealous some of his friends back home would be. Serves’em right, he decided.

In some ways, Delbin was a bit odd for his kind. Most kender cared for little more than fun, although there were the occasional serious ones, “oddballs,” as they were called by some of the young. Delbin liked adventures, but although he had never told anyone, especially Kaz, he also yearned for some purpose in his life, some grand scheme. Listening to the stories of heroes, both kender and otherwise, his ambition grew. Unfortunately, Delbin had been too young to participate in the great war, and by the time he was old enough to sneak away on his own, word had reached Hylo that She of the Many Faces, as the kender called Takhisis, had been banished to the beyond.

Delbin returned to the business at hand. A great web blocked his path upward. So far, this grand adventure had brought him nothing more than a few old coins, a rusty knife, and one amusing secret door. The web was kind of fascinating, Delbin thought, and he briefly imagined some great spider, as big as himself, spinning it. The image he conjured up was so real, the kender could almost see its eight red eyes. …

Suddenly the eight red eyes flashed, and Delbin found himself facing the very spider of his imagination. The thing was incredibly ugly, what he could see of it, and barely able to fit in the passageway. Nevertheless, it was making headway. Imagining a huge spider was one thing, but actually being attacked by one was … was … icky, Delbin decided. The little candle he had shone too weakly to scare the monster, and the knife, which was useful for picking locks on secret doors, was too dull for a confrontation. Actually, a longsword, if he could have lifted one, would probably have been just as useless. The spider was awfully large.

Its eight long legs, each as thick as the kender’s arm, scraped against the passage walls as the huge creature slowly burst its way through the web. Delbin found himself paralyzed, not with fear, which he had experienced only occasionally, but with a trancelike fascination for what was happening. The multiple eyes of the spider seemed to entice him to a warm, safe place where he could sleep snugly, wrapped in his blanket.

He dropped the candle.

The spider scurried back, and Delbin’s mind cleared. The horror was only a few feet away from him. He tried to turn, but to his amazement, his feet were bound together – By webbing, of course, he thought, as he went crashing down on the steps. Recovering from its fright, the spider once again scuttled forward toward its helpless victim.

A roar – a war cry – ripped through the musty passage, and suddenly a huge figure bathed in light stood behind the giant arachnid. In one hand, nearly scraping the ceiling, was a magnificent battle-axe that no man could have wielded with such ease.

The spider hesitated, caught between desire and confusion. Delbin watched in open-mouthed awe as the axe rang down and bit into the monster. Ichor spilled out, splattering the kender and the walls, as the great weapon fairly cleaved the spider in two. It refused to die immediately, its tiny brain lagging behind reality. The light in its eight eyes slowly dimmed as it wobbled in the direction of Delbin. The axe came down once more.

The monstrosity finally collapsed at the kender’s bound feet.

“Delbin!” His axe dripping with the spider’s life fluids, Kaz stepped over the creature’s remains and kneeled down beside his companion. Behind him, carrying a torch, hurried Tesela. There were other sounds in the passage, running feet that undoubtedly belonged to Darius and Argaen.

“Delbin, you little fool!” Kaz muttered. He looked down at the kender’s feet. “What is that stuff?”

“It’s webbing,” Tesela remarked. “What else would a spider use?” She handed the torch to Kaz and brought her medallion in contact with the webbing. The sticky, ropelike substance melted away.

“That thing’s pretty handy.”

“Yes, isn’t it.” She leaned back and spoke to the kender. “Do you feel any dizziness or have bruises? You must’ve fallen.”

“How’d you do that?” Delbin was touching the remains of the webbing. “Could I do that, too? Does it just work for spiders? Well, at least I don’t think I’m hurt. You should’ve seen it, Kaz, though I guess you did, but it just seemed to come right out of nowhere, and all I was doing was thinking that the web looked like a giant spider, and —”

Kaz briefly put a hand over the kender’s mouth and looked at Tesela. “I think he’s all right.”

“Paladine’s Sword! What happened here?” Darius, blade in one hand and a candle in the other, came running up the stairs behind Delbin. “Is that a – a —”

“A spider, yes.” Argaen joined them from the steps above. While both he and Darius had obviously run, only the knight seemed at all winded. “I cannot say I’ve come across one that big before. Not in a place like Vingaard Keep.”

Kaz wiped his axe blade off on the spider. The stench from the bodily fluids of the monster was becoming noticeable. “Have you ever been in these passages?” he asked the elf.

“When I first found those parchments – and, believe me, that was purely accidental, for they were extremely well hidden – I decided to traverse the entire library system. I came across many spiders, of course, but nothing like that.”

“Delbin says that it seemed to come out of nowhere, that he was just thinking how the web looked like one spun by a giant spider.”

The elf frowned. “I do not like the sound of that. Things grow ever worse. I fear that the kender himself may have somehow created that monster – by magic.”

The kender was silent, but there was a gleam in his eyes that Kaz did not like.

“What do you mean?” the minotaur asked Argaen, “when you say that Delbin ‘created’ it?”

“That may be a poor choice of words. What I meant applies to us all, including what happened to you when you first entered Vingaard Keep. You recall the knight you told me of, or the sound of men and animals, yet there were none?”

“The knight was real,” Darius stated flatly.

“Perhaps. Your knight vanished, real or not. This spider of the kender’s imagination did not, however.” Argaen studied Delbin intently in the torchlight. Kaz noticed his companion shiver.

“Let this be a lesson to you, Delbin,” the minotaur chided the kender kindly. “Don’t go running off on any adventures without me.”

“Exactly how did you find the entrance you used, kender?” the elf asked with great interest. “Even I would have trouble finding them without help, and knowing how to open them. …”

Delbin grinned. “It’s easy. All you have to do is know where to look, and the locks weren’t really hidden all that great. They were kind of fun, but my uncle Kebble showed me lots of tricks. A lot of the other kender think he’s the greatest, which he is, but —”

“Delbin’s a kender,” Kaz interrupted quickly. “That should be sufficient answer. He could go on for hours. I for one, however, would like to leave this place. This overgrown bug-eater stinks to high heaven, and I’ve seen less dust in a desert.”

The elf nodded rather absently. “Surely. The nearest exit is the one you came through.”

Kaz stepped back over the remains of the spider. Tesela helped Delbin rise to his feet. The kender seemed a bit unsteady. The cleric made a move to help him, but Argaen was suddenly there. He took hold of one of Delbin’s arms.

“Allow me, human.” Argaen smiled politely at her. Tesela automatically stepped away. The elf helped the kender over the spider. Tesela blinked and followed hastily after them, not wanting to be left alone with the horrid remains. Spiders had always scared her as a small child.

*

The day, like all other days he could remember, dwindled away. Nothing changed … ever. No end seemed in sight.

Lord Oswal sat in the central chamber, where he and his numerous predecessors, including his late brother, had held court. The throne room was a place of power, designed to accentuate the Grand Master’s status as supreme commander and voice of Paladine. The chair on which the Grand Master sat was a level higher than the next closest. Anyone seeking an audience would be forced to look upward. Behind the high-backed throne, further emphasizing who ruled here, was a great representation of the Solamnic symbol. The kingfisher was larger than a man.

Once guards would have stood on both sides of the throne. More would have lined the hall, and there would have been still more at the great doors. Now, as Oswal slowly raised his head, he saw but a handful of knights, little more than a dozen, he supposed, and it was questionable how much he could rely on them. These men were filthy, unbathed, hardly typical of the knighthood as once he had cherished it. They were mad, of course, and it was a madness forced on them by him. He was lucky that he himself had not fallen victim to the tremendous power of that one, though each day it grew a little harder to resist. Each hour it grew so much easier to just let one’s mind drift … to …

The bell sounded, snapping him from his reverie. His eyes widened, and a smile played across his cracked lips. Perhaps his men had thought it part of his madness when the Grand Master had ordered at least one man stationed at the bell at all times. Certainly his command that the bell be rung at random hours had been met with looks of pity from men who had once respected him. Lord Oswal knew what he was doing, however. The loud ringing of the bell stirred his mind whenever he was sinking too deep into madness. The ringing – and his own power as a cleric of Paladine, something that even most of his fellow knights did not know.

What was going on outside? he wondered. Where was Bennett? Where was Arak Hawkeye, head of the Order of the Crown? Where was Huma? Rennard? Where …

He cursed the one who traveled in the darkness as he realized with a jolt that some of the men he was waiting for were long dead. There were others, though. …

“Contemplating your mortality, Grand Master?” a voice like a hiss asked him suddenly.

Oswal was well beyond the point of being startled when he manifested himself. “Come out from behind me, coward.”

A blur of darkness formed before the throne of the Grand Master, but none of the guards noticed. “Are you blind?” he wanted to scream at them. “The enemy is before you!”

The other knights continued to stare without reaction. They were caught in a bizarre world of fanaticism in which the performance of their duties was all they existed for. They were being the best, most alert sentries that they could possibly be, yet they could not see the figure cloaked in shadows.

Oswal refused to consider the possibility that it might be himself who was mad, and that the one before him did not, in truth, exist anywhere but in the Grand Master’s mind.

“Shall I tell you what this day will bring?” the shadow mocked him. “Would you like to know what new atrocities are being performed in the name of Paladine and the Knights of Solamnia?”

It was a game he played each day at some point. Lord Oswal trembled in growing rage and uncertainty. Solamnia was in ruins. The knights were plundering the very people they were supposed to protect. Former allies were now hunted enemies.

All at the Grand Master’s command.

“You can tell me nothing new, mage, and I will tell you nothing new, either.” He said the last with some satisfaction. He could no longer summon up the strength to fully utilize the gifts of Paladine with which he, as a cleric and a Lord Knight, was endowed. How had that come about?

“I can save your people from your madnessssss.” Oswal had struck a nerve. “You merely have to tell me a few simple things. The longer you delay, the worse you make your own position. Do you know that your keep lies open, defenseless, and that other than the few men you have here, there are only two or three dozen remaining in all of Vingaard?” The shadow chuckled. “Soon the Knights of Solamnia will cease to exist, and all for naught.”

“To the Abyss with you!” the Grand Master shouted as he rose from his throne. The knights guarding the chamber turned to look at him fleetingly, but noting that nothing was apparently wrong, they turned back to their “duties.” “If you could take what you wanted, you would have taken it long ago! I have seen it in a vision! Paladine has guided me from the first! It is only a matter of outlasting you, specter! Your own time is limited! I will prevail!”

“You will do nothing. You are impotent, Grand Master. Shall I tell you a secret? Ssssoon, very ssssoon, what I want will be mine.”

“Takhisis take your murky hide!” Oswal slumped back onto the throne.

“She already hasss, asss you can sseee. …” The shadow began to fade into nothing, but not before the Grand Master was allowed a glimpse of a face. It was a human face, but only barely, for the hair lay flat against the skull and the face was overly elongated, like that of some reptile. The skin added to the effect, showing a layer of scale or scab. It was hard to tell which.

Long after the shade had vanished, if indeed it had ever been there, he finally succeeded in whispering the name that accompanied that horrid, less-than-human visage.

“Dracos!”

Chapter 13

The light of day was fading swiftly. Around the Grand Master’s stronghold, Kaz and the others saw the few remaining knights of Vingaard Keep begin what seemed to be automatic rituals. With slow deliberation, a group of some three or four passed among the others, lighting and distributing torches to each. Their pace never faltered, yet never varied, either. Kaz was reminded of folktales about the undead shambling out of their graves. Beside him, Darius watched, his hands clutching the base of the window, his knuckles white. The knights, once all were equipped with burning torches, shifted into a protective shield around the entrance of the building, each man facing the darkness without. Neither the minotaur nor Darius had seen any visible threat. It was almost as if the knights were seeking to hold back the coming darkness. The bell rang its single note for at least the thirteenth time today, though Kaz had lost count.

“How long can this go on?” he muttered.

Vingaard Keep, Kaz mused, was like a limbo of some sort, an unreal place, where everything seemed to slow down, seemed never really to change. There were no conclusions here, just one perpetual emptiness. The knights changed guard several times during the day, but they did nothing else. A few wandered briefly along the walls of the keep, supposedly on sentry duty, but Kaz knew that an enemy horde could stroll in undetected.

“What are we waiting for?” he groused at his companions. Darius nodded agreement with that sentiment. He was all for making some grand plan. The minotaur grimaced slightly. Darius was a good, brave soul, as humans went, but like many of his fellow knights, he seemed to think that what was called for was a glorious attack straight into the teeth of danger. Kaz knew that he himself was guilty of overzealousness at times, but experience had mellowed him somewhat.

Tesela was quiet. She sat on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed. Kaz could not say for certain whether she was performing some ritual or was just plain bored, like he was. He suspected that she herself was not quite certain what to do.

Sensing his eyes on her, she opened her own and met his gaze. Something was troubling her, the minotaur felt instinctively. “What’s wrong?”

The cleric shook her head. “I can’t really say. I’ve been trying to clear my mind and have been asking Mishakal for guidance all day, but I still can’t determine what it is that disturbs me … only that it concerns Argaen.”

“The elf?” Darius grumbled.

“I’ve prayed to Mishakal for guidance, but where the elf is concerned, I feel nothing. It’s as if there is a – a blockage.”

“And your goddess is not strong enough to remove the obstacles?”

Her glare burned holes into the knight’s eyes, making him turn red. “I don’t snap my fingers and have every request taken care of instantly, Knight of Solamnia! Mishakal, like all the other gods, has concerns that go beyond mortal ken. I am not her sole concern, though I feel her love. There may be a hundred different reasons why I can’t see what I want to see. For that matter, where is your Paladine? Why has he not helped his own people?”

Kaz, perhaps the only one of the party who had ever actually met a god – unfortunately, it had been Takhisis – smiled slightly. Gods, in his opinion, had more limitations than people imagined.

Rising from the chair where he had sat polishing his axe and trying to figure out some way to repair the one chipped edge, the minotaur stalked slowly toward the window. Other than the wind and an occasional sounding by the bell, things had been too quiet. On the night they had come here, dark, otherworldly things had been manifest. Now, save for the emptiness and the perpetual cloud cover, things were almost … ordinary.

Kaz did not like that one bit. In his experience, when things turned calm and ordinary, something unusual was about to happen.

“It’s almost as if we’re waiting for a signal,” the minotaur whispered to himself.

“What’s that?” Tesela called.

“Nothing. A whole lot of nothing, it seems.”

“Ah! There you are!” Argaen came stomping in as if he had been searching the entire library for them. The elf always seemed to be at least a little astonished that they were still here, which made Kaz uneasy. It was as if they were temporary diversions from his normal scheme of things and one day would simply cease to exist. No doubt, then Argaen Ravenshadow would probably forget they had ever been here.

“I’ve brought you food!” The elf carried a plate of bread and a pot of thick vegetable soup to the table.

“Most kind of you, Master Ravenshadow,” Darius said politely.

“Where do you get your supplies?” Tesela asked, sniffing the soup. Delbin was trying desperately to pull the pot from her hands. Argaen reached over and pried the kender away with a shake of his head. Delbin smiled and kept his hands at his sides, but his eyes kept drifting to the food.

“There are wells in the keep, and one of them nearby serves as one of the knighthood’s storage areas. Because it is partly underground, it helps to preserve the food. I am afraid that the meat spoiled long ago, but plants can last for months. As for the preparation of the food, you can thank what little sorcery I have. I’ve grown fond of human foods. Elven dishes are too ethereal for my tastes these days.” Argaen gave another broad smile.

“The supplies in Vingaard could help some of those villages to the south,” Tesela said rather harshly.

“You are welcome to try, cleric. I am only one person and the immediate need, if you will pardon me for saying so, is here.”

Tesela’s expression indicated that she did not share the elf’s view. For the past few years, the elf had been working here uselessly while other people were barely surviving. But what could she expect from an elf?

“How do your studies go, Argaen?” the minotaur asked. “Have you discovered something?”

The elf gave him a crooked smile. “I may have learned something that will change the entire situation. You will know before long, I promise you that. Please, eat.”

The smell of the soup was mouth-watering. Kaz, used to rations and living off the land, forgot all his worries and took the pot from Tesela, who was beginning to look as if she was never going to get around to eating. Darius took out a knife and cut the bread into equal pieces. Delbin hopped up and down with anxiousness.

Argaen looked down at the kender. “Delbin, before you eat, could I ask a favor of you?”

Delbin looked at the food, then at the elf, then at the food again.

“It involves an interesting lock.”

The kender’s eyes gleamed. “Where is it?”

“This way.” Elf and kender swept out of the room. Kaz snorted in amusement. Trust Argaen to come up with the one thing more important to a kender than food.

They each took a share of the soup and the bread. The bread was still warm and had that delicious taste only a fresh-baked loaf could have. Kaz decided there and then that sorcery had its useful aspect after all. Perhaps there was some way that Argaen could teach him the minimum spells for whipping up a stew.

“Truly, this is excellent,” Darius succeeded in saying between mouthfuls.

Tesela, on the other hand, was not so enthusiastic. “It smells good, but there’s a funny taste to it.”

“Tastes fine to me.” Kaz was just finishing the contents of his bowl and trying to calculate exactly how much they had to leave for Delbin.

“I’m not saying it’s not delicious, but the taste just doesn’t seem quite right.”

“Would you trade some bread for your soup? I’ll eat it if you don’t want it.” Kaz hoped she would take his offer.

She gave him a smile but declined. “The bread is good, but the soup is healthier. Maybe it’s just me.”

Kaz, disappointed, watched her take a couple more swallows. As she took the second one, he noticed something.

“Human … Tesela … why does your medallion glow?”

“What?” The cleric put her bowl down with a clatter and stared at the artifact hanging from the chain around her neck. “I’ve never seen it do that before!”

“Does it have to pulse like that, Milady Tesela?” Darius asked. He was sweating. “It makes my head spin.”

“I don’t know what it’s supposed to do, because I don’t know why it’s doing it!”

“It must be … must be …” Kaz could not recall what it was he had wanted to say. Like Darius, he was sweating profusely now. “I …”

A groan from Darius prompted him to turn his head, though the action took an eternity as far as the minotaur was concerned. He watched helplessly as the knight fell to the floor. Tesela moved to aid him, but she herself was having trouble standing straight. Kaz felt his mind begin to separate from his body. With what little of his wits remained, he put one clawed hand against his leg and sank his nails into his leg. The pain washed over him, reviving him somewhat.

Tesela, he could see, was no longer trying to reach Darius. Instead, she was on her knees and holding the medallion above her head. The strain was obvious on her face.

Half-delirious, Kaz rose to his full height and stumbled toward the hall. Delbin, his mind repeated. Delbin had to be in danger! He made it halfway before his legs gave out and he fell onto the floor. Delbin in danger … and Argaen?

Kaz could no longer move. Even breath seemed a laborious thing, almost a waste of time. Argaen. The minotaur’s mind slowly made the connection. It had to be. It simply had to be.

*

“Mishakal! I plead with you! These two are needed! I know I’m not the best of your clerics and my skills are few, but give me the strength to bring them back!”

The harsh voice broke through the sweet, warm darkness that had enveloped Kaz like a fur. He wanted to tell the voice to leave him in the quiet solitude of his slumber. What right did the voice have to disturb him? He was tired and needed rest, a long rest.

“Kaz! Hear me!”

He wanted to tell the human to go away. The human named Tesela. The human named Tesela who was a cleric. The human cleric named Tesela who was trying to pull him from his sleep.

Not sleep! a part of him whispered.

His mind, which seemed to have fragmented, began to coalesce again. Tesela was a cleric of Mishakal. She would not disturb him without a reason. The human was trying to help him. The thought of a feeble, human female helping a full-grown male minotaur amused him for some reason, and he started to laugh. It came out as a gurgle.

Tesela must have heard it, for her voice became excited. “Thank you, Mishakal! Thank you!”

“Stop …” Kaz forced his mouth and tongue to work. “Stop shouting … in my ears.”

“Kaz!” He felt the warmth of another body on his. The minotaur began to feel other things as well, especially a nauseating sensation swelling in his stomach.

“Move!” He bellowed in a voice loud enough to make his own ears ring. Tesela moved away from him, and Kaz rolled over just in time to keep from drenching his own body with vomit. It seemed for some time that every meal he had ever eaten was departing his body in haste. Gradually, however, he finished. Disgusted, he rolled away.

It was some time before Kaz felt up to facing the others. Tesela gave him water and a cloth. Wiping his snout dry, the minotaur glanced at the two humans. Both were pale, especially Darius, who looked at least as bad as Kaz felt.

“What … what happened?”

“We all became ill,” Tesela said gravely. “We were poisoned, I think.”

“I had a wild notion about that before I —” Kaz’s eyes widened. “Tesela, how close was I to death?”

“As close as Darius. You’re bigger, but you finished your bowl. He was only halfway through.” The cleric beamed. “Mishakal guided my hand. Through the medallion, she could protect me, but not you. I had to act as her channel. That was what the medallion’s glow meant. It was warning us of the danger.”

Kaz stumbled to his feet. The selfsame pot of soup still sat on the table. Kaz sent the pot and its contents flying. “Sargas take that elf! Where is he?” The minotaur turned his gaze toward the window. “It’s dark. How long has it been?”

“Midnight is upon us,” Darius offered. “We owe a great deal to the lady here, and to her mistress.”

Tesela shook her head in wonder. “I didn’t think it was possible to heal someone so quickly. Not someone as near death as you. I think, given practice – Mishakal forbid! – and the will, I might be able to do it as quickly most every time! If only I’d known! The lives I could have saved!”

Kaz felt his legs grow steadily stronger. Try as he might, though, he could not yet lift his battle-axe properly. “Where is Argaen Ravenshadow? For that matter,” Kaz suddenly recalled, “where’s Delbin?”

“Mishakal forgive me!” Tesela leaped to her feet. “He could be dying of poison at this very moment!”

The trio searched the main room of the library as quickly as possible. It became apparent that neither Delbin nor Argaen were in the immediate vicinity. With a sinking feeling, Kaz knew where they should look.

“The vaults!” he muttered.

That Delbin could get past the much-vaunted safeguards of the Knights of Solamnia was a certainty in the minotaur’s mind. Why Ravenshadow would try to poison them was another question.

“What can we do?” a pale-faced Darius asked.

Kaz shook his head, trying to clear it. He lifted his axe and knew that he still lacked the strength to use the weapon properly. Battling against crazed knights was not something he wanted to do, anyway. And Kaz did not doubt the abilities of Argaen Ravenshadow. Somehow he had gotten Delbin to agree to try to enter the vaults, perhaps by holding as incentive the lives of the two humans and Kaz.

“We’ve no choice,” the minotaur said reluctantly. “I can’t leave Delbin, and I can’t fight. I think we should demand an audience with the Grand Master. Sane or not, I think that any warning I give will be enough to stir Oswal’s interest. You two had better remain here in case I’m wrong.”

“Would you call me a coward, minotaur?” Darius demanded. “And yourself a fool? You have more of a chance of succeeding if you are accompanied by a member of the knighthood as your guard.”

“They might run both of you through without a second thought,” Tesela reminded them. “Argaen said —”

Kaz snorted angrily. “Argaen said a lot of things that I find suspect now.”

*

The column slowed. Bennett had no desire to call a halt now, but advice from his uncle rang in his head.

“Making good time in the day is no reason to go blindly in the night, lad,” the elder knight would say. “Many’s the time a patrol rode straight into an ambush. Go slow … steady but slow.”

“Steady but slow,” he muttered.

“What was that, milord?” the ranger next to him asked.

“I want you to go scout up ahead. Be careful. We’ll be following at a slower pace.”

The man looked at him critically. “You intend to travel during the night?”

“We must. Can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“The —” How can I put it? Bennett wondered. “The – presence – has withdrawn! We should have felt it by now, tearing at our minds, threatening our sanity. …” The knight let his voice fade away as he recalled some of the things he had done under the sway of that power, that spell. He cursed silently.

The ranger was happy his face was hidden by the darkness. His nervousness always grew worse when Bennett talked like this. There was always the fear that the madness had left a permanent mark on those he rode with. The ranger sighed.

Bennett was still insistent. “We will move on! You have your orders, man!”

“Yes, milord.” The ranger urged his horse forward and rode off.

Staring off into the darkness, Bennett tried to make out Vingaard Keep. He knew that, on a sunny day, the outline would have been visible near the horizon. Sunlit days were a rare commodity in recent months, however. It was almost as if the war were beginning all over again.

A bad feeling was developing, a feeling that something was going to happen very soon, and that Bennett was going to arrive too late to do anything about it. A disquieting feeling.

With a wave of his hand, he summoned one of his aides. The knight saluted his lord. “Sir?”

“How are the men holding up, Grissom?”

“We are Knights of Solamnia, milord!”

At one time, that would have been all the answer Bennett needed to go charging pell-mell through the dark toward Vingaard Keep. Not now. Another knight, these five years dead, had taught him otherwise.

“How are they really holding up, Grissom?”

The broad-faced knight shrugged. “They could use rest, but none of them are unfit. We could ride three more days before the first would begin to keel over. I think some of the horses would go first.”

The hint of a smile touched Bennett’s lips. “If we ride through the night, we can be at Vingaard before morning. Have you felt anything at all, Grissom?”

“Nothing, milord.” The aide sounded hopeful. “Could that mean the threat has been crushed? That the spell has been broken by our brethren who remained behind?”

“Unlikely, if you recall our own minds as we rode off to – what was it, anyway? – to crush our nonexistent enemies to the south or something?”

“I … forget.”

Bennett nodded. “I force myself to remember. We have much to answer for, spell or no spell.”

“What do you think is happening at Vingaard, then, milord?”

Gauntleted hands tightened their grip on the reins. “I cannot say for certain, Sir Grissom, save that I think our final destination will be a true trial of our strength, in mind as well as in body.” Bennett muttered a small oath to Paladine, then added, “It’s time we moved on. Send word down the column. Slow but steady, Sir Grissom.”

“Milord.” The other knight turned his horse around and departed.

Bennett continued to stare in the direction he knew Vingaard Keep had to be, trying not to think too much about what he would do once the column made it there. He wondered whether they would be, as he feared, too late really to do anything.

Chapter 14

“You realize,” Darius whispered, “that this plan of yours might be the product of the same sorcerous madness that has affected Vingaard and the lands surrounding it.”

Kaz nodded almost imperceptibly. “Very much so, but then, everyone we’ve been dealing with suffers from the same affliction, so that means what we’re doing is practically normal, doesn’t it?”

The silence of the empty keep was at least as eerie in its own way as that first night when they had been stalked by the winged thing and attacked by the wild knight. Time almost seemed to be holding its breath, waiting. The hair on the minotaur’s back began to rise.

“Look!” Tesela whispered.

Blinking, Kaz joined Darius and Tesela in staring at the scene unfolding before them.

The amassed figures did not resemble the phantom knights, though distance and the flickering light of the torches made it impossible to say for certain. Kaz estimated maybe four dozen. The thought occurred to him that maybe these were phantoms, too, but he discarded that idea almost immediately. These were flesh-and-blood Knights of Solamnia, and they looked ready to defend the stronghold of the Grand Master at any cost.

“They still haven’t seen us,” Darius whispered quickly. “You two could remain in the shadows. I am one of them.”

In lieu of a reply, Kaz straightened and stepped into sight.

Not one of the knights so much as turned a head. They remained where they were, resolutely guarding against … what?

Darius, accompanied by Tesela, quickly stepped up behind the minotaur. One knight slowly turned his helm toward them. Then another. And another. Like some bizarre puppet show, ten or twelve of the figures turned to stare in the direction of the trio. They stared – and did nothing else.

“I like this not,” Darius muttered.

“Really?”

At Kaz’s whispered suggestion, the three walked toward a knight whose armor indicated he was of some rank in the Order of the Crown. Acting as if he were the minotaur’s captor, Darius ordered Kaz to come to a halt. With great uneasiness, he steeled himself and stepped forward to speak with his fellow knight.

“Knight Darius, late of the keep in the province of Westia.”

With his helm completely obscuring his face, it was impossible to tell whether the other knight even took any notice of Darius.

“I have with me the minotaur named Kaz, brought here at the command of the Grand Master himself.”

A mournful howl filled the air of the keep. It was answered by other howls from all about the citadel.

“They’re coming!” the knight Darius had been speaking to shouted suddenly. All around them, the forms were beginning to move with a determination that amazed the trio. Lances were made ready. A few knights secured their torches and reached for bows. The arrows they fitted had tiny bits of moist cloth tied to them. Kaz realized the men were making fire arrows.

In the shadows all around, they could hear the padding of feet, the harsh breathing of several large creatures, and the occasional repetition of the mournful wail.

Kaz glanced at the knights. “They’re ignoring us. …”

The howling was replaced by growls.

“Interesting timing,” Kaz commented sourly.

“What do you mean?”

“After the day’s quiet and Argaen’s betrayal, I just think that this attack is too well timed.”

“A diversion!” Darius blurted.

“Here they come!” someone cried.

White shapes began to burst from the shadows, long, sinewy white shapes so very familiar to Kaz. Baleful blind eyes, burning red, contrasted greatly with the dead flesh of the hairless beasts.

“Dreadwolves!”

The others looked at him. From him they knew of dreadwolves, but actually to see one was quite another matter. The repulsive dreadwolves charged toward the thin line of valiant knights.

Darius could not stand it. “Kaz, we cannot abandon my brothers! Mad or not, they fight for their lives!”

“Our mission is just as important! Whatever Argaen plans, I want to make certain that he doesn’t end up bringing Vingaard Keep down around us!”

A fiery arrow caught a dreadwolf in midleap. The creature tumbled to the side, then rose again. When it realized it was on fire, it began to roll on the ground. The arrow snapped and the head buried itself deeper in the creature, but it didn’t concern the dreadwolf. It was not alive but was merely a parody of life.

Kaz, frustrated, took Darius by the collar. “Listen, human,” he snorted madly. “In times past, the dreadwolves were controlled by the sorcerer, Dracos! Dracos should be dead, but someone or something is controlling those monsters! I think the key lies in the vaults! Someone should go down there and investigate!”

Another dreadwolf became skewered on the end of a long lance. Somehow the defenders were succeeding in keeping the battle a stalemate.

As Kaz released his grip on Darius, the truth of the situation dawned on him.

“You’ve nothing to worry about, Darius,” he said quickly. “They’re like the knight we fought – illusions!”

They watched another dreadwolf, pinned to the ground, vanish. The knight who had pinned him down with his lance seemed to take this in stride, calmly awaiting the next one.

“Come on!” cried Kaz. “I doubt we have too much time!”

Though they had half-expected it, it was still a bit of a shock to discover that the building was empty. Their footsteps echoed loudly in the halls. Kaz, the only one of the three who had ever been in the Grand Master’s citadel, led the way.

Kaz only hoped that Oswal had no intention of hanging him from the point of a lance. It would certainly spoil the reunion, not to mention any chances of catching Argaen before it was too late. Kaz wondered what the elf’s plan was. What did he intend to do with whatever artifact or power lurked down in the vault?

They turned down the hallway and found two elaborately decorated doors blocking their path. Kaz tried the doors and, when they proved to be locked, clasped both hands together, raising them high in the air and bringing them down hard where the two doors joined.

The doors burst open with a loud crash. Splinters flew everywhere.

Beyond the entrance, seated in a throne atop a dais and guarded by a dozen stern figures, was the still-majestic form of the Grand Master of the Knights of Solamnia. Even from where he stood, Kaz could see the strain that Lord Oswal was under. Despite that, Oswal continued to radiate a power of majesty.

The aquiline features, so much like those of his nephew though tempered by age, came into view as the Grand Master looked up at those who had dared invade his inner sanctum. The eyes seemed to pierce the trio.

“So!” Oswal suddenly raged. He stood up and pointed a condemning finger at the three. “You think to twist my mind with still more of your masks, your illusions? I feel your weakness! The knighthood will triumph!”

With odd dreamlike movements, the guards on the steps of the platform began to draw toward the newcomers. The Grand Master fairly wept with delight. “They see you! I’ve survived your spell of madness, then!”

“How is it things keep getting worse and worse?” snarled Kaz. He stepped in front of Darius and Tesela and raised both hands high in the air, palms toward the guards so that they could see he was unarmed. “Lord Oswal!”

The figure standing before the throne stiffened. “A good ploy, but not good enough!”

“What does he mean?” Darius whispered.

“Quiet!” Kaz hissed. To the Grand Master, he called, “Lord Oswal, you know me! I am the minotaur, Kaz, friend of Huma and the knighthood!”

“Kaz?” A peculiar expression moved slowly over the elder knight’s face. “Kaz is dead! I ordered his capture and execution on nonexistent charges before I realized that there was a spell of madness enveloping the keep and that I had been affected along with the rest of the men. I ordered all their executions – Arak Hawkeye, Lord Guy Avondale, Taggin. … So many died before my eyes.”

The guards were nearly upon them. Darius stepped up next to Kaz, his sword committed in the minotaur’s defense. “Milord, I am Darius of the Order of the Crown, from a keep in the south. I know not the whereabouts of Lord Hawkeye or the one you called Avondale, but I do know that we only recently had word from Taggin, ruling knight of one of the southernmost keeps in Ergoth. He is alive and well.”

“Taggin? Alive?” As the Grand Master momentarily faltered, so too did the movement of the guards. It was as if they were extensions of his will.

Kaz suddenly eyed them more closely. Extensions of his will?

“Lord Oswal,” Kaz began, his eyes still on the other knights, “when we – when we buried Huma, you said the world needed heroes, which was why you had such an elaborate tomb built for him.”

The Grand Master seemed to slump a little. “I recall that.”

“I thought it more appropriate to honor him the way he would have wanted it, by a simple burial and a marker noting only his name.”

“The knighthood needed a standard. They, too, needed a hero.” The guards seemed frozen in stride as the Grand Master spoke of that time. “He was a cleric of Paladine in the end, you know. A just reward. He deserved it more than I ever did.”

“He truly lived up to the Oath and Measure, Grand Master.”

“Kaz.” The Grand Master took a step toward them.

Suddenly the loyal guards simply ceased to be. They were, as Kaz had surmised, phantoms. He wondered whether or not the knights combating the dreadwolves had been phantoms as well. Phantoms fighting phantoms.

Kaz bowed his head as the Grand Master approached. His two companions had already done the same. “My Lord Oswal.”

The Lord of Knights came down the steps and walked over to the minotaur. He clasped Kaz on the shoulders. “It is you. I’m certain of it! More lies! All he ever spoke were lies!”

Kaz cocked an eyebrow. “Argaen Ravenshadow?”

A puzzled look crossed the elder knight’s face. “The elf? Is he still here? I ordered him ousted from the libraries shortly after he came here. No, friend Kaz, I fear the one I speak of is none other than the mortal consort of Takhisis herself, that scaly-faced renegade mage, Galan Dracos!”

“Dracos!” Kaz shook his head, remembering the dreadwolves outside.

“Dracos indeed! Who are your companions, Kaz the Minotaur?”

“I am Tesela,” the healer said.

“A brave friend,” Kaz added.

“Milord.” Darius was down on one knee. “Darius, from a keep in Westia.”

“The province that Kharolis claims but leaves to the knighthood to defend? Where are your brethren? I was told to expect emissaries from most of the southern keeps.”

“They … milord, I’m afraid they are dead. A dragon, so I believe.”

“A dragon?” Oswal looked at the three. “Surely another of the renegade’s lies! He could not have the power to enslave a dragon, let alone drag one from Paladine knows where! All the dragons are gone!”

“None of us have seen the dragon in good light, Grand Master,” Kaz replied hastily. “It may be something else – a rare griffon, perhaps. Be that as it may, I think that you have been duped in yet another manner.” He paused at the brief annoyed look on Lord Oswal’s face. Kaz forced himself to be more delicate with his choice of words. “Argaen Ravenshadow never departed Vingaard Keep. In fact, he’s about the only one left in Vingaard besides yourself and – and a few of your most loyal men.”

“All this time, I thought I was keeping a clear head,” Oswal muttered. “Instead, I’ve been living a delusion. What more?”

“Why was Ravenshadow to be sent away?”

“His interest in the works of Galan Dracos was too intense. I saw in him one who treaded a thin line between red and black robes.” The Grand Master’s eyes lit up with partial understanding. “But if Ravenshadow has been here all this time – Paladine! No wonder he pressed for the secrets of the vaults! The elf does not have the magical skills necessary to ferret them out, but that is something Dracos would not need to worry about!”

Kaz sighed in relief. “You understand the situation now. Good, because we fear that this attack, an illusion like all the rest, is a diversion created by Ravenshadow. He may even now down be in the vaults, working his way through your safeguards at last.”

“Impossible! Argaen might be able to bypass the magical safeguards, which I doubt, but he could never weave through the networks of traps and false locks.” The elder knight tapped the side of his head. “Only I know those secrets, and I have not faltered there.”

The minotaur grimaced. “Lord Oswal, I fear that I’ve brought a kender with me. Another companion, if you can believe that.”

“A kender?” Oswal asked, a quizzical look on his face. “A kender?” The Grand Master shook his head. “A kender!”

“His name’s Delbin, and I think, judging by Argaen’s ability to manipulate people’s minds, he’s helping the elf break open the vaults.”

“By the Triumvirate!”

“How do we reach the vaults, milord?” asked Darius quickly, for Oswal was simply staring out into space, dumbfounded, no doubt picturing the elf plundering armloads of magical treasures – evil treasures.

“What? … Yes, of course. This way!” The Grand Master led them up the dais to the throne. He touched something on one of the arms, and the chair and the floor below it slid to one side. There was a stairway leading down into the earth.

“Get a torch, Darius, will you?”

“At once, Grand Master.”

“I could light the way with this.” Tesela held up her medallion.

Oswal shook his head. “I would not risk that yet. Argaen might feel our presence if we make use of the gifts the gods have bestowed upon us. I want to surprise the elf before he even realizes we are coming.”

As Darius returned with the torch, Kaz looked around for some weapon. He wished now that he had not left his own axe behind. To have it in his hands now …

“I thought you left that behind,” Tesela commented in mild surprise.

Kaz gazed down at his hands. His visage was reflected back by the mirrorlike finish of the head of Honor’s Face. He almost dropped it, thinking it just another illusion. It felt real, however. Somehow, it had materialized in his hands just when he needed it. Was it some minor miracle performed by Paladine, or had Sardal Crystalthorn given him a magical weapon?

“Are you coming, minotaur?” Lord Oswal called from the steps.

Kaz hefted the axe once and, feeling the good, solid weight of the weapon, shrugged. All that really mattered at the moment, he decided, was that now he had the axe. “Coming.”

They descended into the cool earth.

“Lord Oswal,” Darius whispered, “is there more than one entrance to the vaults?”

“There is. There is one in the chamber where he who commands the Order of the Rose – my nephew, Bennett, holds that position – speaks before his men.”

“Where is Bennett now?” Kaz asked sourly. He still was not certain just what to think about Huma’s former rival.

The Grand Master paused, trying to collect his thoughts. “I seem to recall … to recall sending him off to fight … to fight Paladine! But what else have I done these past few years that I do not recall? What have I done to beloved Solamnia?”

The minotaur put a hand on the elder’s shoulder. “The elf is responsible – the elf and something left behind by Dracos. You’ve got a lot of wounds to heal, Grand Master, but none of them are really your fault.”

“You say that even though I almost had you killed?”

“Whose doing was that?”

Lord Oswal shook his head dazedly. “I seem to recall asking, or being asked, who might have knowledge concerning Galan Dracos. Ravenshadow asked me to list those who had been there!”

Kaz snorted. “Perhaps the elf thought to eliminate any who knew about the renegade’s magic. We can ask him if we get the chance.”

They moved in silence now, not so much out of a fear that someone might hear but because each of them wondered what they might soon face. Through the trek down the long, winding steps, they battled their own imaginations.

A sound from below caught their attention. Lord Oswal signaled for a halt. A voice, barely recognizable as the elf’s, echoed upward. What he was saying, they could not understand, except that Argaen was tense, excited.

The Grand Master turned to Darius and indicated that he should give the torch to Tesela and that she should stay to the rear. The cleric wanted to say something, slightly annoyed at being relegated to a “safe” position, but decided against it. This was, after all, Oswal’s domain.

Ever so slowly, they continued their descent. They stopped for a second time when they heard a new, higher-pitched voice. Kaz could not help smiling, for the voice was that of his kender companion. Delbin was not only alive, but he was also his usual self, much to Argaen’s dismay, no doubt.

“How did you first get inside? How long did it take you to learn? The knights must really not want people to get in here, because I never saw such complicated locks! My uncle would’ve loved this place. He’s the best, you know, though he taught me a lot, and I bet he would’ve gotten inside by this time, though maybe this one darn screwy lock would’ve given him some trouble. …”

“Be silent, kender!” Argaen Ravenshadow hissed. “I have to concentrate, or I might miss something! If I do, we may both wind up dead! What would your minotaur friend do without you then?”

“I wish Kaz was here. He’s always so much fun. You know, I’m getting kind of hungry. Do you have any more of that bread? I like bread, especially with lots of honey on —”

“How can you concentrate on that lock and babble so?” Obviously the elf was reaching the limit of his patience, but he needed Delbin badly. Had the circumstances been different, Kaz would have found the conversation quite amusing.

“I think I’ve got it!”

“At last! The strain is becoming unbearable!”

Lord Oswal stiffened. The Grand Master reached behind his breastplate and pulled out a chain, at the end of which was a familiar medallion. The elderly knight turned back to Tesela and, with a gesture, indicated her medallion. She nodded and held it tightly with her free hand.

They crept down the remaining steps, Oswal and Kaz in the forefront. A glittering light emanated from the bottom, where the stairs ended in the entrance to what could only be the chamber of the vaults. Kaz leaned down and peered inside, axe at the ready.

At first glance, the chamber of the vaults seemed surprisingly large. The ceiling was almost three times the minotaur’s own height, with enough ground space for a company of mounted knights. Another set of stairs stood opposite those used by the foursome. From the marks on the walls and various odd artifacts lying on the floor or sticking out from the walls, Kaz received a good impression of some of the nastier safeguards the Knights of Solamnia had installed. Those were only the physical traps. Argaen Ravenshadow had evidently dealt successfully with all of the sorcerous traps – at least so far.

In the center of the room, poised beneath the shimmering crystal that was the source of the light, stood the elf, Argaen Ravenshadow. His robe was of the blackest black, leaving no doubt now as to his loyalty. The dark elf held something in his hands, hands that were raised as if he sought to grasp the illuminating crystal, and he stared straight ahead, as if the Dragonqueen herself were about to burst through the vaults. Not something to be ruled out, Kaz thought pessimistically. Argaen’s hair fluttered outward.

The vault doors themselves reached nearly to the ceiling. There were three of them, each with a massive relief of one of the three symbols of the knighthood sculpted into it. Argaen’s attention was focused on the one that bore a single massive rose. Delbin was fiddling with something near the handle. He could barely reach it on his tiptoes.

The Grand Master’s hand touched Kaz. The two looked at one another. Lord Oswal smiled grimly and whispered, “The time is upon us! Be ready to strike when I do!”

Clutching tight the symbol of his belief in the power of Paladine, the elder knight closed his eyes and whispered something.

The effect on Argaen Ravenshadow was immediate. His eyes lit up and he turned to where the four had been concealed. “No! No!” he screamed.

Kaz had already covered half the distance between him and the dark mage. Darius was only a step or two behind. Bellowing like a beast, the minotaur swung the massive axe high over his head. One sweep would send his adversary to the floor. …

It was like striking a stone wall, only he struck nothing. Instead, he went flying backward, bowling over the hapless Darius as he did so, soon ending his flight with a heavy thud against the wall near the stairway. Kaz hit the floor like a sack of rocks, still conscious but too stunned to do anything.

Oddly unperturbed by the chaos around him, Delbin shouted out, “I got it! I should write this down, you know, because this is the best adventure I’ve had y —”

“Be silent, you fool!”

“Argaen Ravenshadow!” The Grand Master stepped out into the open, the symbol of Paladine gleaming brilliantly on his chest. “Your tricks have proven insufficient! Now face me directly, and let us see if your power can save you from judgment!” Behind him, Tesela crouched, clutching her own medallion.

The elf’s expression became even more desperate. He stuffed the object he had been holding into one pocket of his robe, while with his other hand, he pulled something from another pocket. With amazing speed, he threw a handful of tiny spheres at the elder knight.

As Ravenshadow had done with Kaz, so, too, did the Grand Master do with the spheres. The tiny projectiles bounced off an invisible shield and rebounded to various portions of the chamber.

“Is that the best you can do? You are no mage, elf! As I suspected when first you came, you are nothing more than a thief of magic, with little actual power to call your own —”

The tiny spheres began bursting, filling the chamber of the vaults with shock waves of sound and blinding flashes. Caught unaware by the dark elf’s ploy, Lord Oswal stumbled back, his eyesight blinded and his senses, already weak from his long ordeal, in disarray.

Through watery eyes, Kaz saw Argaen rush to the vault door where Delbin stood. The elf shoved the hesitant kender aside. Kaz forced himself to his feet and stumbled forward.

Argaen Ravenshadow tugged the massive vault door open. Despite his slim appearance, his strength apparently was considerable. The door began to swing outward, and the illumination of the chamber was suddenly transformed into a hellish green glow that sent chills down the minotaur’s spine. There was no warmth in the glow, but rather a malevolent presence that was somehow familiar.

“Aaaah!” The shriek was Argaen’s, and it was not one of triumph.

The intensity of the emerald glow was like a physical force, buffeting the members of the party. The Grand Master fell back, his body too weak, his mind too worn. No one could have done more.

Kaz stumbled to one knee. Two hands helped him up and Tesela, her face aglow with the strength of Mishakal, smiled bravely at him. She, too, was under a great strain.

“I’m not a warrior, Kaz! Let Mishakal watch over you, give you strength! It’s the only help I can give!” Though there was no other sound, it was difficult to make out her voice, almost as if she were speaking from a distance.

The minotaur nodded. He thought about turning around and retrieving his battle-axe, only to discover, as before, that it was already in his hands. A grim smile played over his animal features. This was the sort of magic he could learn to like.

“See to Darius and the others!” he shouted, then stalked defiantly toward the open vault.

Even before he reached the doorway, Kaz had a good idea what it was he faced. It was the same tremendous power he had felt from a distance when the surviving dragonriders had swooped down on the citadel of the mad mage. …

He stepped in front of the open vault and confirmed his own fears. With the sorcerous staff of his childhood friend, the slain wizard, Magius, Huma had attacked Galan Dracos. Dracos’s power had been shattered, so had Huma said, and this thing that radiated it should have been nothing more than a thousand glass fragments. Yet this evil thing had evidently reformed itself, albeit incompletely, judging by the cracks and gaps, and now it rested solidly on a pile of broken artifacts gathered from the ruins of the magic-user’s citadel.

Like a dragon atop its horde, the great emerald sphere of Galan Dracos, the same sphere that had almost made the renegade sorcerer victorious, glistened malevolently at the minotaur.

Chapter 15

Fragments. That was all that had remained of the emerald sphere, according to Huma. The sphere had been the channel for the power Galan Dracos had craved … power he had drawn from beyond even the Abyss, power that would have allowed his mistress her full dark glory in the mortal realm of Krynn. Without the sphere, the Dark Queen would have been weakened, as are all gods who enter this plane of existence. Dracos had found a way, though, through his unorthodox manner of experimentation, to cheat this basic law. He had also planned to cheat Takhisis as well and to add her power to his own. However, in a moment of desperation, Huma had thrown the Staff of Magius like a well-aimed lance at the emerald sphere. Where the finest steel could not even scratch the artifact’s surface, the magical staff had driven through virtually unimpeded, shattering both the emerald sphere and its creator’s dream.

Somehow the sphere, over a period of time, had drawn itself back together. It was imperfect, though, and even from where he stood, half-blinded by its evil glory, Kaz could see the many cracks and gaps. Not all of the sphere had been gathered back together; some pieces had no doubt been buried or thrown far from the wreckage of the citadel. It was amazing that the knights had located so many.

Half-draped over the flickering artifact, blood staining his right side, was Argaen Ravenshadow. More and more, it appeared that the true Argaen Ravenshadow was a mad thief of sorcery. The dark elf smiled as he looked up and noticed the minotaur, as if for the first time.

“I never imagined it could be so … wonderful,” he whispered. The glow made him look positively ghoulish. “This is what comes from being unfettered by the Conclave’s stodgy rules! This is true magic!”

“It’s death, elf. Likely yours.” Kaz hefted the axe.

Argaen rose from the sphere, strain evident in every move. Blood was still dripping from a massive wound below his left shoulder. Had it been a little farther to the right, the elf would have been a walking corpse. “The knighthood … is very thorough. I did not expect a … a further safety measure within the vault itself. It … it almost succeeded in its task.”

“It may still succeed. You look about done, thief.”

The elf’s smile grew broader. “A small matter now. I have access to more power than any other mage alive. Not only can I heal myself, but in time, I can become nearly a god!”

Kaz laughed mockingly. “Galan Dracos thought the same thing.”

“He was in the midst of a war.”

“And you have only me. I think I might be enough for you, though.” Kaz took a step toward the elf and his prize.

“Are you?”

This time it was not as if the minotaur had hit a stone wall. Rather, it was more like walking into soft cheese. Kaz struggled forward, feeling each step more and more of an effort.

The distance that separated the two was diminishing slowly, when Kaz saw the elf reach into a pocket in his robes and pull out a tiny figurine. It was, Kaz noted, the same figurine that Delbin had “accidentally” picked up once before. With that realization, the minotaur was abruptly released by whatever spell held him in thrall. His advantage was short-lived, however, because even as he ran, he saw the tiny figurine in Ravenshadow’s outstretched hand swell in size and fly off. The figurine landed in front of him, effectively cutting him off from the elf. It continued to grow and grow.

The nightflyer! Darius had been slightly amiss in his assumption that he had been attacked by a dragon, for, though the thing that Kaz was now desperately backing away from had the wings, body, and jaws of a dragon, it was not that legendary beast. It was not even alive, at least by normal standards.

It was a stone dragon, perfect in every detail – a statue, a figurine, animated by some sorcery. Still it continued to grow. Already its head nearly brushed the ceiling of the vault. Kaz watched in horrified wonder as seemingly immobile wings flapped lightly. He wondered how the thing, so much heavier than a true dragon, could fly.

The stone behemoth opened its great maw wide and roared a silent challenge. Whereas it had been given a mouth with huge, sharp-chiseled teeth, fangs, and a forked tongue longer than the minotaur’s arm, the creator could not endow the strange creature with a throat. The back of the mouth ended in solid rock. It could not make a sound.

Still the creature continued to grow, and Kaz wondered whether it would keep swelling until it filled all the space in the huge vault.

The dragon lashed its long, wicked tail at the nearest wall of the vault. The wall failed to shatter, but cracks ran all along it.

“Cease!” The elf glared up at the creature. “You will bring everything down upon us!”

In reply, the unliving creature glanced down at its master and gave a silent hiss. It began to shift around, as if seeking some escape from the confinement of the vault. A wing struck the weakened wall, spreading the vein of cracks farther and loosening bits of the ceiling. The dragon moved forward.

“Stop!” Argaen stumbled a short distance from the sphere, which was glowing more intensely than ever. “I command you!”

“Your toy doesn’t seem to be listening!” Kaz shouted, and regretted it a moment later when the dragon suddenly swiveled its head and studied him thoughtfully with its blank eyes. It began to change direction. The tail struck the base of the wall. There was an ominous rumbling from above.

Argaen Ravenshadow was down on one knee, every movement requiring a greater and greater effort on his part. “Minotaur!”

Kaz paid him no mind at first, intent on saving his own skin. He swung the dwarven battle-axe in his left hand, cutting an arc of death that he was certain would not impress a creature that had already proven itself impervious to such weaponry. To his surprise, however, the stone beast actually backed up a step or two. It leaned forward and opened its mouth wide, eerily remaining in that stance for several seconds. The action seemed peculiar until Kaz recognized the pose as that of a true dragon unleashing a deadly stream of flame. The animated dragon obviously thought itself every bit as real as the vast leviathan it had been carved to resemble.

“Minotaur! Listen to – to me!”

“What is it?” Kaz watched in dismay as the monster tried to rise in the air. It was no sooner off the ground, however, than the top of its head smashed into the ceiling like a battering ram. Both elf and minotaur were showered by large fragments.

“By the Oath and Measure!” Whatever Argaen sought to say was again cut off, this time by the intrusion of the Grand Master and Darius. They had come in expecting a battle, but nothing like this. The stone behemoth turned to regard them.

“The Abyss take you, foul fiend! I owe you for many lives!” shouted Darius. He started for the monster in what Kaz thought was typical Solamnic fashion, a head-on charge with only a sword against a creature more than twenty times his size. Kaz was never sure whether such an action ought to be considered bravery or stupidity.

Darius was already upon the dragon before anyone could prevent him. With a loud battle cry, he struck at the nearest leg, only to have his sword rebound off the limb and go flying from his hand. The dragon raised its front paw high.

“No!” Lord Oswal reacted instinctively, rushing to pull the stunned and still angered Darius away from a danger that seemed obvious to everyone except the young knight.

The massive paw came down, smashing a vast hole in the floor and causing the entire vault to shake. More ceiling rained down, but this time it did not cease after a few seconds. The structure had not been designed to combat something so huge trying to get out.

The Grand Master managed to save Darius, but not without risk to his own safety. Several large fragments of rock struck him, knocking him to the ground. Kaz tried to reach him, but Ravenshadow’s uncontrollable stone dragon now blocked his path completely. It was determined to extinguish the two knights. The minotaur steadied his axe, mentally readying himself for a suicide charge.

“There … is a way … minotaur! Listen … to me!”

Argaen Ravenshadow clutched at the ugly hole in his upper torso. The wound had stopped bleeding, but the elf was as white as a dreadwolf. With his other arm, Argaen forced himself to remain in a sitting position. Kaz could see that it wouldn’t take much to shift the arm a little and send the dark one falling facedown into the earth, where he would be too weak to rise again. The temptation was there, but Kaz checked the thought. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Darius was trying to drag his liege lord to safety. He was not making much headway, for the younger knight’s right leg seemed unsteady, as if he had sprained his ankle. Another figure darted into the vault, Tesela, with a look of grim desperation on her visage. Her eyes avoiding the monstrous threat before her, she rushed over to Darius and helped him drag Lord Oswal toward the entrance of the vault. The stone dragon trailed closely behind. Of Delbin, there was still no sign, and Kaz hoped the kender had enough sense to stay out of danger this time.

Argaen’s renewed plea made him turn back to the elf. “Help … me to … bind the sphere … the sphere to my will. …”

“Hah! You’re even madder than I thought! Me help you?”

The elf spat blood. “I … cannot control the animate … for very long! You can … see that I … am dying, minotaur! If I do, that thing will rampage until … all of Vingaard is destroyed … and then it … will start on Solamnia!”

“Another sorcerer will stop it!”

“True” — Argaen tried to smile — “but we will be long dead … and who knows … how many others will die!”

Kaz looked back and saw that Darius and Tesela had succeeded in nearly gaining the entrance. As the dragon struggled against Argaen’s control, it was slamming against the walls again. The network of cracks now extended from one end of the vault to the other, and Kaz wondered if the outer chamber was in danger of collapsing as well.

“You’ve precious little time left, minotaur! I’ve … precious little time also!”

“What do you want of me?”

“In … a pouch … a pouch on my belt …”

“Gods, Argaen, not another of your little trinkets!”

“A … very old one, minotaur. This pouch …” The elf nodded to the left side of his body.

Kaz eyed the emerald sphere. Somehow, he could not help feeling that it watched him in return – with amusement. He found its sporadic surges of power unsettling, as if it were playing a game of sorts. The minotaur wondered how well Ravenshadow truly understood what it was he was trying to bind to his mind. The elf’s death would be no great loss to Kaz, but there would still be the emerald sphere itself to deal with.

Kaz reluctantly stepped over to Ravenshadow and began to search the pouch. “What am I looking for? This flat, leathery thing?”

“No … and release it immediately!” Argaen coughed up more blood. “A tiny cube … a box.”

Kaz found what he assumed was the cube. Carefully he pulled it out and showed it to the elf. “Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes. Now … help me to move … a few feet from the sphere.”

Behind them, there was a tremendous noise, and suddenly portions of the ceiling began to cave in. Kaz nearly released his grip on Argaen as he turned to see what was happening. “Pay it no mind!” Argaen shouted madly. “This vault and … likely the entire chamber … is collapsing! Help me!”

The minotaur cursed in the name of every god he could think of as he dragged the dark elf away. When they were a good dozen paces from the sphere, Argaen had Kaz help him into a sitting position.

“Now …” Ravenshadow’s breath was very ragged. “Place the cube on the top of the sphere.”

“Raven —”

“Don’t argue!” The elf nearly toppled. The other walls were showing signs of weakening. Kaz could hear the stone dragon pounding away at something and realized it was trying to get out of the vault, despite the fact that its present girth was too vast to fit through the entrance.

Axe in one hand and cube in the other, Kaz took a deep breath and made his way back to the malevolent globe. Oddly, this time he felt no surge of power, no blinding glare. Rather, there was an aura of impatience.

It’s only an object, he told himself. It’s an Abyss-spawned, cursed object, but only an object.

Though he was not able to completely convince himself, he did succeed in reaching his goal. Steeling himself, Kaz carefully placed the tiny black cube on the very top of Dracos’s pride and joy, then ran.

Argaen Ravenshadow was laughing, or at least attempting to, when Kaz rejoined him. “Were – were you expecting something?”

The minotaur looked at the cube. “It’s growing! Elf, if you’ve unleashed another pet —”

“Keep watching!”

The black cube continued to swell in size, but it also took on a new quality. The larger it became, the less substantial it seemed to become. When it was nearly half the volume of the sphere, it appeared to sink down into the artifact, as if its bottom were melting.

At the battered vault entrance, the stone dragon paused in its rampage, seemingly confused about what it was supposed to do next. Kaz’s companions were nowhere in sight, and he hoped they had departed the outer chamber in quick order.

“It’s swallowing up the emerald sphere, minotaur. Once inside, the power of the sphere will be muted and controllable, transportable.” Argaen arose, very unsteadily, but obviously without as much pain as he had been suffering moments before. “I knew it would work!”

“You knew it would work?” The minotaur’s eyes narrowed.

“You’ve witnessed my pride and joy, minotaur. I designed the shadow box, as I call it, strictly for such a purpose … and it worked! The emerald sphere, the path of power, is mine at last!”

Kaz’s huge, clawed hand pulled the elf off his feet and brought him to a minotaur’s eye level. “You sound much better, magic thief!”

“Remember your friends!” Wild-eyed, Argaen Ravenshadow tore himself from Kaz’s grasp and fell to the ground. He looked up at the minotaur and smiled broadly. “Especially your talkative little lockpicker!”

A huge section of the ceiling collapsed, sending tons of earth falling around the shadow box but strangely leaving it untouched and accessible. Kaz was caught between his hatred for the elf and his desire to leave before the rest of the ceiling and the earth above came crashing down around him.

“I should let the animate kill you all, though I fear that my playacting was not far from the actual truth, minotaur! Elves are a bit stronger than you think, but there are limits.” Argaen stared past Kaz at the stone dragon, which still paused by the vault entrance. The creature suddenly spread its wings as best it could in the cramped space and turned, shrieking silently, toward the two. The mighty jaws opened wide, and the stone beast began to move slowly in their direction. Its movements were graceful, and Kaz could almost imagine its stone muscles rippling. The tail lashed out and struck one of the walls, sending large pieces of the wall flying and raising a cloud of dust.

Kaz stepped back swiftly as the monster, ignoring the destruction raining down, stopped just before its master. The dark elf laughed at Kaz. “I would not recommend remaining down here, minotaur! If you leave now, you might just make it before everything crumbles!”

“You can’t be serious!”

Argaen’s unliving pet, its eyes focused on Kaz, lowered itself to the ground so that the elf could climb aboard. “I am so very serious!”

A Knight of Solamnia might have stayed and fought. Most minotaurs might have stayed and fought. Kaz knew better. He started running.

A small figure chose that moment to come crawling over the wreckage of the vault doorway. It was Delbin. Behind the kender, Kaz could see Lord Oswal. He cursed, knowing Darius and Tesela could not be far behind them. So much for his vague hope that they would do the intelligent thing and flee while they could. The Grand Master, haggard, spotted the minotaur first and started to speak.

Kaz waved them back. “Run!”

The elder knight took one look and, sizing up the situation, obeyed reluctantly, but Delbin, caught up in typical kender curiosity, remained where he was, trying to see what was going on beyond the minotaur. Snarling, Kaz tucked his battle-axe under one arm and, with the other, scooped up the small figure. Behind them, Argaen shouted something incomprehensible.

Lord Oswal and Tesela were already helping Darius up the steps. No one paused or even looked back. The walls and the steps vibrated as the party ascended. Kaz, in the rear, felt the step beneath his feet begin to give way. He said nothing, knowing that the others were moving as fast as they could. Tesela hadn’t had time to do anything for Darius’s sprain.

When the steps finally ended, the party’s relief at reaching the surface died quickly. The exit was barely passable; there was extensive damage.

“We must go outside,” the Grand Master decided for them. “We may have to abandon Vingaard entirely until the danger is over.”

Lord Oswal led them through crumbling halls. Darius was in definite pain but said nothing. Kaz, in his excitement, had forgotten to put Delbin down, likely a good idea, in retrospect. There was no way of telling whether the kender would stick by them or wander into further danger somehow.

The darkness of night welcomed them once more. Kaz, with a start, realized that only a short period of time had passed since he and the two humans had gone in search of Delbin and the elf. His encounter with Argaen Ravenshadow had seemed to last an eternity.

A few bewildered figures darted out of the darkness, the knights who were standing guard around the Grand Master’s stronghold. It was a bit of a surprise to discover that those knights were indeed real and not illusions. By now it wouldn’t surprise Kaz to discover that Oswal had been alone all this time.

The Grand Master instantly took charge of his meager force. As much as he admired the human, Kaz knew that Lord Oswal was weak and faltering. With each passing second, the moment drew nearer when he would collapse – this time for good. For now, though, he was still the one who must be obeyed, and for those who served him, only just emerging from the madness they had lived with for these past few years, he was a beacon of trust.

“Everyone out of the keep! Everyone out!”

The citadel of the Grand Master began to collapse. Columns cracked and tumbled down the steps. The outer walls of the building caved in. The roof, unsupported, came crashing down on the rest. In mere seconds, the stronghold was in ruins. Yet parts of the structure continued to shift, and those who had been in the vault knew that something massive was digging its way out.

Lord Oswal glanced at his men and noted their consternation. “We can do nothing at the moment! It’s nothing we can fight for now! When our strength is greater, then we shall hunt it down, but not before! No questions now! To the gates! Go!”

The shattered roof of the Grand Master’s devastated citadel shifted position and slid determinedly into the side of another building, caving in the wall.

“Kaz,” a muffled voice peeped. “I promise I’ll stay with you if you just let me down, even though it’s fun, but it’s kind of hard to breathe like this, and I know you must be tired.”

“All right, Delbin, but if you run off, you’ll wish you’d stayed down in the vaults!”

“Actually, they might still be kind of interesting, if they haven’t caved in com —”

“Come on!”

From the ruins of the collapsed building, a huge form arose. Some of the knights glanced back, then froze and stared in dismay. Worn to the point of breaking, a few even fell to their knees in resignation. The Grand Master paused in his own flight and returned to them.

“What are you doing?” he shouted in his most commanding voice. It was a strain to continue on as he did, but Lord Oswal refused to give in. He waved a fist at them. “Get up now! Whatever destruction that beast causes, it cannot destroy the knighthood so long as one of us believes! Do you understand?”

Chagrined, they began to move again. The light of the one moon visible was suddenly augmented by an unholy glow. Now it was Kaz who paused and gazed back at the center of the keep and the leviathan that was lit up by that horrible glow. The outline of the huge, winged form couldn’t be missed. Beneath the dragon, held tightly in its forepaws, was the shadow box containing the malevolent power of the emerald sphere.

Riding on the back of the stone creature, Argaen Ravenshadow laughed insanely. The elf’s unliving servant spread its wings. Kaz began to move again, but ponderously, his attention fixed with fascination on the great monster as it rose into the air. He marveled that such a creature, even magical, could lift its stone weight into the air.

The stone dragon lurched as its wings beat, causing it to lose altitude and crash into the roof of yet another building. The weight was too much. The roof caved in, and then the floor below it. The beast didn’t struggle, but instead seemed confused. Kaz wondered if Argaen Ravenshadow had lost control.

“The libraries,” Lord Oswal muttered. Kaz nearly stumbled, not realizing that the Grand Master had come up behind him. “It’s destroyed the libraries as well. We will have much rebuilding to do. Come, Kaz. Odd as it sounds, we have to abandon the keep for the safety of the wastelands of Solamnia.”

The Grand Master had as yet truly not seen what lay outside, and Kaz hoped his mind would be able to stand the shock. The elder knight was a veteran campaigner who had faced some of the deadliest threats the Dragonqueen’s warlord had sent against him, but he was older now, and the past few years had taken an exceptional toll on him.

Behind them, they could hear the beating of the dragon’s wings as it forced itself up into the air again.

A rush of wind and a brief shower of emerald light told them that Ravenshadow and his pet had flown over them. The gates, wide open, stood just before them.

Kaz and the Grand Master found a small jumble of figures, including the minotaur’s companions, near the gates, where uncertainty reigned. Already the stone dragon was little more than a black blot framed in the moonlight of Solinari. Below the blot, like a dim beacon, the sphere continued to glow. Kaz stepped through the milling group and out of the keep, his eyes on the receding form until it left the brilliance of the moon and was swallowed up by the darkness of night.

Somehow his battle-axe was still in his hands. He raised it high in a brief but futile gesture at the magic thief.

“This isn’t over, Argaen Ravenshadow!” Kaz muttered darkly in the direction the elf had flown off. “Not at all. Somehow I’ll track you down. We’ve business left unfinished, you and I.”

Brave words, he thought bitterly as he returned his battle-axe to its harness. But where do you plan to start, Kaz? You have only all of Ansalon to search!

“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered aloud. “All of Ansalon won’t be able to hide that elf.” The minotaur smiled grimly at the night. “This is personal now.”

Chapter 16

Kaz sat brooding on the ground near the front gates, his eyes closed in contemplation of what he would do when – not if – he and Argaen Ravenshadow met again.

The flicker of a torch warned him of the knight’s approach.

“You are the minotaur called Kaz?” the knight asked. He was a middle-aged human whose most distinctive feature was his rapidly receding hairline.

“How many other minotaurs are there in Vingaard Keep, human?”

The man ignored the jibe. “We found two horses that apparently belong to your party.”

“Did you?”

“They are being kept in the east end of the keep until the stables can be cleared.”

Kaz looked up at the man. “The Grand Master didn’t send you here just to tell me about our animals, did he?”

The silence that followed spoke volumes. Like many humans, this knight had difficulty dealing with a minotaur. Here was a monster, an enemy, despite what had happened this very night, despite the part Kaz had played in the final days of the war – if that was even remembered anymore by more than a few.

“The Grand Master wishes to speak to you.” A tone of menace crept into the human’s voice. “He is very nearly exhausted. Do nothing to further the strain.”

The minotaur rose, allowing him to look down on the knight when he answered. “Lord Oswal is a comrade and a friend, human. I’ll do my best to ease his problems. You might help by being more respectful to those whom the knighthood and your Grand Master in particular have in the past called an ally.”

Kaz marched off to where he knew he would find the Grand Master. A bit more respectful now, the knight hurried after him with the torch. They had not made it more than a few dozen paces when a shout from the watch at the gates broke the silence of the keep.

“Riders approaching!”

“Paladine! What now?” Kaz whirled on the knight accompanying him. “Tell your lord that I’ll be with him shortly … I hope.”

“I’ll come with you, minotaur. If there is a danger to Vingaard, I may serve my liege best by —”

“Fine.” Kaz left the human in midspeech and, utilizing his long stride and powerful legs, raced toward the front gates, approaching so fast that he startled one of the guards. The knight jumped up and pulled his sword free, actually taking a slash at the minotaur before Kaz was able to convince him that he was a friend. He had forgotten momentarily that he was dealing with men whose minds had suffered for quite some time.

“Who called out?” Kaz asked the sentry.

“Ferril. Ferril called out.”

Kaz called out to the indicated sentry. “You! How many riders?”

It may be that, in the darkness, the one called Ferril could not tell it was a minotaur he spoke with. Certainly he was respectful enough. “Difficult to say from here, sir. A small army. More than a hundred.”

More than a hundred! They might be in for a full-scale assault! “Can you identify them?”

“Not yet.”

The knight who had followed Kaz joined him again. “What news?”

“More than a hundred riders. You’d best tell the Grand Master.”

“He’s in no condition! He couldn’t possibly take command.”

The minotaur’s eyes narrowed, and even by torchlight they glowed blood-red. “Do you mean you won’t inform your lord of a possible attack?”

The human opened his mouth, then clamped it tightly shut. Stiffly he replied, “I’ll inform him at once!”

“Good for you,” Kaz muttered under his breath as he watched the man practically vanish before his eyes. A horn sounded from somewhere out in the countryside. He looked up at where Ferril stood watch. “What was that?”

“Signal horn.” The man was anxious. “I think – the Triumvirate be praised! – I think they are brothers!”

“Knights of Solamnia?”

“Yes!” The other knight on the wall and the one near Kaz began to cheer. The minotaur shouted them down.

“Quiet! They may not be what they seem! They might be some of the Dark Lady’s servants, or if they are your fellows, they might not be in their right minds!”

The knight next to Kaz looked up at him with an uneasy expression. “You think we should keep the gates closed?”

“If only until we are certain. It follows common sense, don’t you think?” He glanced upward. “If the Grand Master should come, I’ll be up on the battlements watching.”

Surprisingly, the knight saluted him.

When Kaz reached the top of the wall, Ferril was waiting for him. Judging by the expression on the human’s face, Ferril had only just discovered that he had been conversing with a minotaur.

Kaz gave him a casual look. “Something wrong?”

“No … sir.” Ferril, a Knight of the Sword, was uncertain how to address someone like Kaz.

“Good.” Leaning forward on the wall, Kaz peered out over the countryside of Solamnia. He had some difficulty making out the oncoming force. They looked like a black tide on a gray surface. Still, at the rate they were riding, they would be at the gates of Vingaard in an hour’s time. He suspected there were well over a hundred riders, likely closer to two hundred. Indistinct as they were, the group’s size as a whole gave some idea of the numbers.

“Could we hold them if they don’t turn out to be your brethren?” Kaz asked the knight.

“For a time … until they succeed in finding some way over the wall.”

“What’s happening, Kaz?” a familiar voice piped.

Both minotaur and human jumped. Kaz turned and snorted angrily at the figure who had somehow managed to sneak up next to them. “What’re you doing up here, Delbin?”

The kender smiled. “I heard people running around, and someone said that someone was coming with lots of horses, so when I heard the horn, I knew they were nearby, and I —”

“Take a breath, Delbin!” Just then the horn sounded again. “Why’re they doing that?”

“They want us to respond,” Ferril said excitedly. “They must be comrades.”

“Maybe you should respond.”

Shaking his head, the man replied, “I cannot. The horn that usually stands by the gates has vanished. No one is able to locate it.”

Delbin, meanwhile, was doing his best to peer over the wall, a difficult thing considering his height.

“Do you think they’ll attack?” he asked eagerly. “I’ve never seen an actual siege, though maybe it won’t be a very long one, since there are so few —”

“You up there! Kaz, is that you?”

“The Grand Master!” Ferril whispered reverently.

“Yes, Lord Oswal.” Kaz shushed the kender, who had been about to speak again.

“Can you see the riders?”

“They’ll be with us before long.”

“How many?”

Kaz looked at Ferril. “Somewhere between a hundred and two hundred. We can’t make them out any better.”

There was a pause as the Grand Master evidently digested this information. He was determined to be in command.

“You four will have to protect the gates alone, I’m afraid,” the elder knight decided.

“I’ll help real good, Grand Master,” Delbin began.

Instead of the consternation that the minotaur expected, the Grand Master chuckled. After a moment, Oswal said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh. Three knights, a minotaur, and a kender guarding the front gates of Vingaard Keep! A kender guarding Vingaard Keep from possible invasion! No offense is meant, Delbin, but I never thought to see the day!”

“I’ll be a good fighter, honest!”

“I’m certain you will.” To the defenders as a whole, he added, “Call out the moment you know whether they are friend or foe. May Paladine and his sons watch over you.” Lord Oswal turned and departed, undoubtedly to rally his few other stalwarts.

“How does he keep going?” muttered Kaz.

“He is the Grand Master,” Ferril answered simply, as if that explained everything.

*

Before very long, the newcomers were near enough to make out. The men were obviously armored well, but in the dim moonlight, it was still impossible to tell anything specific about their appearance. Kaz glanced up at Solinari. Over a third of the moon was gone, as if eaten up. Slowly it dawned on Kaz that another body was overwhelming Solinari. It was a moon that represented the darkness within men and other races – Nuitari, the black moon, whose presence, overshadowing its bright rival, could not be a good omen.

“There are sure a lot of them, Kaz.”

“I know, Delbin.”

“They’ve got banners and lances and everything.”

“We’d better pray they’re friends, then.”

The riders slowed a few hundred yards from Vingaard. A small group, maybe five or six, started forward.

“They’re Solamnic Knights, Kaz.”

“Let’s let them talk first.”

“Who guards the gates up there? I see someone!” the apparent leader shouted.

Kaz stiffened. Relief that these were true Solamnic Knights and not marauders in disguise washed over him, tempered a bit, however, by his personal feelings concerning the knight who had spoken.

Ferril responded to the call. “I am in charge of the gates!”

“Why did you not respond to our horn?”

“Ours cannot be located, milord, and the situation here has not warranted time for a thorough look.”

The company leader’s voice softened. “The Grand Master … how fares he?”

“All things considered, well, milord.” Ferril continued. “Forgive me, but I must ask you to identify yourselves before we dare open the gates.”

“Understandable. Know that I am Bennett, Lord of the Order of the Rose, nephew to Oswal, Grand Master of the knighthood. I have with me some two hundred fellow knights. How – how fares Vingaard Keep, man? Are there still enemies that must be rooted out?”

Kaz chose to call out before the sentry could respond. “Vingaard Keep struggles back to normality, Bennett, which does not mean that all of its enemies were mere figments.”

Bennett stood in his saddle and peered up. Kaz was standing too far away from the nearest torch to be made out clearly. “Who is that? Your voice sounds familiar! What order do you belong to?”

“The order of survival, human. I’m not one of you, but you know me just the same.” Kaz shifted over so he was visible.

“A minotaur!” the man next to Bennett shouted. More than one man unsheathed his sword. “Vingaard is in the hands of the enemy!”

“Be still!” Bennett commanded sharply. To Kaz, he said, “I do not think you are part of an enemy force. I think you are a minotaur with definite suicidal tendencies, else why would you have come where you were supposedly wanted for crimes – eh, Kaz?”

The minotaur laughed grimly. “Call me an optimist.”

This time, it was Bennett who chuckled. “You have nothing to fear, Kaz, not from me or anyone here.”

“Milord!” Ferril saluted and leaned back to call down to the knight standing by the gates. “Open the gates for the Lord of the Order of the Rose!”

While the gates were unbolted and opened, Oswal’s nephew signaled back to his men. The column slowly began to move forward. There were scattered, tired cheers from some of the returning band.

Kaz glanced at Delbin, who was watching the parade of armored figures with delight. While the kender was thus occupied, the minotaur descended from the wall to meet Bennett.

Some of the men were milling around on their horses, staring at the long-neglected interior of the keep with mild shock.

“A word with you, human,” Kaz called.

A look of annoyance briefly flashed across Bennett’s face before he succeeded in controlling himself. “There will be time to speak later, Kaz. Right now, I would speak to my uncle. We have much to discuss.”

“Then I’ll come with you. I can fill you in on some of it.”

“As you please.”

Bennett dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to another knight. Kaz began almost immediately to relate what he knew, going through the madness and illusions, the meeting with Argaen Ravenshadow and the subsequent betrayal of his party, Lord Oswal’s struggle, and the destruction of the vaults and much of the keep as the dark elf made good his escape. By the time he was through, Bennett was shaking his head.

“Paladine preserve us! I cannot fathom all you have said, minotaur, and I know there must be much more that my uncle can tell me.”

“I’d hoped that you’d sighted his pet on your way here, since he headed in the general direction of south.”

“Leave this to the knighthood, minotaur. We owe Argaen Ravenshadow for these past few years of manipulation and deceit.”

“I owe him, too. He made a fool of me and nearly succeeded in poisoning me. Through me, he gained access to his prize. I want that elf!”

Bennett turned to face him. “The knighthood will deal with him! He owes us for lives! He owes for disgracing us —”

“I see no reason why you two cannot pursue him together,” a voice called out. “I think that might be best for all concerned.”

“Uncle … milord!” Bennett immediately knelt before the elder knight. “Glad I am to see that you are fit!”

“A sham, nephew. I am in fact ready to teeter over, but no one will give me time. Praise be that Paladine chose to make me a cleric as well as a knight, for I doubt I would still be standing if not for his power.”

“You are the foundation of the orders, uncle.”

“And you are still the eager young squire, Bennett.” Lord Oswal bade his nephew to rise. “The two of you should not argue. Kaz, you will need the might of Solamnia behind you. I do not doubt that the dark elf will be found in some dire region. As for you, nephew, respect the knowledge and honor of this minotaur. Huma called him friend. I do now. Learn from his experience. In many ways, Kaz knows more than I.”

“I find that impossible to believe, milord, but I shall do as you say.”

“Fine. What about you, Kaz?”

“You have my word. Argaen Ravenshadow is my goal. I’ve sworn that I’ll hunt him down if I have to travel beyond the ice in the south.”

The Grand Master smiled sourly. “Let us hope it does not come to that.”

“This is all a bit pointless,” Bennett remarked in exasperation. He looked from his uncle to the minotaur. “I have been told that the magic thief flew south. But where in the south? Surely not Silvanesti or Qualinesti! Ergoth? Kharolis? Where?”

Kaz gritted his teeth. He took a deep breath and was about to launch into another tirade when the Grand Master spoke. “We will solve nothing with bickering,” Lord Oswal said wearily. “I suggest we try to get some rest. Bennett, walk with me for a bit, please. I wish to hear what you have seen since your departure. I wish to discover what else the knighthood must make amends for.”

Bennett grimaced. “As you wish, milord.”

“Get some sleep, Kaz.”

“A good suggestion, Grand Master.”

Kaz watched the two depart and felt exhaustion suddenly take control of his body. Arguing, however briefly, with the Grand Master’s nephew had just about used up his own reserves. He looked around. The sky would be his roof tonight, as it had been for so many nights in his life. He looked for a secluded spot.

The place he finally chose had only one drawback, and that was the sudden appearance of a particular kender, even before Kaz had a chance to lie down.

“Where’ve you been, Kaz? I’ve been looking all over for you since you vanished back at the gate while I was watching the knights arrive. How come you’re sleeping here when there are so many other places? Though I guess we can’t sleep at the library anymore, because the building isn’t in too good shape anymore, is it?”

“Delbin, unless you have something important to say, why don’t you go to sleep, too?” Kaz removed his battle-axe and harness and lay down. He put his hands under his head and stared up at the sky. Until tonight, the only things really visible had been the moons. Now, however, the stars were apparent. Kaz started to pick out the constellations he knew.

“Are we gonna stay here for a while, Kaz?”

“In Vingaard? Not if I can help it!” the minotaur grunted. “One can only take so much of the knighthood. I start searching for Argaen Ravenshadow tomorrow. The colder his trail becomes, the harder it’ll be to find him.”

“At least we won’t have to go far.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Delbin shrugged innocently. “Well, I mean, he probably headed for the mountains east of Qualinesti or for the southern part near Thorbardin. Don’t dwarves live down there? You wouldn’t go that way when I asked last time. Did you have trouble —”

The minotaur sat up. “Delbin, do you know where the elf is?”

“I do now. I was going to write about everything that happened and how big and powerful the knights looked when they arrived a few minutes ago, but when I reached for the book, I found this little crystal that I knew had to be Argaen’s, and when I thought about him real hard, all of a sudden I could see him landing someplace in the mountains just north of Qualinesti. I think they’re partly in Ergoth and partly in Solamnia, but I could be wrong.”

“Let me see what you found.”

Delbin pulled something out of his pouch. “I thought you might want to see it, but you looked pretty busy. I bet maybe Argaen put it into my pouch while he had me imagining I was helping you by opening the vaults.”

A look of wonder passed over Kaz’s bullish visage as he eyed Delbin’s prize. It was the same trinket that Ravenshadow had used to find the kender the first time he had disappeared, searching in the library. Kaz snatched the magical device from his companion’s diminutive hands.

“You saw where the elf was going just by thinking about him?” Ravenshadow’s image was burned into his own mind now.

The artifact in his hands began to glow a little, and something murky appeared within it.

“That’s how it did it last time,” Delbin offered helpfully.

“Quiet!” Kaz continued. A dragon, even a stone one, could cover astonishing distances in a short period of time. The mountains Delbin had described, however, were fairly near, several days’ ride at the very most. It amazed Kaz that the dark elf would position himself so close to the land of his people.

The murky image began to waver. Argaen Ravenshadow. His home. The emerald sphere of Galan Dracos.

With a flicker, he was suddenly flying high above a mountain range. Had he not flown on the backs of dragons in the past, the angle would have sent him reeling. As it was, he was able to study the range.

He knew these mountains, had seen them from a distance several times. The northernmost tip of Qualinesti was only a day to the south. How could Argaen hope to keep out of sight of his kin?

Slowly the image focused on one mountain in particular. The peak began to grow larger and larger – or rather, Kaz, through the crystal, was descending. Within seconds, he was below the tip of the mountain and still descending.

The ruins sprang from nowhere.

One minute he was gazing at yet more mountainside, and the next he was hurtling toward the roof of some long-abandoned structure. Kaz allowed himself a smile. He not only knew his prey was in a particular set of mountains, but he also knew where in those mountains.

Who?

The voice echoed through his mind, and Kaz nearly fell back. Only barely did he succeed in keeping his grip on the crystal.

“Kaz?”

Who? the voice demanded. There was an ethereal quality to it.

The crystal began to grow hotter. Kaz no longer had any desire to hold on to it, but now it appeared to be holding on to him. The image in its center had faded, but the voice remained in the minotaur’s head, growing increasingly powerful and demanding.

Where? Who?

Gritting his teeth, Kaz called out. “Delbin! Knock … knock it from my hand. Hurry!”

The kender reached into his pouch and pulled out, of all things, his ever-absent book. Taking it in both hands, Delbin struck the minotaur’s hand with all his might. Smoke arose from the book as the tiny artifact burned the edge of it before being sent flying away.

Clutching his hand where it had been burned, Kaz watched the crystal strike the ground and crack into several pieces. In that same instant, it ceased to glow. The voice that had been demanding the minotaur’s identity vanished as well.

Both Kaz and Delbin stared at the shattered remnants for several seconds before the kender dared to ask, “Kaz, what happened?”

“Someone was trying to locate me while I was locating the elf.”

“Someone?”

Kaz nodded, eyeing his injured hand. He hoped Tesela had the strength left to heal it. He had a feeling he was going to need to be at his best. The voice had not been Argaen Ravenshadow’s – of that, at least, he was sure.

Then, who?

Chapter 17

The group selected to hunt Argaen Ravenshadow would, by necessity, be a small one. Of the two hundred or so knights the Grand Master now had under his command, a good quarter of them would not be fit for very much activity for at least a few days. Still more were needed back at the keep to guard the walls of Vingaard and start clearing the debris left over from the stone dragon’s departure. All in all, the Grand Master was stretching his resources to the limits when he assigned fifty knights to his nephew.

Darius, Tesela, and Delbin, of course, all insisted on coming along as well. To the knight, it was a sense of duty, of honor. The cleric insisted that they were likely to need her healing skills where they were going. Kaz suspected her real reason was Darius himself. Adversity had thrown them together.

As for Delbin, he did not need a reason, and Lord Oswal was more than accommodating when it came to the kender. If he stayed behind, without Kaz to watch over him, the knights rightly feared that he would pilfer everything in sight, plus, no doubt, some things that were not.

Those riding with the party were personally chosen by the Grand Master, and the entire expedition was supplied with whatever could be spared in the way of food and materials.

Just before noon, they started out the front gates. There was no cheering, for those riding forth might be heading to their deaths, and nearly every knight remaining behind manned the walls against equally uncertain destiny. When Kaz looked back, just before Vingaard Keep became too distant, he saw that the men on the walls were still there, silently watching.

The shortened day passed without incident. There were signs of occasional goblin activity, but not one of the creatures was sighted. The column avoided villages and other settlements. Until people could be brought to understand what had happened, it was best to give civilization a wide berth.

The most promising sign of the day was the presence of the bright sun. It was encouraging. Certainly it raised spirits.

Just before nightfall, a scout reported signs that a relatively large band of men, some riding and some on foot, had been in the area earlier that morning. They, too, were headed in a southerly direction. No evidence indicated that they were heading toward the same destination as the column, but the thought nagged at Kaz. Who could they be?

When night came at last, there was some debate as to whether or not they should press on. Common sense won out. Everyone needed rest.

A perimeter and watches were established. Kaz felt as if time had slipped back several years and he was once again in the great war. He wondered what they would do if Argaen’s unliving servant returned under cover of darkness.

He felt the twin edges of the blade, admiring the workmanship of the metal axe head. His face reflected back at him, crystal clear despite the dim light of the night sky. Kaz studied the image for a minute wonderingly, when something registered. The minotaur stared at the axe head, at the handle, and then at the sharp edges. …

That was it! The area where the axe had been chipped after it had struck the rocky hide of Argaen’s monster was whole and unbroken once more! Sharp as ever again! He also recalled a moment in the vault, when the unliving beast had shied away from the minotaur’s seemingly futile attack with the battle-axe. Could the stone dragon actually fear the axe? Granted, the weapon was somehow magical, but why would a creature that size, magical itself, fear Sardal’s gift?

How powerful was the battle-axe? Could it do anything else besides mend itself? Kaz grunted, recalling how, before, he had found himself carrying the axe after leaving it behind. A one-time fluke, or would it come to him again if the need arose?

“Kaz?”

Kaz looked up at Bennett, who seemed disturbed about something. “What, human?”

“We may have trouble – trouble that you might be familiar with. Would you follow me?”

Kaz arose and followed Bennett.

They moved toward the eastern side of the camp. One or two knights stood guard in the camp; the rest, along with the minotaur’s companions, were asleep. The only other knights awake were those on sentry duty on the edges of camp.

The countryside consisted of small hills covered with wild grass and ugly, twisted trees. It was not a region Kaz would have voluntarily traveled through, but dire circumstances seemed to delight in forcing him to cross it again and again.

“What is it you want me to see?”

“Nothing, perhaps, but the knight ahead of us reported something I felt you would appreciate being told about.”

The knight on guard duty saluted Bennett and looked uneasily at the minotaur. Bennett cleared his throat and told the man, “Describe what you thought you saw.”

“Milord” He was a Knight of the Crown, such as Huma had been, but much older, a veteran who perhaps had decided to stay with that particular order rather than move on to the Order of the Sword. “I would not have even mentioned it, milord, but I was told that all strange things, no matter whether they seemed like a trick of the eyes or not, should be reported.”

“What did you see?” encouraged Kaz.

“It was only for just a moment, mind you, but I thought I saw an animal. Just a glimpse of one, but it did seem real. The odd thing was, it looked to be completely white, only not like some of our horses. More like that of a corpse.”

“White like a corpse?” Kaz grimaced. “What sort of animal did it appear to be, knight?”

“I cannot say for certain, for I only caught a glimpse. A large cat, possibly, or – or —”

“A wolf?” the minotaur finished for him.

The knight nodded. “A wolf. Yes, it could have been a wolf.”

Bennett glanced at Kaz. “That cannot be possible. You know that, minotaur.”

“You came for me, which means you’ve enough doubt to think it possible. It may be that Argaen knows a few more tricks than we thought. He keeps surprising me with his Sargas-be-damned ingenuity!”

“Dreadwolves!” Bennett shook his head. “I’d thought never to hear about them again. I thought everything concerning Galan Dracos could be buried from sight and mind forever.”

“For a dead man, the renegade mage does seem to pop up in one way or another, doesn’t he?” Kaz considered. “With your permission, Bennett, I think we should talk to some of the other men on guard duty.”

“Very well.”

The first man they spoke to reported nothing. The second man proved no more informative than the first, and they spent even less time with him.

Bennett seemed to think the whole thing pointless. “Perhaps there is an albino wolf out there. I have seen albinos in other species from time to time, and they do tend to be nocturnal.”

“Perhaps.” Nevertheless, Kaz continued on.

It took them a moment or two to locate the next nearest sentry, for the man was standing on the other side of a small rise. It was a good place to keep watch, for the knight avoided the light of the moon and anyone approaching would have to be right on top of him before noticing him.

“You there,” Bennett called out softly. While he spoke to the guard, Kaz, his axe resting lightly against his shoulder, peered around. Something was making him uneasy.

“Milord?” The man turned but did not abandon his post, as was proper.

“Have you seen anything tonight that you have not reported … anything at all?”

The other knight peered at them, trying to make out who stood next to his commander. In this place, each of them was little more than an outline. “Nothing, milord, unless you count a couple of carrion crows. They seemed to be going nowhere in particular.”

“Hopefully they’ll keep right on going,” Kaz muttered, his back almost to the man. The light of Solinari caught the mirrorlike finish of the metal axe head and glittered in the minotaur’s eye.

Beside him, Bennett turned and sighed. “I think we should cease this. There’s nothing to be gained. If anything should arise, we will be forewarned by those on watch.”

“I suppose so.” Kaz lifted the axe head from his shoulder. As he did, both his reflection and that of Bennett caught his eye momentarily.

“Is that all, milord?” the guard called out.

Kaz froze, then carefully glanced back to see where the knight was standing. The guard was directly behind them.

“That is all. Return to your duties,” Bennett replied.

Turning away, Kaz lifted the axe so that once again the side of the head would reflect everything behind him. He saw the same odd, distinct reflection of his own visage and Bennett’s shoulder. Of the other knight, there was not even a shadowy outline.

Yet, when he turned back again, Kaz could see the dark form of the man, still there.

The knight on guard duty was casting no reflection in the mirrorlike surface of the axe head!

Kaz hesitated. The sentry, his attention fixed on the surrounding countryside, paid him no attention. What does it mean?

Noticing the minotaur’s strange behavior, Bennett, too, had stopped. “Is there something —”

“Quiet. Wait a moment,” Kaz whispered. The minotaur, axe ready in one hand, stalked over to the other knight. “You!”

The man turned around slowly. “What is it you wish, minotaur?”

“Your name.”

“Alec, Knight of the Sword.”

“Alec” — Kaz tightened his grip on the battle-axe — “do you know what the phrase Est Sularis oth Mithas means?”

There was a short pause. “I cannot recall at the moment.”

Every muscle in the minotaur’s body tensed. “I didn’t think so.”

The battle-axe came up in a vicious arc that should have ended with the flat side striking the unsuspecting Alec. There was only one problem. Alec was neither unsuspecting nor a knight. Kaz’s swing sailed a foot above the false knight’s head even as the man ducked and his longsword flashed out.

“Kaz! What are you doing?” demanded Bennett.

The minotaur parried a powerful thrust and growled, “We may be under attack at any moment, commander!” Another swing of the axe proved as futile as the first. “In – in case you haven’t figured it out by now, this isn’t a knight!”

“Paladine!” Bennett unsheathed his own sword and started forward, but Kaz yelled. “Forget me! Warn the camp! Go!”

Bennett paused for a second, then nodded his head and ran. He withheld a shout, for fear of giving away their discovery to anyone waiting beyond the camp. Quiet and caution were important now.

As soon as Bennett vanished, Kaz began to regret sending him away. He was finding the imposter quite a deadly swordsman. The man was tall and, between his arm and longsword, had a lengthy reach.

They traded blows for several seconds, but something seemed to be eating away at his opponent’s determination. The knight imposter was hesitant in his movements.

Of course! “Your friends seem to have abandoned you, human!”

Kaz had struck the right nerve. “Unlike you, minotaur, we are faithful to our mistress. They – they would not abandon me!”

In the background, Kaz could hear the shouts of men in the camp. His opponent began to fight with renewed vigor. It seemed, the human was correct; the camp was now under attack.

“We will overrun your Solamnic friends, beast, but don’t worry. You won’t be alive to see it!”

“I’d wager you wore a black suit of armor five or six years ago,” Kaz snarled. “You’re dead wrong on two counts, though, guardsman! First, the knights defending the camp will prevail, and second, I plan to be very much alive!” He gave the human a grim, toothy smile. “Yes, you look to be one of the Black Guard. By the way, I saw your warlord, Crynus, die. He had become quite a madman by then.”

The guardsman’s sword wavered.

The battle-axe caught him in the chest and across the neck. It sliced through the breastplate without slowing. Slowly he toppled to the ground, his head only loosely attached to his neck.

Cursing, Kaz stood his ground and waited for some sign of a new foe. Nothing.

Moments later, several knights, Bennett’s aide Grissom among them, came running in his direction. Kaz turned toward them with relief, only to find half a dozen swords pointed in his direction.

“What’s this?” he growled.

“What have you done to the man on watch here, minotaur?”

It was obvious that neither Grissom nor the others knew exactly what had transpired here. Kaz knew that some of the knights distrusted him, but not to this extreme.

“Talk to your commander, human! I was the one who discovered our danger!”

Grissom hesitated. “Why would you betray them? You once fought for the same side.”

Kaz sighed. How many times would he have to explain this?

“Have those weapons lowered, Sir Grissom! The minotaur is an ally, a valuable one!”

At the sound of Bennett’s voice, the other knights stood aside. Grissom saluted his superior. “My apologies, milord! All we knew was that you had come into the camp warning of danger!”

“Do not apologize to me, Grissom. Apologize to Kaz; it was his honor you impugned.”

“Milord?”

Bennett looked at his aide critically. “Is that so difficult to understand? Must I apologize for you? I certainly will, because he deserves it. After all, he may have saved all our lives.”

Grissom exhaled sharply and turned back to Kaz. “I apologize for my quick judgment, minotaur. I assumed that there was only one person who could be responsible for this.”

“They killed the man who stood guard here,” Kaz explained to the man, “and one of their own took his place so that no one suspected. We’re fortunate we caught them before they could really get organized.”

“They tried to attack the camp only seconds after I was able to warn the men,” Bennett interjected. “They were hardly expecting the entire camp to be awake and ready. One wave came in. We killed perhaps six or seven and wounded a few more. We lost only one man besides this one. They fled almost immediately afterward. The cowards!”

“I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them. This man was one of the warlord’s Black Guard, Bennett.”

“There seemed to be quite a few of them roaming around in central and southern Solamnia. Kharolis, too. Raiding runs have increased noticeably,” To Grissom, Bennett said, “See if you can find the body of our brother who gave his life here. Before we leave tomorrow morning, he and the other man will be given rites. Double the guard for the rest of the night.”

“As you command, milord. What of this one?” Grissom tapped the body with the tip of his blade.

“Have someone gather the enemy dead. We’ll have a separate pyre for them – and wish them ill on their way to their mistress. If we leave them as is, they might become breeding ground for some plague, and that’s the last thing we need.”

Two knights were left to stand guard while all but Grissom went in search of their dead comrade. The aide saluted and returned to camp to take care of the other orders Bennett had given him. The Grand Master’s nephew stayed with Kaz.

“How did you know he wasn’t one of us? I don’t know half the men in my command. Too many of them are from outside the Order of the Rose.”

“Est Sularis oth Mithas.”

“‘My Honor is my Life.’ It’s the code by which we live. What about it?”

“He couldn’t tell me what it meant if his life depended on it – which it did.”

Kaz had a theory about the dwarven axe’s name, Honor’s Face. What had the dwarf been like who had forged such a unique weapon? Had he been aided by some mage, or visited, perhaps, by the god Reorx himself? Kaz now believed that the mirrorlike flat side of the axe head apparently reflected the faces and forms of only those with honor, those who could be trusted. Enemies, beings without honor, cast no reflection – a handy tool that the minotaur wished he had known about earlier. He wondered if Sardal Crystalthorn had known of it.

Sardal Crystalthorn. He had almost forgotten about the other elf. Was Sardal in league with Argaen? Kaz decided it was doubtful, or else the elf never would have given him the dwarven battle-axe. Giving such a fine weapon to Kaz, in addition to saving his life, was not the act of a dark elf.

“Minotaur?”

Kaz blinked. “What, Bennett?”

“It might be good if you got some rest. You look nearly asleep on your feet.”

It was true. Buried in his thoughts, Kaz had been drifting further and further from consciousness. Elves and magic battle-axes could wait until morning. Sleep was a luxury that Kaz had been unable to afford of late. He needed to catch up now, before they came upon Argaen Ravenshadow.

*

They were not bothered again that night, though the watch remained fully alert. The dawn came with Kaz and the others feeling only slightly refreshed. A full day of rest was really in order, but no one was willing to sacrifice that much time. There was a sense of urgency where this mission was concerned.

As they drew ever nearer their destination, Kaz began to worry about the human, Darius. The young knight rode close to Tesela and often talked to her, but Kaz, glancing back now and then, also knew the man was looking up into the heavens more and more, with a fatal stare. He knew what Darius was looking for: the stone dragon that had left him for dead.

Kaz had seen that look before, during the war. Darius was waiting for the beast to come and try to finish the task. It was almost as if he felt that it was unfair he should have survived when the others had perished. Such beliefs led to foolish, even suicidal, actions. The Knights of Solamnia, Kaz thought, were too eager to die. What bothered the minotaur more was that he knew his own race was susceptible to such compulsions.

Even Kaz was becoming too pessimistic. In an effort to ease his mind, he reached into one of his pouches for one of the dry biscuits the knighthood had provided. They had little in the way of taste, but they were solid and filling. Long used to such fare, Kaz discovered that his fondness for them was actually growing – another sign, he was sure, that his mind was rattled.

What he touched in the pouch was not one of the biscuits, however, but rather a scrap of parchment. He grasped it by one end and pulled it out. It was a rolled parchment that someone had sealed with amber. Where, Kaz wondered, had he – Of course! With all that had happened to him, he had forgotten completely about this little item. This was the parchment that Sardal Crystalthorn had asked him to deliver to Argaen Ravenshadow. All this time … He wondered what message the dark elf had sent along. Again the minotaur wondered: Could Sardal be in league with the magic thief?

Kaz decided to break the seal and see what Sardal had written.

The amber proved to be more of a problem than he would have expected. A flick of his thumb should have broken it off, but his nail kept sliding away. In exasperation, he pulled out a dagger and worked on it. The dagger, too, slipped from the seal.

Cutting around the amber turned out to be a tricky maneuver, what with trying to hold on to the reins and the bouncing of his horse. Nonetheless, he managed to trace a circle, and the seal fell to the earth. Kaz put away his dagger and started to unroll the parchment.

A golden void opened up before him.

“Kaz!” someone cried, possibly Delbin.

“Pala —” The minotaur had no chance to complete his oath before his horse rode blissfully into the void. The search party, everything, vanished.

The void was beautiful, inspiring, but Kaz had no time for such contemplation. It was all he could do to hang on as the horse fell and fell and fell and fell … until it seemed they were destined to keep falling until the Final Day. Not once did his steed give any indication of panic. It still tried to gallop, apparently ignorant of its predicament.

At last their descent began to slow. The minotaur felt his own movements begin to decelerate. In a matter of seconds, it became nearly impossible to do anything but breathe, and even that was becoming increasingly difficult.

Like a fly trapped in honey, he thought helplessly. A fury was building within him, one that in combat made him a terror. Now, though, it did nothing but further frustrate him. For all his strength, he was unable to move, to defend himself.

As he and his mount came to a complete stop, so, too, did his capacity, even to breathe. Kaz was certain he was going to die now. He waited for suffocation to wash over him. It did not. He almost wished for it, for now came the fear that he was meant to be trapped in this void forever, ever staring off into the beautiful golden nothing.

“Aaahh, minotaur!” a voice boomed all around him. “What have you done to yourself now?”

He knew the voice. It was Sardal Crystalthorn who had snared him.

*

“Kaz!” Delbin shouted.

Several of the knights were forced to restrain their horses. Bennett stood in the saddle and looked around in vain for the minotaur. Darius cursed, and Tesela prayed to her goddess for some clue as to what had happened to the minotaur.

Bennett sat down. “The Abyss take that dark elf! This must be his doing! He’s been watching all along, waiting for the proper moment!”

“Do you – do you think Kaz is dead?” Darius finally ventured.

“No, but I think the thief must have captured him somehow.” Bennett turned to look at the others. “We have to move on. Kaz’s only chance – our only chance – is to find the elf before he grows any stronger! With any luck, we will be able to save the minotaur. Wherever he is, if he lives, Argaen Ravenshadow will know.”

Tesela removed her hands from her medallion. “I can feel nothing where Kaz is concerned, but that may mean very little. There’s no trace of him in this area. That much I can say with confidence.”

Bennett nodded, as if that were the confirmation he had been waiting for. As far as he was concerned, there was no more time to waste. “It’s settled, then. We move on.”

As the knight turned to signal the others, Tesela and Darius exchanged looks of uncertainty. If Kaz was a prisoner, spirited away by their enemies, what chance did this small force of knights have against such formidable power?

Nonetheless, no one even suggested turning back.

Chapter 18

It was two days after the column had departed in search of Argaen Ravenshadow. The Grand Master was trying to discover everything that had been done in his name over the years his mind had not been his own. What he had discovered shamed him. All this time, he had imagined he had fended off the evil, the madness. Staring longer and longer at proclamations that bore his name, proclamations that he remembered vaguely as having started out as something else, he knew why the general populace had turned on the Knights of Solamnia. After finally having the courage to hope for a brighter future, they had been seemingly betrayed by those sworn to watch over them. It was like the great war all over again, when the knighthood had fought on and on while it was the ordinary citizens who paid the price for decades of stalemate.

Lord Oswal was stirred from his work by the sudden intrusion of one of his guards. “Milord?” the man whispered urgently again.

“What is it?”

“We have a party of travelers at the gates, demanding justice.”

“Justice?” Were the people revolting already?

“It – it might be best if you saw for yourself.”

Oswal pushed his chair back and stood, wishing at that moment that his brother Trake had not succumbed to the poisons of the traitor Rennard, for then he would still be head of the knighthood.

“Give me a few moments. Tell them I am coming.”

“Milord.”

The Grand Master looked around for his boots. His boots discovered – how they had gotten underneath the bed was something he would never understand – the Grand Master readied himself and started for the gates. Knights of his royal guard saluted and fell into line behind him. With all that had happened, the knights remaining in the keep had become virtually paranoid about the safety of their lord. Whether he wanted them to or not, his guards were now determined to be with him during any matter that hinted of trouble.

The captain of the watch saluted him as he reached the gates. “Well, where are they?”

“Outside, milord.”

“Outside? Have you forgotten your manners? Just because someone has a grievance, there is no reason to leave them barred from Vingaard.”

The watch captain paled. “With all due respect, Grand Master, I think you should see for yourself!”

Lord Oswal had found that his patience was short these days. “Nonsense! Not another word! Have they given their word that they come in peace?”

“Yes, but —”

“How many are there?”

“A dozen or so, mi —”

“A dozen? Let this fearsome army in, captain. Now!”

“As the Grand Master desires.” It was obvious that the other knight still had qualms, but he would obey his lord.

The order to open the gates was given and obeyed with great speed. The Grand Master, with his guards standing at the ready, stared in amazement at the newcomers. Small wonder that his men had been hesitant! They were minotaurs!

Other than Kaz, Lord Oswal had seen precious few minotaurs this close up. And the few he had seen were either prisoners or had died by his sword. In all honesty, a band of minotaurs was probably the last thing he had expected.

“Who is in charge here?” a nasty-looking, disfigured giant snarled.

The Grand Master folded his arms and, in a voice that had more than once silenced his rivals in midsentence, replied, “I am in charge here, minotaur. I am Oswal, Grand Master of the Knights of Solamnia! For what reason do you leave your lands in the east?”

“We are here on a mission of honor and justice. Such things, I have heard, are held in great esteem by the Knights of Solamnia. As for my name, I am Scurn.” The minotaur gave a perfunctory bow. Lord Oswal took an instant dislike of him.

Studying the others, Oswal, for the first time, saw the ogre standing in the rear of the group. “What is that doing with you? Is that one your prisoner?”

“Molok is one of us. It is he who first brought forth the news of the disgrace one of our own has brought down upon us.”

“One of your own?”

“His name, noble lord, is Kaziganthi De-Orilg, as listed in the formal charges. A son of the clan of Orilg, of which we are all distant relations. Orilg was one of the mightiest of our early champions, and Kaz has brought such dishonor to the clan that we were sent to bring him back for justice.”

An insight into the family structure of minotaurs would have interested the elderly knight at any other time. It was known that family was foremost, but to hunt down a fellow clan member for staining the honor of the clan … perhaps there was not so much difference between the minotaurs and humans, after all. Lord Oswal yearned to learn more, but there was the more urgent matter of the charges.

“You still have not mentioned what it is that your kinsman is supposed to have done.” Judging from the look in Scurn’s eyes, the Grand Master doubted that this one needed any excuse to go hunting down Kaz. That look of hate was mirrored in the ogre’s eyes, Oswal noted.

A strange pair, the Grand Master thought.

Impatiently Scurn explained. “In the war, Kaz was sworn to the service of one of the armies sent into Hylo.”

“A slave-soldier.” Oswal was interested to see that some of the minotaurs – he realized that certain of them were female! – cringed a bit at that word.

“Nevertheless,” the disfigured leader growled, “he was sworn to the service of that army, and an ogre captain in particular. Kaz served ably” — Scurn seemed reluctant to admit as much — “until the taking of a human settlement. He disagreed with the decisions of his captain.”

Not surprising, the elder knight thought. Ogres were notorious for their sadistic streaks.

A memory began to surface. Huma and Kaz had told him of this time. As the Grand Master recalled, the ogre captain had been in the process of amusing himself privately with the slaughter of old folk and children, something horribly dishonorable by minotaur standards. Did the group here know that? He doubted they would take his word for it.

Lord Oswal found his eyes drifting to the ogre in the back. What was his part in all of this? Was he a blood relation to the one who had died? A comrade? The knight’s experiences with ogres had always led him to believe they worried little about anything except their own lives. That this ogre had sought out the minotaurs for a crime against one of his own kind, even murder, was unusual. If the minotaurs were not so caught up in their beliefs of honor – as, regrettably, many knights were – they would have seen the incongruity of the situation. No, this ogre had to have some other motive besides justice. Most ogres would have settled for revenge, if they even remembered the incident at all after a few months.

“As further proof of Kaz’s guilt,” Scurn was saying, “we have this. …”

Scurn held up a small spherical object in his hands. The Grand Master recognized it immediately as a truthcrystal, a minor magical artifact that reenacted some historical scene over and over again. Lord Oswal watched the magical image as Kaz struck the ogre from behind, murdering him again and again. The Grand Master remained unmoved. The trouble with truthcrystals was that they did not live up to their name. Any decent mage could create distortions. To the minotaurs, however, who shunned sorcery and yet were too ready to believe it, it was all too real.

Lastly, a written proclamation from those who served as elders among the minotaurs was produced, dictating that, by the laws of that race, this posse was performing a deed of honor in seeking out one who was a disgrace, a coward, and a murderer. The proclamation emphasized Kaz’s fleeing from the scene, a dishonorable act, more than the death of the ogre. According to minotaur code, that was enough to have him executed – or, at the least, sentenced to a battle of impossible odds.

Lord Oswal read the proclamation over. He greatly trusted Kaz, but he was, in the end, an avid proponent of justice and law. The minotaurs who ruled their race were, until their own kind removed them, legitimate masters, and their word was lawful.

“Why come here? Why show me this?”

“We believed the minotaur would come here. Is such the case?” The look in Scum’s eyes dared the Grand Master to lie.

He would not. “Kaz was here two days ago. He has gone south with a small force of my own men.”

Oddly, there were some looks of relief and murmured comments among the crowd of minotaurs. A male and female who, as far as a human could discern, resembled one another, seemed most pleased. The leader was not.

“South! We missed him by two days? Where does the coward go in the south?”

“The ‘coward’ rides to the mountains just north of Qualinesti. He and my nephew ride to face a magic thief who threatens not just Solamnia but also all of Ansalon with his actions!”

“Kaz rides into danger?” asked the female minotaur.

Scurn snorted in disdain. “With a force of knights at his back, he can afford to be brave!” To Lord Oswal, he asked, “You claim this as truth?”

The elder knight straightened. “My honor is my life, minotaur! You have my word!”

The disfigured minotaur smiled cruelly and, replacing the proclamation and the magical sphere, pulled out what appeared to be a crude map. “In that case, my lord, I would ask you to show me exactly where they travel … all in the interest of honor and justice, which we also hold dear.”

*

How long? Has the Final Day come and gone while I remained frozen here, helpless?

Kaz had heard nothing more from Sardal Crystalthorn. Perhaps the elf, satisfied with the results of his trap, had no more need to speak to him. And Kaz would have to remain where he was, forever staring out at the golden void.

No more had the melancholy thought escaped his mind when he found the opposite was true, for motion began to return to him. He could breathe, turn his head, flex his arm, blink! It was astonishing to think how wonderful it was to blink his eyes! Below him, the horse, too, began to move, neighing and shaking its head as it realized that it could run once more – or fall.

For with the return of motion came a return to falling! Kaz frantically tightened his grip as best as possible, hoping, selfishly, that the horse would somehow soften the minotaur’s own landing.

Then, as abruptly as it had first appeared, the golden void gave way to green grass and trees – a forest, in fact. The moment the horse’s hooves touched solid ground, Kaz was tempted to ride as if demons were after him. One important thing prevented him, though. That was the figure of Sardal standing before him, a wizard’s staff held high.

The elf was smiling and his robe was of the purest white. Kaz did not trust him for a moment.

“I thought for a while there I’d never get you out of that trap! I thought minotaurs were competent enough to follow simple instructions like giving parchments to unsuspecting, deceitful dark elves!”

Kaz looked around. The trees told him nothing. He could be in any forest, though he had a suspicion that he knew this one. “Where am I? How long – how long was I trapped in – in whatever that was?”

“You are fairly near your destination. A bit south, in Qualinesti, if you really want to know. It is now three days since you apparently departed Vingaard Keep.”

“I was only trapped for a day or so?” Not an eternity?

“I imagine that it would seem a lot longer, considering that you would have no need to eat, drink, or sleep. It was meant as a punishment.”

“Punishment?” Kaz’s eyes burned red. His hand went to his battle-axe, the same battle-axe that none other than Sardal Crystalthorn had given him.

“Not for you, but for Argaen.”

“Argaen?”

“I knew he had gone beyond all limits. Always, with his lack of ability, he has turned to the younger races for inspiration. He studied the traits of each race, especially the humans, for several years. He even lived among them. Yet, while the humans have many worthy traits, it was the worst of them that attracted Argaen. Argaen was always one who, lacking all but the least magical prowess, felt he had somehow been deprived of a birthright. So, secretly, he began to steal magic. By that I mean he stole items of power from those around him.”

“Why didn’t you stop him?”

“The truth, sadly, was only discovered recently, when he sent me what he obviously believed was an innocent note asking for information about the mad human mage, Galan Dracos! It became very clear that he wanted the treasures of Dracos that the knights had gathered. Until recently, he had been singularly unsuccessful in gaining entrance to the secret vaults. What happened, Kaz? How did he slip past the safeguards of the vaults? Argaen was never much of a thief when it came to physical traps.”

Kaz told the elf all about what had transpired, starting with the party’s first glimpse of Vingaard Keep and leading up to the moment when he had opened up the parchment. Sardal shook his head wonderingly.

“All that work gone to naught! Do you know, minotaur, that I invested much power in that prison I was forced to free you from? It’s not something I can do again too soon, you know. What was it that Argaen stole from Vingaard?”

Kaz described the emerald sphere and its chaotic power, drawing on memories of what Huma had told him as well as more recent information. When he had finished, he asked, “The knights, Sardal, and my friends – what has become of them?”

“They moved on. Bennett gave you up for dead or a prisoner of Argaen. Either way, it was his assumption that the best course of action would be to continue on despite your loss. Such a loyal companion.”

“Bennett is a Knight of Solamnia. I would’ve done no less.”

“I fear, however, that they are going to run into some difficulties. You see, what remains of the Dragonqueen’s armies has slowly been gathering near here. In secret, so they think. But such as they cannot hide from the eyes of elves. Your friends are riding into great danger, minotaur.”

“Then I’m wasting my time here!” growled Kaz. He started to turn his mount around. “Which way?”

“Time is never wasted if you plan well,” uttered the elf philosophically.

Kaz pulled up short, craning his head so that he could look back at Sardal. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I have a quicker way of getting us to our destination … and he should be arriving just about now.”

The minotaur’s mount suddenly shied as it scented something off in the woods. Kaz readied his dwarven axe. Whatever the horse had scented was moving slowly, taking its own pace.

Out of the woods behind Sardal Crystalthorn came a huge beast. It was at least as large as the horse Kaz rode. Huge paws touched the ground lightly and silently. A red tongue hung from a maw large enough to swallow Kaz’s arm. The fur was sleek and silver.

It was the biggest wolf that Kaz had ever seen. From his past experiences with those mockeries of this magnificent creature, the dreadwolves, the minotaur had gained a certain distrust of anything that resembled them.

“I discern the reason for your distrust, warrior, and I mourn the fact that so many cubs have become the playthings of twisted beings like Galan Dracos and Argaen Ravenshadow. You may place your trust in me, however, for your cause is Habbakuk’s as well as Paladine’s, and my lord Habbakuk’s cause is ever mine.”

“What is it, Sardal?”

Sardal did not deign to answer, for the subject of Kaz’s question was more than capable of speaking for himself.

“I am Greymir, who runs with Habbakuk, lord of the animals, and serves him in the mortal world. My liege has commanded, at this elf’s request, that I give you both safe transport to that place of darkness where the scavenger called Ravenshadow even now moves ever closer to his greatest folly and a resurrection of Krynn’s greatest threat.”

As pale as a minotaur could be, Kaz continued to gape at the magnificent beast. With the banishing of Takhisis, he had thought his existence might turn forever to more mundane business. He had tried to do his best to shun the likes of sorcerers and magical quests, but obviously not with much success. It was as if time were reversing itself. Once more Kaz was one of those caught in a game involving the gods. Greymir’s presence was all that Kaz needed to convince himself that this had gone beyond some elf’s petty ambitions – but how far beyond?

“What —” he began.

“As you said,” Sardal interrupted, “time is wasting. Dismount and take only what things you truly need.”

“We’re – we’re going to ride that?”

“You who’ve ridden dragons should certainly not fear me,” Greymir commented smoothly.

The minotaur’s horse, after its initial fear, was now eager to rub noses with the huge wolf. Kaz trusted animals’ instincts only so far. He held up Honor’s Face so that Greymir’s reflection, if any, would be clear.

“A noble weapon, that,” Habbakuk’s emissary remarked. “And you are more or less correct about the reflections – or lack of them.” Greymir’s visage was plain to see in the battle-axe. So, then. The dwarven weapon had not failed Kaz so far. He would trust in it.

“I trust you are satisfied,” Sardal said, a little petulantly.

“I am.” Kaz dismounted. The battle-axe was returned to his shoulder harness as he reluctantly stepped over to the great wolf. Greymir lay down so as to allow the minotaur to climb onto his back. So huge was the animal that there still remained room on his back for the elf, who immediately joined Kaz. The weight of two full-grown figures seemed to make no difference to Greymir, for he rose to his feet with ease. The wolf stared at Kaz’s horse, and the steed trotted off, as if given orders. Greymir pawed the ground.

“Hold tight!”

Greymir raced with a speed only a dragon could match. Trees whirred full speed in the opposite direction. Birds flew in place. Kaz knew that Greymir’s paws did not even touch the earth. This was the stuff of legend, the stuff of wonder. This was the stuff that one breathless minotaur would have preferred never to have experienced.

Daylight was losing its battle with the night. Kaz knew his companions must have reached the mountains nearby now. Fifty against how many?

“They will have aid,” came a voice that he recognized as the wolf’s. The magnificent creature could listen to his thoughts. … “You are the most worrisome minotaur I have ever observed.” This last was followed by a chuckle from Greymir.

Kaz concentrated on maintaining his grip.

The mountains swallowed them up. Entering those mountains was like entering a new and fearsome world. It was too reminiscent of the evil that had hung over Vingaard Keep so long. It was the renewed presence of the emerald sphere of Galan Dracos.

“Not long now,” came Greymir’s voice.

A mocking howl suddenly echoed through the mountains. Kaz snarled, recognizing the sound. No living animal howled like that.

“Dreadwolves,” Greymir commented sadly. “My twisted young,” the wolf continued, his anger swelling. “And there is nothing I can do for them. They are only shells with vague, tortured memories.”

The howls echoed from everywhere. Argaen knew they were coming and was trying to slow their progress with his illusions. This time, however, no one would be fooled.

“The elf is ignorant of us – and they are not illusions,” Greymir growled, pulling to an abrupt stop, gazing at the horrid scene unfolding before them.

“Habbakuk and Branchala!” Sardal whispered.

Suddenly dreadwolves were everywhere, surrounding them. Kaz ceased counting after fifty or so. The sight was sickening, as if the burial ground of all wolves were suddenly upturned by evil Chemosh, lord of the undead. Countless red orbs stared sightlessly at them. Rotted tongues hung out of maws filled with yellowed teeth. Bones showed through.

“Hold tight. Prepare to defend yourselves!”

A dreadwolf atop a high ledge laughed. It was a very human, very maniacal laugh. Kaz had no time to think about it, however, for Greymir was already moving again.

The dreadwolves attacked as one.

Hampered in his movement, Kaz could only make a partial defense as dozens of bloodthirsty horrors swarmed about the swiftly striding wolf. Even his partial blows, however, were enough to dismember several dreadwolves, although the monstrosities immediately rose up again, as their body parts drew back together. It was difficult to kill something that was already dead and could pull its body parts back to one complete form. Still, time was bought.

Greymir never paused in his flight, but somehow managed always to have a dreadwolf in his jaws or trampled under his feet. Monster after monster was tossed aside. But Kaz and Sardal had cuts all over their legs and sides. Greymir had scores of minor wounds. Given time, the dreadwolves might have brought them down.

With a few amazing strides, the gigantic wolf broke free of his unliving counterparts, striking one last foe with his hind paws as he passed by. The dreadwolves gave chase, but they were soon left far behind.

“Thank the gods that is over,” Sardal muttered.

Kaz, happening to gaze skyward, saw something he had hoped never to see again. “We’re far from safe, though, Sardal. Look up there!”

Circling menacingly above a mountain a short distance to the north was the stone dragon.

Greymir began slowing. “I have brought you as far as I can. You will have to go by foot the rest of the way, but it is not far. Perhaps it is even too close.”

“Where will you go?”

“I asked one boon when my lord Habbakuk sent me forth, and he did grant it.” Greymir came to a halt. “Please dismount.”

The two did. The great wolf turned to face toward the direction they had just come from, back where the dreadwolves still roamed.

“We thank you sincerely for your aid, emissary of Habbakuk.”

“Your request gave me an opportunity of my own. I could not come to this land without a reason. If anyone should be thanked, it is you and the minotaur for enabling me to complete a task that has long been overdue, a curse upon my kind.”

In the distance, they could hear the howling of a dreadwolf or two.

Greymir’s burning eyes narrowed at the sound. “I could do nothing before, what with you two on my back. Now I shall deal with them properly. May you gain success in your own quest.”

With that, the huge wolf raced off.

“It has pained him for the past few years that such as the dreadwolves exist,” Sardal said. “He goes to destroy those twisted forms so that the souls of the pack members who once fostered them may rest in peace.”

“I thought they’d all died with their original master, Galan Dracos. Where did Argaen Ravenshadow learn such foul sorcery? I wouldn’t have thought him capable of it.”

Sardal looked at him grimly. “Argaen is not capable of it, although he may have come to believe that he is responsible. Argaen, you see, is only a tool. No, minotaur, the dreadwolves still obey their first and only master.”

“The emerald sphere! I felt it!”

“Yes, my friend. Galan Dracos lives!”

Chapter 19

“Those mountains in the midst of the range, I think,” Bennett commented calmly to Sir Grissom. The other knight nodded obediently. Behind them, Darius, Tesela, and Delbin listened with various combinations of impatience, anxiety, and anger. Kaz was gone, swallowed up by some fiendish trap. It was not the column moving too slowly that bothered them, but that Bennett seemed to accept the disappearance of Kaz so easily.

“This is war,” he had replied to Tesela’s angry questions. “As much a war as the one fought more than five years ago. Kaz knows, if he is indeed alive.”

There were traces of recent activity, men on horseback and on foot. The tracks went toward the mountains, away from them, parallel to their own path – essentially everywhere. A few times, men had thought they had seen the stone dragon.

“Ready arms,” Bennett ordered.

The men in front had lances, should the foe block the mountain paths. The men in the ranks were divided between those with bows ready for any enemy hiding in the rocks and mountainsides, and others who had swords in case they were set upon from low ground. It was the unspoken duty of Darius that he would watch over the cleric and the kender. He was more than willing to test his blade in their defense. Tesela, meanwhile, was composing herself. In defense of the column, she would utilize her powers as best as she could.

Even Delbin was ready. He had succeeded in finding a sling and ammunition. The sling was a lucky find; he had been looking for his book, in order to record the coming battle. The sling seemed as though it might be useful, so he kept it at the ready.

The column moved into the mountains.

Perched atop one peak, the stone dragon, momentarily unnoticed, continued to watch them. It had not been given orders to attack. Not yet.

That was quite fortunate, for soon it was apparent that the knights had other concerns – concerns wearing armor and sporting a nasty variety of weapons.

Their first mistake was in believing that the knights would even think of retreating. Their second was assuming that fifty men were just fifty men, when they were actually dealing with the best-trained fighters in all of Ansalon. The first wave of attackers, both on the ground and on the slopes of the mountain, died nearly to a man as each knight did his part. Only one knight died, an arrow through his neck, and only two others were injured. Some twenty or thirty of the enemy perished, however. The fierce battle lasted several minutes.

As the disorganized figures scurried back into the safety of the mountains, Bennett ordered those who would prefer to give chase to maintain their positions. The column would move as a whole or not at all.

The next clash came only five minutes later.

*

“How much longer can we afford to stay here, minotaur?”

Kaz gazed down to where another patrol was scouring the nearby area. It was all too obvious what – or rather, whom – the patrol was looking for.

“As long as it takes our friends down there to tire themselves out.”

They were slowly inching their way toward the keep that Argaen Ravenshadow had made his own. Finding it had been fairly simple; the two of them had moved steadily and stealthily in the direction of the peak where the stone dragon now perched. As they had assumed, the keep lay below that particular mountain.

Getting there … now, that was a nasty problem.

The region was a kendertown of activity. Patrols scurried everywhere. Kaz was truly astonished at the number of hardened fighters; this was the bulk of what remained of the once-terrible force of the Dragonqueen. The dark elf was indeed building himself an army! How long had he planned such a thing? When had he first contacted the various raider commanders? What had he offered them?

Ravenshadow’s keep had been built long ago, probably by someone dreaming of a new life. It was old but solid. A high, serviceable wall surrounded it, save at the back of the keep, where a mountain provided a natural barrier to outsiders. There were several taller buildings toward the back end of the keep, one a squat tower that had probably served as the lord’s residence. It was in that tower that Kaz suspected he would find Argaen Ravenshadow himself. Despite the damage the elements had done to the keep as a whole, the dark elf had apparently seen no reason to have it repaired. What had happened to the original inhabitants, neither Sardal nor Kaz could even guess, but at one time, the minotaur estimated that the place could have held almost four hundred souls. Certainly the size of the keep indicated that. The size also hinted at how massive Argaen’s army had become; the keep was fairly overwhelmed by men and horses. There were groups of ogres and other races that had forged alliances with Takhisis.

Time was rapidly running out. So much activity meant only one thing to Kaz: His friends were under attack. Every moment he delayed brought them closer to death – if it was not already too late.

The going was too slow. Dodging patrols and riders. Being forced, at one point, to wait and quietly kill a trio of searchers who had gotten too close in their search. Still the keep was far away.

“They are moving on,” Sardal whispered.

The patrol had decided to continue down the path before them. No one would find the three men Kaz had been forced to dispatch, but if they went far enough, they might find traces of one very large wolf.

Thinking of Greymir, Kaz wondered how the emissary of Habbakuk was faring. The dreadwolves were nothing if not maddeningly persistent, and they were nearly impossible to kill. Kaz could not help wondering whether Greymir had fallen to them, and if the others were now closing in on the elf and him.

“We waste valuable time,” Sardal reminded him.

Kaz replied in a manner that left it quite clear what he thought about the elf’s comment. While Sardal suppressed a smile, the minotaur scanned the area quickly and, deciding it was safe, stepped out into the open.

“We are fortunate,” Kaz’s companion added, “that Argaen does not dare trust another mage.”

“Why can’t he?”

“Very simply, what Black Robe would not be tempted by the power channeled by the emerald sphere? Argaen is not strong enough to match a true magic-user.”

“Which makes him perfect for Galan Dracos.”

“Yes.” Sardal looked saddened. “Poor Argaen. I wonder if he knows yet what role he may be playing.”

Kaz grunted.

A warning shout came from behind them. Both turned at the noise. For whatever reason, two of the men in the last patrol had backtracked just in time to see the minotaur step out into the open. They had only one viable option, and the minotaur put it into action with but a single word.

“Run!”

Horns sounded. Kaz heard more shouts, an indication that the rest of the patrol was nearby. It wouldn’t be long before the alarm alerted others.

“We cannot … cannot run mindlessly!” Sardal gasped as he ran.

“Save your breath!”

Kaz’s footing became unstable. He immediately discovered that he was not alone in his predicament. Sardal was falling forward, and startled cries alerted him to the fact that their pursuers were having problems of their own.

An earthquake? Kaz wondered.

“M-Minotaur!” the elf bellowed. Sardal was rolling helplessly down the incline. As much as Kaz would have liked to aid him, he was having enough trouble preventing himself from toppling after him. The tremors continued to toss loose objects about.

Barely on his feet, Kaz stared wide-eyed as the side of one peak seemed to melt downward. He blinked, but the astonishing sight remained. The emerald sphere had to be the cause of this. Argaen Ravenshadow must be trying to harness its abilities. And he was not succeeding.

Chaos. Huma had said that Galan Dracos called the sphere his channel into the power of chaos, or something along those lines.

Something bumped him from behind. Kaz lashed out, only to find his arm snared by the powerful grip of a human almost as tall and broad as himself. The man had to be part ogre. He had to try to fight off this foe before he lost his footing entirely.

The human was trying to twist the battle-axe out of Kaz’s grip. As he fought back, his left foot slid downward. Minotaur and human compensated, but Kaz found himself at a definite disadvantage. His adversary had the higher ground. Kaz’s grip was loosening, and worse, the soldier was now drawing a dagger. Kaz couldn’t gain more than a temporary foothold.

Kaz fell into a sitting position. His opponent followed him down facefirst, striking the earth hard. His grip all but vanished, and the two of them separated. The soldier began to tumble over and over uncontrollably. By the time Kaz reached more level ground, his adversary lay absolutely motionless.

The earth finally ceased rippling, but the games were not over. The formerly solid ground, though no longer rising and falling, was now like mud. Kaz rose and immediately sank to his knees. Beyond him, Sardal cautiously made his way toward the minotaur. He was up to his ankles in the mudlike earth, but each step sank him a little deeper.

A horrible slurping sound caught Kaz’s attention, and he turned just in time to see the boots of his opponent, the only portion of the man still visible, sink into the earth. The minotaur glanced down at the muck surrounding his own legs and froze in trepidation.

He began to sink even faster.

“Don’t stand still!” Sardal shouted. “Spread your mass! It will slow the sinking!”

The logic was questionable, but the results were evident. Kaz actually succeeded in raising himself up a bit. There was still one problem. “How do we get out of here?”

A shadow loomed overhead. Kaz didn’t have to look up to know what it was.

Ravenshadow’s stone dragon.

The creature circled above them, seeming to debate what it should do. Kaz readied his battle-axe, knowing that even if the unliving creature feared it, it wouldn’t do the minotaur much good if the dragon simply dropped on top of him. At least, however, he would try to get in one blow.

Several tons of solid stone came hurtling down, blotting out the sun. Kaz closed his eyes, awaiting the final moment, but the moment never came. There was a heavy thud, as if something massive, such as a dragon made of stone, had struck a hard surface and bounced off.

“Branchala be praised!” whispered Sardal from nearby.

Kaz dared to open his eyes. Apparently the stone dragon, much to its annoyance, had bounced off something, for it was now careening madly about, trying to regain control. Sardal was smiling wearily. The minotaur looked from elf to dragon to elf again.

“What’d you do?”

“I devised a spell that I thought just might be strong enough to repel Argaen’s pet. It worked, I am happy to say.” The elf looked very relieved.

“Might? You weren’t certain?”

The dragon had not yet given up. It tried once more to regain control, but with similar results. Still, it was keeping them effectively pinned down. Worse yet, the survivors of the patrol that had been chasing the two were slowly wading their way toward the duo. Kaz counted perhaps seven men, five with swords, one with an axe, the last with a pike.

Enemies behind him, a monster above him, and his maneuverability nearly nil. Things had been better, even during the war.

Paladine knows, I’ve tried to live up to your memory, Huma, Kaz thought darkly, but the gods have frowned on this minotaur and I think my luck’s finally run out.

The sounds of horses running and men in armor jolted him from his somber thoughts. His first inclination was to expect the worst: that the patrol had been joined by reinforcements. Kaz and Sardal looked back.

A force of knights was cutting its way through the meager resistance. Kaz imagined he saw two or three mages, all elves, riding in the rear of the group.

Sardal laughed lightly. “I had given up all hope that they would come in time!”

Kaz turned on his companion, eyes wide. “You knew they were coming?”

“While you were ensnared in my trap, I spoke briefly with my people and also sent a message off to the nearest of the Solamnic forces. The southern keeps have been pursuing the remnants of the Dragonqueen’s army since the war ended.”

The minotaur nodded.

“As for my own people —” Sardal broke off. Kaz looked up, saw nothing but one massive set of stone claws, and realized, even as he was torn from the boggy earth with a schlupp!, that Sardal’s spell had been exceeded. The stone dragon rose high in the air, its prey held tightly. Kaz was greatly surprised to find that he was still breathing. Indeed, he was not dead, and the stone dragon apparently had no intention of killing him. The animated horror turned up into the sky and fled from the danger of the elven mages, directly toward the keep of its master.

The stone claws squeezed Kaz’s arms tight against his body, and the intense pressure made him loosen his grip on Honor’s Face. Before he could react, the battle-axe slipped free and plummeted into the muck below, vanishing beneath the surface of the liquefied earth. He tried picturing the dwarven weapon, tried to call it back to him, but nothing happened. How he had done it before was beyond him. Now he was unarmed and alone.

The claws squeezed ever tighter. The minotaur could no longer breathe. Perhaps, he thought as things turned to darkness, the stone dragon was going to crush him to death.

A moment later, he no longer cared. Unable to breathe, he passed out completely, cursing only the fact that he would not go down fighting.

*

A part of him knew that this was yet another dream and memory mixed together, but that part was buried in the back of his mind. He only cared that this was the day of oath-taking, a day of both pride and shame, of honor and indignity.

With the rest, Kaz took his place before those the ogre and human lords had made elders of the minotaur race. There was the one bearing the title of emperor, who had never been defeated in arena challenges, though some said that was due to trickery. There were the elders, supposedly the strongest and smartest of the minotaurs. Some of them were true minotaur champions, like Kaz. Most were suspected of the same treachery as the emperor. It mattered not, for they were as much slaves to the overlords as the rest of their people.

Long ago, when they had first been conquered, the minotaurs, in order to save their race, had taken oaths of utter obedience. Bound by their own strict code of honor, they trapped themselves in an endless cycle of slavery. The few malcontents were quickly and quietly dealt with by the masters. Oath-breakers were very rare, however.

Now, in the interminable war between Paladine and Takhisis, the minotaurs were an important part in the efforts of the warlord, Crynus. A minotaur was worth any two fighters from the other races – generally more than two. They fought and won battles others would have given up as lost. Parceled out so that the temptation to rebel would never be concentrated in too great a number – the warlord did not care to take chances – the minotaurs strengthened every army tremendously. All that was needed was to insure their loyalty with the oath.

Crynus was here himself, and he seemed to gaze at Kaz in particular. The minotaur felt both proud and disturbed. Someone signaled for the oath to begin. A horn sounded, yet now it was a Solamnic battle horn, and the man who had been the warlord became Grand Master Oswal. The other figures seated before the assembled throng became knights. Bennett sat on his uncle’s right, and Rennard, smiling merrily – something Kaz had not seen him do in the brief time they had known each other – sat on the elder’s left.

This is a dream! one part of the minotaur’s mind shouted. This is not right.

“An oath is only as good as the man,” muttered someone to his right, “and a minotaur is no man.”

Kaz whirled about and found himself among a legion of young knights waiting to take their own Solamnic oath. The one who had spoken was Huma, who looked at Kaz with contempt.

“How long will this oath last?” Huma asked with a smirk. “The one you gave your masters lasted only until you tired of it. How long before you turn on me? I’m disappointed in you, Kaz. You have no honor. None whatsoever. You tried to be like me only in order to convince yourself you aren’t a dishonorable coward and a murderer!”

The minotaur’s eyes grew crimson, and he longed to hold the dwarven battle-axe again, to show the human the truth of it with the blade of the axe. Even as he longed for it, Kaz realized that the axe was in his hands. Matching Huma’s smirk, Kaz raised the weapon up – and found himself staring into the side of the axe head, at his own reflection, which was slowly fading away.

“How did —?” Huma uttered, but it was no longer Huma’s voice. Instead, it was that of Argaen Ravenshadow, or perhaps Galan Dracos. It was impossible to say.

With the sudden manifestation of that voice, or those voices, Kaz gained some measure of control of his own dream. He hefted the axe, but he knew the figure he stalked toward could not be Huma. Instead, he imagined it was Ravenshadow. Ravenshadow he was more than willing to deliver to the Abyss.

“Wake him up, curse you! No more games!” a voice that seemed to come from all around him commanded.

*

Kaz was jarred back into reality. That was the only way to describe it. From dream to waking, with no transition in between. It was enough to make his head spin. He started to slump, only to discover that something held him up by the wrists.

“Open your eyes, old friend!”

The minotaur did.

Argaen Ravenshadow lay seated before the malevolent emerald sphere in the center of what seemed to be a makeshift wizard’s laboratory in the keep. He seemed in good health, free of his wounds, although he leaned to one side in an odd manner. He also seemed annoyed, at something other than Kaz’s presence. There was, barring the stone dragon, one other presence of import in what passed for Argaen’s home. It was he, of course, who had welcomed the minotaur. It was he who now floated above the emerald sphere itself, as much a part of it as it was of him.

He was Galan Dracos, of course.

Chapter 20

The raiders attacked again. The second time, the enemy did nothing so foolish as to charge the knights. Instead, they kept to the ridges and mountainsides and rained death down upon the band. Two knights were struck down in the first volley, despite raised shields. There were just too many archers above and around them. One or two knights answered with strikes from their own bows, and though each attempt put them in jeopardy, they did not shy away from the task. One man fell across Tesela’s horse, and the cleric, despite herself, could not help gasping in horror. Darius helped her remove the unfortunate knight. There was no time to stop. Indeed, it would have been certain death to do so.

From the left of the column, rocks came bounding earthward as someone sought to start an avalanche. A Solamnic archer cut down one man, but others remained hidden. One knight’s horse was toppled as several large stones crushed its hind leg. With amazing speed, the knight brought his sword down across the animal’s neck, relieving it permanently of the terrible pain. Under the protection of his fellows, the man claimed the mount of a fallen comrade.

While the knights had no intention of retreating, Darius feared for his two companions, especially Tesela. He looked back toward the rear of the column, hoping that his comrades might be able to cut a path for the two, but the attackers were already swarming over the rocks. Sending Tesela and Delbin back now would be tantamount to condemning them to death, though what sort of future they had if they remained was also questionable.

It was then that Darius first noticed that the kender was gone.

He whirled around and almost caught an arrow because of his foolish hesitancy. Delbin was nowhere in sight, but the knight was certain he would have remembered if the kender had been killed. Rather, Darius was nearly positive that his kender companion had somehow, in the middle of combat yet, sneaked away.

“Damn you, Delbin!” Darius muttered as he moved forward with the rest of the column.

Had he known where the kender presently was, the knight would undoubtedly have withdrawn the statement. Delbin was not heading toward safety, which Darius assumed. He was, in actuality, scurrying through the myriad paths in the range, making his way ever deeper into the mountains. Intent on the knights below, the enemy did not notice the small figure stealthily threading his way through the oncoming forces. If the truth be known, the kender was making better time than the column. Delbin felt some uncharacteristic kender guilt at seeming to abandon the others, but that was outweighed by his determination to reach the stronghold of the magic thief, Argaen Ravenshadow. A trait that many other races overlooked in the kender was their intense loyalty to their friends. Delbin’s best friend, someone who was as close to him as his own family, was probably a prisoner of the dark elf. Nothing would make the kender turn back.

Not once did Delbin imagine that Kaz might be dead.

A figure moved in the rocks ahead of him. Delbin, his sling ready, quietly moved closer, as only one of his kind could. The figure sharpened into the backside of an archer. The man had a good supply of arrows and looked ready to use them all. Delbin glanced around and saw other ambushers spread around the area, but only this one blocked his path. The kender chose a proper bullet for his sling, loaded the weapon, and with no hesitation, swung the sling around and around above his head. It seemed a bit unfair to strike the man without his knowledge, but Delbin considered the fact that the human had no such compunction where the knights below were concerned.

On the next swing, he released the bullet. It soared swiftly through the air and struck the archer soundly in the back of the head. A river of red briefly washed over the man’s backside before the archer fell forward – and over the edge where he had been kneeling. Delbin sincerely hoped he would not hit somebody when he landed.

Scurrying past the spot where the archer had stationed himself, Delbin saw the keep. It really did not seem that far away.

Suddenly Delbin felt the shock of the earth itself rippling wildly. There were screams as some of the attackers fell to their deaths, and curses from above and below the kender’s position. Delbin enjoyed the movement of the earth – it seemed like one of the most enjoyable things he had ever experienced – but the liquefying earth that materialized around his feet fast became an annoyance. Kender liked to move, and mud was strictly for gully dwarves. It was difficult to find solid ground, for despite its new traits, the ground he moved upon looked no different from unaffected patches nearby. The only way to tell the difference was to actually step on the surface and hope one didn’t sink.

That concern died when Delbin noticed the stone dragon rise from behind some smaller peaks. Sharp kender eyes saw the shape clutched tightly in its claws. Delbin had seen the creature up close and knew how big those claws were. To him, there could only be one person as big as the helpless figure he saw in the distance, and that was Kaz. Kaz, his friend, needed rescuing, and the only one who would be able to rescue him was the kender himself.

A mask of stern resolution on his face, or the nearest facsimile he could muster, not knowing how stern resolution was supposed to look, Delbin picked up his pace. He would not let Kaz down.

*

After his initial shock, Kaz fell back into the dark realm of unconsciousness and did not revive for quite some time. When he did, he discovered himself chained up in a chamber. This was hardly the way he had wanted to enter the keep. He scanned his surroundings. There was actually very little to see. He could make out a single entrance, where the door stood tantalizingly open – either through great carelessness or overconfidence. The walls of the room were cracked with age but still quite sturdy. Cobwebs decorated the ceiling. The chains that held Kaz looked to be formidable, and whoever had secured them to the wall behind him had known his business.

He wondered what the situation was like outside. He suspected it was a full-scale battle, something he had hardly expected. Delbin and the others were out there, possibly injured or worse. Nothing was going right. Nothing had ever gone right. Kaz snorted in self-pity. Did the gods have nothing better to do than pick on a lone minotaur who wanted only to live the rest of his life quietly with an occasional trial of blood to keep him from becoming too bored?

He was still sitting there feeling sorry for himself for all the troubles the world had dumped on him when a guard suddenly materialized. He was not alone, however. There was one very familiar figure with him.

Argaen Ravenshadow walked in, and Kaz saw immediately that his previous brief encounter with the dark elf had been no figment. Ravenshadow did indeed lean to one side as he walked, and it was obvious he did not feel well enough to actually straighten up. This seemed to annoy the elf only slightly, but it gave the minotaur great satisfaction.

The gifts of the emerald sphere are tainted.

The dark elf stopped before Kaz and stared at him for quite some time. Argaen started to speak, seemed to think better of it, and turned to the guard.

“You are dismissed for now. I will call you if I need you.”

Oddly, the guard hesitated. Kaz was rather surprised by the open defiance, but Argaen appeared to expect it. He stared the man down, and the guard finally thought better of his insubordination and reluctantly obeyed, closing the door behind him. The elf waited until he was certain they were quite alone before speaking.

“You saw him, did you not, minotaur?”

Kaz shivered involuntarily, but he kept a calm appearance. “I saw. Even expecting something like that, it was surprising.”

Ravenshadow smiled, but his smile had a peculiar quality, almost as if the elf were mocking himself. “A great prize, yes? Not only is the most powerful artifact of Galan Dracos under my control, but I have made contact with the master sorcerer himself!”

“How did he survive, Argaen? Sardal thought he had, somehow …”

“Sardal? Is that whom you are with? I should have recognized his presence sooner. I’m sure I would have, but there is so much to do and so little time to do it, as they say. Still, I feel that you are the one person I should take time out to talk to, if only because of the role you are destined to play.”

Kaz stiffened.

Ravenshadow waved off any comment. “You ask how Dracos survived? He did not. Your comrade, Huma of the Lance … he saw what truly happened. Dracos knew he had failed in his bid to be a god and also knew that he could only expect the most imaginative of the Dragonqueen’s tortures as reward for his folly. Better, I would agree myself, to destroy both body and spirit, to cease to exist.”

“I know all that.”

“Do you know, then, that it did not go as Dracos planned? Even he is not infallible, evidently. Instead of death, he discovered himself in a sort of unlife, a specter floating helplessly in the chaos of his own shattered creation.” The smile on Argaen’s face altered subtly. The thought of Galan Dracos condemned to everlasting emptiness pleased him.

Kaz wondered what the elf would have said if he had known a similar fate had been planned for him at Sardal’s hands. Another failure on my part, the minotaur bitterly recalled. Had Huma ever failed so often and so greatly? Likely not.

“It was all he could do to slowly pull the emerald sphere back together. He thought it would enable him to free himself, but in that he was wrong, and so he patiently waited, seeking one with the skill and cunning he needed.

“I know all too well now that some of the things I thought I was responsible for were his doing. For some reason, he could not draw sufficient power from the crystal itself, but he could extract it from those other objects that the knighthood so foolishly piled with the fragments of the sphere. I daresay that they will find most of those items worthless and powerless now, if they investigate. Dracos is living on borrowed time, though. He was fortunate; if not for my intervention and the timely appearance of you and your little kender friend, he would have failed. Vingaard Keep would have returned to normal. For our success, I thank you, minotaur.”

Kaz, however, was not paying attention to the elf’s sarcastic remark. Instead, at the mention of Delbin, his thoughts had turned fleetingly to his companion and the rest of his friends. Were they still alive?

“You seem pretty calm for someone whose stronghold is under attack by a large force of Solamnic Knights – or don’t you know about them yet? Has anyone bothered to inform you, or do they just alert their true master, Dracos?”

Argaen flinched ever so slightly, a sure sign that Kaz’s remark had struck home.

“The attack goes on, if that is what you were seeking to discover, minotaur,” Ravenshadow replied. He was trying to once more assume the bland mask that Kaz had originally mistaken for the typical elven posturing when dealing with outsiders. Even now, the mask was failing to stay in place. Ravenshadow did have reason to worry about the battle. The elf added, “We will not be disturbed in here, however.”

“You don’t seem completely confident about that.” Kaz smiled back for effect.

With a speed unnatural for any human or minotaur, Argaen struck Kaz across the jaw. A minotaur’s jaw is a bit harder than a human’s or an elf’s, and Kaz had the slight satisfaction – slight because his mouth throbbed with pain – of seeing Ravenshadow wince at the impact.

“If I didn’t need you, minotaur …”

Kaz glared back. “For what? What do you need me for?”

Argaen seemed a bit taken aback. Finally he replied, “To assuage him.”

It was said with such uncertainty that it took Kaz several seconds to actually comprehend what the elf had said. When he did understand, he grew grim.

“He – he wants me to work on freeing him from the wraithlike state he now is forced to endure. Only revenge against the knighthood vies with his desire to be whole again. He was the one who demanded that I send the stone dragon after you. I would have preferred you dead, of course.”

“No doubt.”

“Do not mock me, beast. You are in a disagreeable situation. When he succeeds in teaching me how to give him a true form, when at last he walks the land of Krynn again, Galan Dracos will exact his revenge on the knighthood. First you. The others will follow.”

Kaz had no ready reply. He could only imagine the fate awaiting him at the hands of Dracos. Dracos had cheated death, had even cheated Takhisis! If he became a threat once more, what would happen to Krynn? There was no Huma this time, and Kaz knew his own limits quite well.

Kaz glanced at the elf, who was watching the minotaur’s visage with interest.

“Now that I have impressed upon you your own future, or lack of it, I want you to consider this. Once Galan Dracos becomes a living, breathing creature again, there is, however remotely, the reality that he can die. Very quickly, if necessary.” Argaen gave his prisoner a knowing look.

So that was it! Ravenshadow wanted an assassin to perform the task that he himself did not have the nerve to attempt. The elf was offering Kaz a chance to strike down the master mage before Dracos gained full control of his powers and the emerald sphere. Did the elf think he was that stupid?

No. That desperate.

“Make no mistake about this, minotaur. I will control the emerald sphere, or Dracos will. You have a choice in the matter. I will leave you to decide. It may be that if you take too long, I will find that I do not need you, so I recommend haste.”

Argaen gave his false smile and turned to leave. Kaz waited until the elf was nearly at the door before calling out, “Argaen, where did you learn to create and control the dreadwolves? I thought only Galan Dracos could do that.”

The figure before him stood frozen for an instant, his face turned from the minotaur. Then, with a haste that gave Kaz the answer he had expected, Ravenshadow flung open the door and barged out of the room. His rapid retreat was punctuated with harsh footfalls. After a moment, the guard peered into the room. He gave the minotaur a singularly passive look and then closed the door, leaving Kaz alone with his thoughts.

So it was Galan Dracos, indeed, who controlled the dreadwolves. Imprisoned as he was with no true form, Dracos had still been able to reach out and perform his dastardly spells.

Several more precious minutes passed. Kaz could hear nothing from outside. He tested the chains again. Very sturdy and very constraining. Even with his strength, escape by sheer force seemed next to impossible, yet Kaz did not relish waiting politely for his execution.

Futilely, he tried once more to struggle against his bonds. Kaz thought of his companions – Delbin, Tesela, Darius, and Sardal – and others he knew, like Bennett, Grand Master Oswal, and Lord Guy Avondale, who might die. The minotaur thought of Huma and how, before this had all begun, he had tried to live up to the ideal that his Solamnic companion represented. But he was a minotaur, not a knight – a minotaur and a rebel among his own kind, besides.

The chains strained but held.

Kaz slumped back against the wall and took a deep breath. He did not let up. Though his body was still screaming from his first attempt, he tried again without hesitation. What other choice did he really have?

He fell back against the wall and readied himself for a third attempt. His wrists and ankles were already raw. His only hope was that whoever had installed these chains had thought in human terms. Even for a minotaur, Kaz was strong.

On the next attempt, he felt some part of his bonds loosen. The chain that held his right wrist seemed to give just a little. Encouraged, Kaz put his full effort into that one side and felt it give a bit more. Gritting his teeth and breathing heavily, he again threw the full force of his body into it.

The chain tore loose with a loud clatter.

The scrape of metal breaking free from solid stone reverberated throughout the chamber. Two feet of solid chain dangled noisily from his wrist.

The door burst open even as he flung his arm back into place. The guard glared at him.

“What’s that noise? What’re ya up to, cow?”

From the doorway, it was impossible for the human to make out the fact that Kaz now had one free arm. When the minotaur refused to answer and even turned away from his interrogator, the guard stepped closer. His sword was out, and the tip was on a level with Kaz’s throat.

He repeated his question. “I heard a noise, cow! Ya make that?”

In reply, Kaz brought his right arm around and, utilizing the two feet of chain, caught the guard’s leg. The human had only a moment to realize that a minotaur’s reach far exceeded that of a man, especially when the minotaur held a length of hard chain as well. The guard fell backward, losing his sword and striking the stone floor with a harsh crack. Kaz quickly dragged his prize over to him, his eyes flickering back and forth to the open door where the appearance of just one more guard would doom his escape attempt.

Hope crumbled to frustration when he discovered that the guard had no key. It was probably in the hands of Ravenshadow, who didn’t trust anyone but himself. Kaz spat out several colorful minotaur epithets. Not only did he lack keys, but the guard’s sword was also out of reach, which meant that he could not use it to defend himself if someone came upon him before he succeeded in freeing his other arm and his legs.

If only he had his twibil. The double-edged, dwarven battle-axe had come to him magically before – why not now? What made it decide when to come or not to come? How desperate a situation did Kaz have to be in? Was it lost forever in the muck the stone dragon had torn him from?

He had no more than thought the latter question when he realized that Honor’s Face was there in his left hand.

Now Kaz had a weapon, a weapon of power. Whether it was up to facing a master sorcerer like Galan Dracos or even a cunning magic thief like Argaen was unknown, but Kaz felt certain that the dwarven craftsman who had fashioned it had forged it strong enough to take on something as simple as chains.

Honor’s Face sliced through the metal chains as it might have sliced through the very air. Both the wrist and ankle cuffs proved impossible to remove without keys, however. So be it; at least they would not interfere with his movements.

Still no one had come, a fact that puzzled Kaz as much as the fact that it was so silent outside the chamber. Slowly making his way to the doorway, he discovered that the outer corridor was windowless. A few torches lit the dim hall. Kaz had begun to suspect that one of the reasons it was so silent was that he was underground now, most likely under the tower. Certainly that would explain the lack of windows.

The shadow of someone carefully moving down a side corridor in his direction made Kaz flatten against the wall. There was nowhere to hide save his former cell, and he had no intention of retreating into it.

With little other choice, he raised the battle-axe high. One adversary or more, his best bet would be to charge the moment the owner of the shadow came into sight. Surprise was on his side.

There was still only one shadow. A lone guard who had heard the noise? Why not summon help, then?

A hand and boot slipped around the corridor. Kaz stiffened in anticipation. A head peeked out.

“Sardal!”

Kaz almost let the battle-axe drop to the floor as he exhaled sharply in relief. The elf looked up at the minotaur in surprise, saw the massive blades, and blanched.

Kaz was the first to recover. “How did you find me? Where did you come from?”

“Lower your voice or speak not at all, friend! Branchala be praised that we have found one another! I pray that together we may find some way to turn that monstrous evil back before it is too late!”

“Too late?” Kaz eyed the elf fiercely. “What’s happened, Sardal? I’ve been chained up until a moment ago. What’s happened?”

“You do not know?” Sardal seemed stunned. It took a few seconds for the elf to collect himself. “No, you would not know, trapped as you were in the lower chambers of this keep.”

“Something’s happened to the others? Delbin? The humans?”

Sardal looked as grim as an elf could, which was very grim indeed. “Only a barrier surrounding this keep, one of incredible magnitude, hardly the work of one such as Argaen. I was barely within its boundaries when it was cast. A second or two more and I would have been trapped in it.”

“And the others?”

“The Knights of Solamnia and those of my people who aid them are the better force, but the Dragonqueen’s former servants hold the more advantageous positions.

Even if there was no barrier, your companions and the knights would not be able to reach the keep’s outer walls before darkness, and in the night we are at a further disadvantage.”

“Why?”

“Nuitari rules among the moons now, my friend. Tonight the black moon will devour all but a trace of Solinari. I fear the sorcerers without will not be able to break the spell of the shield, which leaves it up to you and me, minotaur. And since I am hampered by the same difficulties as my brethren, I fear that my aid will be somewhat limited.”

“Which leaves most of it up to me,” Kaz muttered.

There were times, he reflected, when it would have been better to have been born a simplistic gully dwarf. At least no one expected them to save the world – or die trying.

Chapter 21

Argaen Ravenshadow raged at the object of his desire, the gleaming emerald sphere wrought by Galan Dracos.

“No more tricks! I know your power! I know what you can do! The minotaur did not lie, did he? Why else have I come up short each time I sought to bind the sphere to my bidding? Is it because it still follows the dictates of another master?”

Above the crystalline artifact, an indistinct form wavered almost haughtily. At the moment, it little resembled any human form. It was a mere misty outline, a gauzy shroud. There had been times when it had worn a more definite form, when Ravenshadow had found himself staring into the unsettling eyes of the renegade mage Galan Dracos. Argaen found he was more than happy to deal with the wraith in this less disturbing form.

There was no response. Sometimes there was; sometimes there was not. The magic thief could never be certain when he was going to receive an answer, and sometimes he even wondered if he had imagined the others, for when Dracos spoke, his voice was little more than a drawn-out breath.

When it became apparent that this time he was wasting his energy, the elf finally whirled away from the silent specter and turned his concerns to other matters. It had seemed as if everything was going his way for a change. The mostly human raiding bands in the south had answered his call with surprising speed, almost as if they had expected his summons. To the north, the ogre tribes were amassing again after lying low for most of the past five years. The elf had promised them a tool of great power in their seemingly hopeless struggle, for without the dragons of darkness the servants of Takhisis had no edge. Now they had Argaen Ravenshadow.

Through a stroke of astonishing luck, he had secured the artifact he needed to make him first and foremost among the Dark Queen’s servants, only to discover that there was more to the emerald sphere than even he had surmised.

Ravenshadow stalked to a window and stared out at the eerie tableau before him, the shimmering that represented the barrier keeping both his enemies and his allies from him.

There was a question he had asked himself more than once in the past day, even before the minotaur had made his unnerving remarks. The dreadwolves were further testimony that Dracos did need him – but for what? The wraith had more power than it would admit to, but it still needed him. Why? And how could the dark elf turn that need to his advantage?

A bitter smile briefly played over his lips as he watched the tiny figures in the distance waver like unstable puffs of smoke. Ravenshadow, at present, was only able to command the least of the object’s abilities, yet that had already given him a taste of incredible power. If he could only bind himself to the core, truly control the flow of magical power that the sphere only acted as a conduit for, he would be like a god. …

Or dead. A pawn of the creator of this amazing tool.

He needed to know more. He needed to know what his place was in the schemes of the vague figure floating above that which rightfully belonged to the elf. Then – then Ravenshadow would deal with the fool. Dead was dead, and Galan Dracos had had his chance. The future now belonged to Argaen Ravenshadow.

Turning from the window, Argaen glanced at the hourglass on one of the tables he used for his studies. The books and manuscripts he had stolen over the years were forgotten now and were piled to one side, for the timepiece now held precedence. It held roughly three hours’ worth of sand, approximately half of which had already fallen to the bottom. Three hours of safety. That was the barrier’s limit. It would cease to exist then. The sand in the hourglass fell too readily, he thought. By nightfall, his protection would be gone. Before then, he had to master the sphere. He had no more shadow boxes; the one he had used to carry the sphere had been nearly burned out by the time they had arrived here.

Without thinking, he tried to straighten up. Cursing suddenly, Argaen thought of his pain. Everything he had gained was a half-measure. By rights, the emerald sphere should have granted him sufficient power and control to heal himself. Yet he still couldn’t even stand straight without tremendous agony. …

He put his hands in his robe pockets and turned to once more face the emerald sphere and that other who floated vaguely above it. Briefly the fingertips of his right hands touched what he sought. Argaen did not smile, though he felt the urge to. Instead, he spoke to his “partner” of circumstance.

“Let us begin afresh. …”

The dark elf stepped toward the gleaming artifact, his eyes never leaving the specter.

So caught up was he in his new machinations that Argaen Ravenshadow failed to take notice of a small form watching from the alcoves.

Delbin, like Sardal, had gotten within the boundaries of the barrier spell at nearly the last moment. The kender had only become aware of what was happening when he turned around and saw a hapless human, one of the enemy, trapped in the essence of the barrier itself, frozen like a statue. While the idea of such a spell tickled his imagination, Delbin knew that it could only mean trouble for Kaz and the others. The kender had immediately picked up his pace.

Getting inside had turned out to be remarkably easy. Delbin was very proud of himself. As far as he knew, during his search through the upper floors of the main building, he had done none of the things that, for some reason, irked his minotaur companion. His only problem now was not knowing where to look next. Kaz was in this place somewhere, and Delbin had the feeling that something was going to happen very soon, and there might be no one to prevent it except him.

Looking down at the dark elf and the indistinct phantasm that Argaen insisted on addressing as Galan Dracos, a name Delbin knew from Kaz, the kender felt an odd, unfamiliar emotion stir within him. A member of any other race would have recognized it immediately, but not a kender. It was a rarity among his own kind, but Delbin had spent enough time among the other races so that he was finally able to put a name to it.

Fear.

*

Sardal had wanted to say more, and Kaz had certainly wanted to hear more, but such was not to be, for something chose that moment to come prowling through the corridors.

This was no dreadwolf. They had no inkling exactly what it was, save that it was a guardian, a watchdog of sorts. A watchdog on two feet, which was how they first became aware of it. Kaz heard the footfalls.

Whatever it was breathed heavily, so that they could hear it at all times. Sardal, with a shake of his head, indicated that it had not yet picked up their presence. That was a hopeful sign. A dreadwolf would have been hot on their trail by now. Nonetheless, it was heading in their direction.

With the unknown danger wandering toward them, Kaz and the elf had no choice but to retreat down the hall. Speed was of the essence, but so was stealth.

For Sardal, moving silently was no problem. For a being of Kaz’s stature, built for strength and not for subtlety, it was next to impossible. His feet seemed to find every uneven portion of the floor, causing him to stumble several times. Naturally the battle-axe bounced against the wall more than once because of this. Each time, he expected creatures to come boiling out of the stone wails.

Their unseen pursuer moved ever closer, but it didn’t seem as if it had taken real notice of them, Kaz began to wonder if the thing was deaf. Even he would have known by now there were some intruders.

Sardal paused at one point, looking back in the direction they had come from. The footfalls of the creature behind them had finally faded to nothing. Kaz thought the elf looked rather pale.

“What’s wrong?” the minotaur asked.

“I scarcely can believe it, but I think I have been leading us in circles.”

A shriek caught them both by surprise. Something huge, furry, and two-legged threw itself on Sardal, who went down with a muffled cry. Kaz readied a strike at the rampaging attacker, but there was too much risk of hitting the elf instead. Abandoning his battle-axe, the minotaur took hold of the creature from the back and tried to pull it off the elf.

They struggled at a stalemate for several seconds. Then the head of the creature slowly bent back as Kaz pulled at it. He slipped one arm around its neck, further strengthening his hold. The head swiveled to look at him, and the minotaur caught a glimpse of the only face he had ever seen that would make an ogre or a goblin look handsome by comparison – not to mention the face of the biggest vermin he could possibly imagine.

The ratman released its hold on Sardal and twisted around, trying to get its sharp teeth and claws on the minotaur’s bare skin. Kaz would have none of that, however. Strong though it was, the monstrosity was at a disadvantageous angle, and Kaz slowly tightened his grip on his adversary’s larynx. Jaws snapped a few inches from his face and claws scratched his chest and arms. He refused to budge.

With a gurgle, the creature suddenly convulsed in his arms and went limp. Kaz saw blood running down its back. Sardal had stabbed it from behind.

“I would recommend haste, minotaur. I sincerely doubt that this poor misfit is alone.”

Kaz found himself scanning each dark corner thoroughly, as if ratmen were about to come leaping out of every corner now. “Agreed. I just have to retrieve my —”

After a moment of waiting for Kaz to finish his sentence, Sardal finally asked, “Your what?”

The minotaur did not reply at first, instead gazing around the hallway. In frustration, he kicked the dead ratman.

Sardal watched him impatiently. “Is there something amiss?”

“Honor’s Face! I can’t find the battle-axe you gave me!”

“Perhaps it was thrown during battle. …”

“I put it down here.” Kaz pointed at a spot no more than a couple yards from the site of the struggle. “I was afraid I might chop your head off instead of his.”

“Then it is lost, minotaur, and we had best depart before those who took it return. They might be some of his brethren.” The elf indicated the corpse and shivered slightly. There was something disgusting about such a creature. He doubted whether the beast had been born like that. More likely, it was something that Argaen had stolen from some Black Robe. Sardal hoped it had never been human.

“Let me try something first.” Kaz, now smiling, closed his eyes. Whoever had stolen his battle-axe was in for a surprise. How could they know that he could summon it back to him? He pictured the weapon, the mirrorlike axe head gleaming, and called it to him as he had done before.

“What is it you are doing?” Sardal asked, his tone hinting of annoyance.

Kaz opened his eyes and stared at his hands – an empty pair of hands. “It’s not here!”

The elf looked at him worriedly.

“The axe! It comes to me when I call it, when we’re separated!”

“It does?”

Leaning toward the elf, Kaz looked into his eyes. “You didn’t know that?”

“No … but it might explain things a bit. I always thought there was some secret about that axe. The dwarf would never explain. Said I should just keep it ready. He wanted it kept away from those who would misuse it, but he saw that someone would eventually have need of it. I think he was almost as confused as I am now. It is quite possible that Reorx worked through him. I often wondered about that. The battle-axe sounds like a product of his mischievous mind. Anyone who would forge a thing like the Graystone of Gargath …”

Kaz was completely ignoring the elf. He stared grimly at his empty hands. With the battle-axe, he had stood some chance, however little, against Argaen and Dracos. He had even come to believe that the twibil was the key to destroying the emerald sphere – didn’t Magius’s wizard’s staff shatter it the last time?

“We have to move on,” Sardal was concluding, “with or without your axe.”

The minotaur nodded. “We must be on guard for traps.”

“Those are aptly timed words, minotaur! They will make an appropriate epitaph for you!”

Argaen Ravenshadow was suddenly there before them, his left hand stretched back as he prepared to hurl something at the two stunned figures.

*

Only moments before, Delbin had watched wide-eyed as the dark elf, face alight with obsession, seemed about to achieve what he had failed to do before. Ravenshadow had one arm raised high and the other pointed toward the emerald sphere. His outstretched hand barely skimmed the surface of the artifact. The elf’s body trembled.

Above the sphere, the misty form of Galan Dracos seemed to intensify. Delbin got the odd impression that the wraith was waiting for something, something that had as yet not manifested itself. The form shifted and twitched in what the kender guessed was growing impatience.

Suddenly the phantom straightened, solidifying to the point where its features became truly distinct. The almost reptilian visage twisted into a look of savage madness. Dead eyes stared off into space, and a soundless cry issued from the specter’s lips. At the same time, Argaen Ravenshadow fell back from the crystalline sphere with a scream of both pain and astonishment.

“Free! The minotaur free! And Sardal here as well!” the dark elf snarled at the air. His words made only partial sense to the eavesdropping kender. Ravenshadow locked eyes with the ghostly Dracos. “Show me where they are!”

The wraith faded, turning almost nonexistent. Some silent communication passed between mage and elf. Ravenshadow nodded, then suddenly vanished. One second he was there, reaching into his robe pockets, and the next second he had disappeared. There was no puff of smoke, like the magic of illusionists. Ravenshadow simply ceased to be there.

The kender marveled at this for quite some time before realizing that this was his chance to do something – but what? Galan Dracos no longer floated half-seen above the emerald sphere, either having decided to follow the elf or to return to some otherworldly domain. Either way, it meant that Delbin was completely alone. His only excuse for not attempting something was his own bewilderment. Perhaps if he climbed down and got a better view of the place, he might be able to think of something.

Delbin waited three or four dozen breaths before he decided it was safe to climb out of his hiding place. No human could have fit into the space he had watched from. With ease, he stretched out, got a hold on the wall beneath him, and scurried down like a spider, jumping the last three feet. Where a human would have made noise, he landed as silently as an autumn leaf falling from a tree. Delbin turned around. There were all sorts of neat things that he would have been eager to look over if the situation had been different, but concern for Kaz was paramount.

His eyes focused on the scarred surface of the sphere. Were there eyes there looking back at him? Delbin waited, but no figment of Galan Dracos rose to crush him. It was only a trick of his own mind. During their months together, Kaz had more than once chided the kender for letting his overactive imagination get the best of him. Delbin had never been able to make him understand that an overactive imagination was a normal kender trait.

His eyes trailed back to the emerald sphere. It was the cause of everything, he decided suddenly. Argaen had used it to drive the knights mad – or had the emerald sphere used the elf? Delbin shook his head. That didn’t matter. He knew only that Argaen was planning to use it again, and that Kaz thought a lot more people would get hurt if that happened.

It was what Delbin had to deal with. If he could destroy it – the sphere was too large to fit into his pouch, so he couldn’t just wander off with it – then everything would be wonderful again. People would be happy once more, which was the proper way to be.

How to shatter it, though, was the question. Delbin looked around the room. There were lots of shelves and tables with all sorts of interesting stuff on them. He looked at the spellbooks that Ravenshadow had shoved aside on one table, massive tomes, possibly centuries old. They looked pretty heavy. Maybe one of them would do the trick. There was also the hourglass.

While the kender pondered what would work best, a mist slowly rose from the emerald sphere.

“Why … not … try … the … battle-axe?” a voice like a drawn-out breath whispered mockingly in his ear.

The battle-axe – Kaz’s battle-axe, he realized – was suddenly there next to the table. Delbin caught only a glimpse of the weapon, for he was already turning toward the origin of the voice.

The wraith that was Galan Dracos looked down at him with eyes that made the kender shiver and turn away.

“There is … nowhere … to go … and I have need … of you!”

An invisible hand took hold of Delbin and began to drag him back toward the emerald sphere. He struggled in vain.

“No,” continued Dracos. “I think … I need … you … a little more … pliable.”

A great shock surged through every inch of Delbin’s body and he slumped, but his body was moved by a force other than its own ever nearer to the sphere and its creator.

“Soon … I will be … alive again,” the wraith said to the limp form, “and my mistress … my forgiving … mistress … will at last … rule Krynn!”

Chapter 22

Several dozen tiny black objects went flying toward Kaz and Sardal.

Even as Kaz realized that he was going to take the brunt of the magic thief’s attack, the projectiles faded harmlessly less than two feet from his face.

“You have become what you always thought of our race, Argaen! Much too predictable. Is that the only spell you can perform consistently? Creating those little baubles is a toddler’s trick!”

As Sardal spoke, Kaz noticed a smile creeping onto Ravenshadow’s visage.

The ceiling above the minotaur and his companion collapsed.

Sardal raised his hands in defense, but he was too slow to effectively protect them both. To Kaz’s horror, the elf’s hurried spell stabilized the ceiling above the minotaur, but not above Sardal himself. Great chunks of cut stone rained down upon the elf. Kaz could see that some of the stones were glancing off harmlessly, but enough were still hitting his companion, who had saved his life at least twice now.

All the while, Argaen Ravenshadow laughed insanely. Sardal had underestimated the dark elf. He had always been a magic thief, with little power to call his own. That had changed now, and it looked as if his old friend had become Argaen’s first victim.

Snarling in anger, Kaz turned his gaze on Ravenshadow and charged him. He never made it. Argaen stopped laughing and stared down at the floor before the minotaur’s feet. A gap began to spread across the floor. Kaz leaped over the treacherous chasm, fully intending to land on his adversary.

Stone claws sprouting from both walls caught both his legs and one arm. The sudden stop nearly wrenched one leg out of its socket. Kaz bit back a bitter, painful scream.

Argaen Ravenshadow had decoyed him.

Like a child with a new toy, the dark elf was experimenting with his newfound powers. He twirled one hand before Kaz, remaining just out of reach of the minotaur. Tiny winged serpents fluttered out of the circle he sketched in the air, flitting around Kaz’s face. With his free hand, Kaz tried to swat them away. He was bitten several times in the process and succeeded only in crushing one. They were astonishingly quick, like hummingbirds.

After a minute or two, Ravenshadow tired of this and waved his hand. The winged serpents faded away.

“Once I would have only been able to dream of doing something so extraordinary. My masters said I lacked the aptitude. What they inferred was that there was weakness in my bloodline, that perhaps one of my progenitors had been a human.”

Kaz, who understood what elves could be like, knew what sort of life Argaen must have had. Pure bloodlines were more important to them than to even the Knights of Solamnia.

“Being part human doesn’t necessarily weaken the blood. I’ve met many powerful human sorcerers.”

That produced a smile – a chilling one, but a smile nonetheless. “That is what I believed as well. The rumor was never confirmed, but I chose to study humans anyway and discovered within them a vitality that the elven race lacks.”

“You chose to admire … the wrong aspects of humanity, Argaen,” a familiar voice called out from behind Kaz.

“You still live, Sardal?” the magic thief commented blandly. He took a step closer to Kaz, but his eyes were on the elf behind the minotaur. Kaz eyed the distance separating him from the dark elf. Another two steps and Ravenshadow would be within his reach.

“You still live, Sardal,” Argaen repeated in that same bland tone, “but not for long.”

“More true than … you think, friend.”

Argaen started to take a step forward, but froze in midstep and looked the minotaur square in the eye. Kaz found himself suddenly swung toward one of the walls, one leg temporarily loose. He was slapped against the wall with bone-jarring force. While the minotaur fought to stabilize himself, Ravenshadow walked past him toward the other elf.

“You are dying, aren’t you?” he said at last, his tone odd. Kaz thought he almost detected a slight trace of guilt in the magic thief’s voice.

Ravenshadow stood over Sardal, who lay pinned under several large portions of the ceiling. A gaping hole above indicated just how much stone – more than enough to crush him to pulp – had actually fallen on the elf. Only quick thinking on Sardal’s part had prevented that, but one especially large chunk of stone had slammed into Sardal’s rib cage. It was a wonder he could speak, let alone breathe.

“Argaen … it is still … not too late! No one is … safe around … the forces that Dracos … sought to tap! Even the Dragonqueen … was hesitant!”

“You think that I cannot control such power?” All guilt was gone from the renegade’s voice. He spat down on the dying figure at his feet. “Even you! Elderly fools! I know more about the workings of magic than all of them combined, including you! While they have been content to play with their powers, I have studied and learned – and now I have access to more power than any of you can imagine!”

“All that power … requires skill.” It was obvious now that Sardal was struggling to stay alive. “You have … have …” He could not finish the sentence.

“Nonsense. I have studied everything I could get my hands on. I know what to do. It is only a matter of proportion.”

“Argaen …” Sardal gasped, his eyes staring.

It took some time before either the dark elf or Kaz realized that Sardal Crystalthorn was dead. The eyes of the battered elf still stared. Ravenshadow muttered something under his breath and bent down beside the body, obscuring it from the minotaur’s eyesight. When he rose and stepped away, Kaz saw that Sardal was no longer there!

The minotaur struggled against the magical hands that held him fast. “What’ve you done with his body? Saving it for another one of your spells?”

The dark elf turned around and gave him a stony stare. “Sardal Crystalthorn will have a proper burial. We might have been adversaries in the end, but I will honor him still.”

Kaz was tempted to say something about his captor’s twisted code of honor, but held back when he looked closer at Ravenshadow’s face. Killing Sardal had taken more out of the dark elf than Argaen might admit.

“At one time, I meant to share what I found with him,” Argaen said quietly. He seemed only marginally aware of the presence of the minotaur. “Sardal was the only one who really tried to help me. I thought he would understand at first.” Ravenshadow looked up at his captive, and his face was abruptly bland once more. “That is neither here nor there, however. Time is extremely precious now, and I cannot afford to deal with you properly. I underestimated your amazing strength, Kaz – my experience with your race is very limited. As it stands, I think I must ask you to accompany me. An old friend has been dying to see you.” The attempt at sardonic humor sounded flat, even to the dark elf. He turned, glanced at the pile of rubble that had killed Sardal, and then stared at the hole in the ceiling.

Without a word and barely a thought, Argaen Ravenshadow gestured toward Kaz.

The minotaur found himself lifted toward the stone ceiling with frightful speed. Just before the tip of his horns hit the ceiling, the ceiling opened. The opening didn’t appear to be like a trapdoor, but rather like a mouth. As he was pushed through to the next floor, Kaz couldn’t help but imagine that he was about to be eaten. The feeling was enhanced by the total darkness into which he was thrust. Something caught him around the waist and legs, and he had a nightmarish thought that these were teeth. The mouth closed, but another one opened above him. Kaz saw that what held him were more stone hands.

He was being passed up through the levels of the keep like some unwanted trinket. Kaz was passed through four more levels, each time with the same horrifying rush to the ceiling.

Eventually Kaz’s journey came to a halt. His relief at having to face no more oncoming ceilings quickly died when he realized where he was. He was now a prisoner in the chamber of the emerald sphere.

“Here he is, wraith!” shouted Argaen Ravenshadow, whom Kaz had not seen materialize in the chamber. He was simply there, next to the minotaur, calling out to the creator of the artifact. “Shall I allow him a quick death? I know how much that would madden you!”

The emerald sphere flared violently. Ravenshadow laughed mockingly. “You cannot harm me, even though I know you would like to try! I have a piece of you, so to speak!”

While Kaz watched, puzzled, the dark elf shoved a hand into one of his robe pockets and removed a curved object. In the odd light of the room, it glinted a brilliant green … an emerald green. Kaz knew what it was instantly.

Argaen had a chunk of the emerald sphere.

He doubted that the elf could have taken the piece from Galan Dracos directly, and that could only mean that the magic thief had, at some point, scoured the ruins of the renegade mage’s stronghold up in the mountains between Hylo and Solamnia. Kaz knew that the knights had not found all of the shattered remnants of the sphere, even with the aid of sorcerers and clerics. It was just too impossible a task. Argaen must have been lucky enough to locate this particular piece.

“To think” — Ravenshadow turned to his prisoner and smiled briefly — “that I originally carried this as some sort of good-luck charm. How true that turned out to be! While I hold this, minotaur, I am shielded from him!”

Shoving the shard back into his pocket, the dark elf stalked up to the emerald sphere. As he neared it, mist began to rise above it, slowly congealing into the vague form of Galan Dracos. The wraith looked from Argaen to Kaz, silent all the while.

It was Ravenshadow who finally spoke. “He is yours! The companion, the friend, of your enemy! The closest you will come to revenge against the Solamnic Knight! Whatever you wish to do with him is up to you, but our bargain stands! First you will show me how to bind the sphere to my will!”

“Come … then.” The voice made the minotaur’s hair stand on end. That voice had haunted his dreams. This was no longer a creature strictly human. When Galan Dracos spoke, his voice was like the wind, seemingly drifting toward the listeners from all around.

The elf took another step toward his prize.

“No! I won’t let you do it!” A figure leaped from one of the shadowy corners nearby and landed on Argaen. Kaz struggled, feeling the stone hands loosen as Argaen’s concentration broke under the surprising assault. First the minotaur’s arms, and then his legs, were free. He started toward the two fighters. The newcomer was Delbin, and Kaz knew that, against Ravenshadow, the kender stood little chance.

No sooner did he think that than the dark elf managed to pull Delbin from him and toss him aside like a rag doll. Somehow Delbin landed on his feet, but that was the only good fortune they had, for immediately Ravenshadow whirled on both of them.

All strength fled from the minotaur’s massive frame, and he collapsed without taking another step. Frantically Kaz tried to rise, but it proved too much effort. Oddly, he felt as alert as before. It was only his body that lacked all strength. Delbin was likewise hampered.

Argaen looked them over coldly, then whirled back to face the emerald sphere. “How did that kender get in here?”

“I … was not … expecting … a kender. Neither apparently … were you.” Dracos sounded annoyed with both Ravenshadow and himself.

Glancing back at the hourglass on the table, the dark elf snarled, “Time is running out! Tell me what I must do, and this time nothing must go wrong!”

“You … will not … be disappointed.”

Kaz blinked, the only physical act he was still capable of. Dracos seemed anxious … very anxious.

Raising his hands high in the air, Ravenshadow stared at the emerald sphere. It started to pulsate, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the seconds went by. The elf became enraptured by his work. Slowly Galan Dracos began to dissipate.

Kaz had failed. There was no denying it. He could only watch helplessly as the emerald sphere grew brighter and brighter – so bright, in fact, that the minotaur had to shut his eyes. Thus it was that he did not see exactly what happened next.

In the last seconds, Argaen Ravenshadow faltered. The burning brilliance of the artifact did not bother his eyes, but for some reason he began to blink uncontrollably, regardless.

Outside, Nuitari, the black moon, had only just eclipsed Solinari.

A ghostly laugh reverberated throughout the chamber. The misty form of Galan Dracos no longer hung above the sphere.

With a roar of agony, the dark elf collapsed against the crystalline artifact. The glare died, and Kaz felt life returning to his limbs, all too slowly. Somewhere Delbin groaned.

Ravenshadow pulled away from his prize and looked up to the heavens with a face contorted by numerous vying emotions. He laughed, but that laugh held both pleasure and sorrow. That laugh also held insanity.

His eyes were blood-red.

“I told you, elf, that only through you could I live again!”

The voice was that of Argaen Ravenshadow, but Kaz knew that the eyes, the mind, belonged to Galan Dracos.

This was what the wraith had been waiting for. This was why Dracos had needed the dark elf. The renegade mage had been unable to create more than an insubstantial form for himself, a form ever tied to the emerald sphere.

Argaen, however, had boasted that he was protected against the specter’s power thanks to the shard he carried. Kaz believed him, for he doubted that Dracos would have tolerated the magic thief all along if he had had the power to take over his body. What had happened to change things? Ravenshadow had put the shard into his robe pocket; had it slipped out somehow during the struggle with Delbin?

That was it, of course. Galan Dracos had been able to manipulate Argaen toward this moment and then let the kender do his bidding.

Kaz found that he could now raise himself to a sitting position. Dracos, enthralled by the success of his plot, was laughing and laughing. He clutched his newfound body tightly.

“Mistress, mistress, I thank you for your benevolence and this second chance!” roared Galan Dracos.

The minotaur shivered. There was no question as to who the sorcerer’s mistress was. Kaz was almost to his feet when the mage remembered him and turned.

“Kaz! Minotaur, I hope you did not think I was going to neglect you!”

“The thought had crossed my mind. Feel free to, human.”

Dracos laughed again. That laugh was getting on Kaz’s nerves. “I hope you appreciate how precious these last few moments of your life are; I can promise you, from personal experience, that death is not always a relief!”

The minotaur straightened. If the reborn mage was going to kill him, Kaz would die with honor and dignity. “So I gathered. You didn’t escape the Dragonqueen after all.”

“Not quite. I was trapped in my own creation, but the claws of my mistress reach very far. Though she could not remove me from my selfmade prison, she spoke to me. I still could aid her with her conquest of Krynn, even after her defeat and temporary exile by your belated comrade.”

“Temporary?”

“Temporary.” Galan Dracos smiled through Ravenshadow’s visage. More and more, the elf’s body seemed gaunt, and the skin, though it might only have been the minotaur’s imagination, appeared a bit scaly. “Tonight, Kaz, you will watch the world welcome Takhisis back to Krynn! Tonight!” He laughed again in that same mocking tone.

The laugh broke off in midstream as two things happened simultaneously. The first was the hourglass, which, without warning, exploded, sending glass shards and bits of sand flying about the room. The other was what at first seemed to be an attack of some illness so virulent that all of a sudden Dracos pitched forward and fell to one knee, screaming.

“Cease … your … struggling! This is … my body now!”

Kaz scanned the room hurriedly, seeking something he could use against Dracos, or Ravenshadow, or whoever was controlling the body.

“Kaz!” Delbin rushed to his side.

“Get out of here, Delbin! Go and find the others! I’ve got to stop him if I can!”

“He’s got your battle-axe, Kaz! I saw it! That one called Dracos has it, only it’s invisible now, so you can’t see it —”

“Where? Just point!”

“I don’t know. He hid it!”

Eyeing the agonizing figure of the elf, Kaz held his breath and concentrated on the axe. Maybe, just maybe, with both Dracos and Ravenshadow fighting for control of the body, the spell on the battle-axe would be weakening. If so …

Delbin whistled. “How’d you do that? Can you do it again? That’s a neat trick!”

As Kaz gazed down at the dwarven axe, new sounds reached the minotaur’s ears. The sounds of battle had returned. The barrier that Ravenshadow had formed with the guidance of Dracos was no more.

*

Thrusting a sword through an overanxious opponent, Darius looked up and saw a strange dull haze surround the keep. At first he thought it was some new addition to the spell that Argaen Ravenshadow had evidently cast, but then he spotted several figures in the distance. At least three of them had their arms raised and were staring intently at the keep.

Another man came at him with an axe, and he put up his sword to block the blow as best he could. Something bright flashed in his adversary’s eyes, and the man faltered.

“Do something!” Tesela shouted from behind him.

Darius realized that she had saved his life. While his opponent tried to move back out of range until his eyes cleared, the knight urged his mount forward, reached under the other’s frantic swings, and ran the man through at the neck.

“Darius! Look at the keep!”

He did – and covered his eyes as the spell of the other mages reacted with the barrier spell and the entire region was lit up brightly.

When he dared look again, the barrier was gone. The keep was open to attack.

“Stay close to me!” he shouted at Tesela. “This is our chance to rescue Kaz!”

With renewed morale, the knights surged forward.

*

“You have … your god-spawned battle-axe … again! No matter! That will not … help you now!”

Dracos had recovered somewhat, and now pointed a finger at his adversary. Kaz was thrown back, but he managed to keep a grip on his weapon. He landed on a table, crushing several tomes and breaking the table itself in two. The minotaur was only slightly stunned; he had suffered worse blows in tavern brawls with drunken, hateful humans.

Dracos swore bitterly and swerved toward the emerald sphere.

Kaz looked at his battle-axe, momentarily debating whether to throw it or not. He might succeed in striking the sphere, but there was no guarantee that it would shatter.

Galan Dracos made it to the artifact, but he paused there, oddly indecisive. He seemed to be of two minds, and Kaz sourly reminded himself that he was indeed of two minds. What Argaen Ravenshadow lacked in sorcerous ability, he more than made up for in willpower, and he was not about to surrender his existence to Dracos. Ravenshadow was an elf, and he had centuries of training behind him, something the human mage had evidently not taken into account.

Kaz took one look at the sphere and then at the struggling sorcerer. The minotaur hefted his battle-axe. Perhaps he could get two targets with one blow.

The doorways were suddenly brimming with onrushing soldiers.

Cursing, Kaz turned to meet them. He should have realized that it was only a matter of time before guards were summoned to investigate the commotion.

The first man came at him, a spear thrust barely missing Kaz’s shoulder. This man, too, underestimated the reach of the minotaur, and Kaz brought the axe around, ripping a great gap in the human’s chest. The man tumbled to the floor as two others moved closer. They were armed with longswords. Behind them, a third man, clad in the dark armor of one of the Black Guard, saw the crazed mage and shouted Dracos’s name.

Another guard went down under the minotaur’s onslaught, only now two more joined in. Against four, Kaz was hard pressed. These were not goblins; these were veteran warriors.

Kaz couldn’t see what was happening, but the guardsman who had called out the mage’s name now gave a shout and ran toward his master, sword at the ready. That relieved the minotaur of one opponent, but the other three still kept him at bay.

“Give me that, you little vermin!” a voice shouted from the other part of the room. Kaz could spare no time to glance back, but he could think of only one person the guardsman could be shouting at. In his present danger, he had forgotten that Delbin was still in the chamber. The kender was quick and armed with both a knife and a sling, but Kaz thought less of Delbin’s chances than he did of his own.

“Stop him!” Ravenshadow – Dracos, Kaz corrected himself – shouted.

The minotaur had no time to wonder what his companion was doing, for in the next instant, a huge form broke through the roof, sending massive sections of stone tumbling down on everyone. A guard in the corridor outside screamed as he was crushed by the stone. Kaz and his opponents leaped away from one another as a particularly large chunk fell between them, collapsing the floor and falling through to the next level.

Above him, the stone dragon opened its mouth in a silent roar.

One of the guards sought to take advantage of the moment and jumped across the gap. Kaz turned and caught him as he was landing. Before the man could secure his footing, Kaz shoved him backward with the top of his battle-axe. Cursing, the guard fell into the hole.

Temporarily free, Kaz located Delbin. The kender was backed into a corner by the ebony-armored guardsman. In Delbin’s hands was a barely visible item, Ravenshadow’s shard. Off to one side and still near the emerald sphere, the two minds within the dark elf’s body continued their struggle. Occasionally words would bubble forth.

The stone dragon finally worked its way into the chamber, leaving a gaping hole in its wake, and proceeded to go wild. The one opponent still left to the minotaur screamed as a massive paw crushed him into the floor. The beast’s tail swished back and forth madly. Whichever of the battling mages had summoned the beast barely controlled it now; it was possible that no one really did anymore.

That left fighting it up to Kaz – and Delbin.

The kender cried out. Kaz saw the guardsman strike the small figure down, but the dragon chose that moment to swipe at him with a huge rocky paw. The minotaur was buffeted and fell to one knee. The battle-axe almost slipped from his grip.

Rage washed over Kaz. He saw the black figure lean over the still form of the kender, take the shard, and give it quickly to Dracos-Ravenshadow. He saw the elven body straighten and knew that, with that shard, one of them had finally triumphed.

The stone dragon swiped at Kaz again, and this time the minotaur, still on one knee, defended himself with the dwarven axe.

Honor’s Face cleaved through half the paw without even slowing.

Kaz gaped, momentarily at a loss. The unliving leviathan reared back and mouthed a silent roar of anguish. It could not perish, not in the sense that a living creature could, but even this creature had a sense of self-preservation.

Small wonder, then, that the beast feared the axe. If it were used properly, Kaz could fight the stone dragon. He should have realized before, especially after his first attempt at chopping his chains off. He remembered how easily the axe had cut into the wall.

The massive creature stumbled backward, in the process creating more destruction. What remained of the ceiling was weakened even further. The wings of the beast flapped madly as it tried to rise from the chamber. One lucky blow caught the guardsman who had struck down Delbin. The hapless warrior went flying against – nearly through – one of the far walls, and Kaz knew he was dead.

“Kill him! I command you!” Crouched over the emerald sphere like a protective mother, Dracos-Ravenshadow screamed at the stone leviathan. Kaz could see that he was slowly accumulating power with the aid of the magical device.

Reluctant but unable to defy the command, the false dragon snapped at the valiant figure before it. Kaz held his ground and defended himself again, this time swinging the axe in a downward arc. The beast tried to halt the descent of its massive head, but its momentum worked against it. Kaz struck it squarely on the muzzle, the axe not stopping until it had split both the upper and lower portion of the jaws in two. A fault, beginning at the cut, now ran back through much of the creature’s head. The stone dragon staggered drunkenly. Its movements became stiffer, and Kaz realized that the magic was weakening.

Encouraged, Kaz made a move toward the robed figure, his true adversary, regardless of whether the human or magic thief now inhabited that mortal shell.

As Kaz moved, an entire section of the floor gave way. Into the chamber beneath went one of the dead guards, several tons of stone, a table and the artifacts spread on top of it – and Honor’s Face. Kaz himself barely succeeded in catching hold of what remained of the floor. With a tremendous effort, he tried to pull himself up.

“I wish I could take the time to kill you slowly,” someone with Ravenshadow’s voice uttered madly, “but I fear time is precious right now.”

The floor crumbled a bit more, and Kaz frantically changed his hold. The stone dragon loomed over him.

Dangling by one hand, he looked down at the jagged rubble below, knowing that the fall would surely kill him. His eyes darted to the beast above him and at the robed form stepping around the emerald sphere. His eyes burned green.

“I have the power now to form yet another shield. By the time they break that one, I will have the strength to deal with them permanently! You can die knowing that you have failed! I’m only sorry that I will not be able to witness your death!”

To the stone dragon, Dracos-Ravenshadow shouted, “For the last time, kill him and be done!”

The broken but still deadly jaws of the stone dragon opened wide and the beast lunged. As its head came down, Kaz used every bit of his will to summon Honor’s Face.

Instantly the axe was in his hand. Kaz looked up at onrushing death and muttered, “Paladine, guide my hand, or we’re both in for it!”

It may be that Paladine did guide his hand. It may have just been the desperate strength of the minotaur, who knew that this was the end, one way or another. It may have been pure luck.

His swing was timed perfectly; it caught the stone leviathan directly in the head near the fault. The battle-axe sank deep into hard rock, and Kaz was nearly flung across the room as the huge beast shook prodigiously. The minotaur landed soundly on the rubble-strewn floor, screaming as his left arm and leg were twisted grotesquely beneath him.

The axe was wedged in the stone dragon’s head, which was now nearly split in two. The leviathan made one feeble attempt to knock the weapon free, but its movements were jerky. The spell could no longer hold together. As Kaz watched through dazed eyes, the stone dragon stiffened completely, teetered momentarily, and then fell over.

If there had been any poetic justice, Kaz decided, Dracos-Ravenshadow would have turned at that very moment and seen the portent of his doom. His eyes would have widened, and he would have had time only to mouth a scream.

Instead, the dragon toppled over onto both mage and sphere. The robed figure never saw death coming.

In the end, Kaz could still not say who it was he had fought – Dracos, Ravenshadow, or some unholy combination of the two. What mattered was that the unholy threat was dead. Kaz blinked his vision clear and looked again. A single twisted arm was all that remained visible of his enemy. He smiled.

Oceans of relief washed over him, and in their wake came the blissful nothingness of unconsciousness.

Chapter 23

At times his life seemed little more than collapsing and waking, and never more so than now. Kaz had visions of elegant, somber-looking elves surrounding his body. He dreamed of being carried through the mountains by a huge furred creature that might have been Greymir. Bennett and Darius were standing near him while Tesela prayed for his recovery. He, in turn, insisted they find Delbin, who, Kaz thought, might be dead. Each vision was punctuated by timeless intervals of darkness in which the minotaur heard voices, some real, some not. Briefly he dreamed of the overwhelming presence of the Dragonqueen.

The Dragonqueen’s presence faded abruptly as another voice overwhelmed it. Kaz’s confused mind knew that it could only be Paladine, but the voice sounded very much like that of Huma. After that dream, he found he was able to sleep better.

At last voices, actual voices, brought him back to the world of the living. Kaz opened his eyes and found himself lying on a mat in a large tent, surrounded by several arguing figures.

“They have no right to him, milord!” Darius was shouting.

“It would be a stain on our honor if we did not allow them to present their cause!” Bennett replied. “Besides, it is Kaz who must decide!”

Tesela was also in the room, but at the moment, she was saying nothing. Watching the others with mild amusement was an elf. Kaz had to look hard, for the elf reminded him greatly of Sardal Crystalthorn. The newcomer noticed that the minotaur was awake and inclined his head slightly in greeting. He was one of the elves from Kaz’s memory.

The cleric turned abruptly, and her eyes grew wide as she saw that her charge was awake. She rushed over to his side and put her arms around him. “Kaz! Thank Mishakal you’re going to be all right!”

“Unnh! I’ll need your goddess’s services again if you don’t ease up!”

The two knights broke off their argument and greeted him profusely. They were acting as if he had almost died. He was about to question them when a fifth figure entered the tent.

Delbin’s face lit up, and the kender went bounding over to his friend. “Kaz! You’re alive! They said you might die because you lost so much blood, but I knew you were strong, and did you see what they did with the big green thing in the chamber? How come it didn’t shatter? I mean, Argaen shattered pretty good when the dragon fell on him, but the sphere was okay —”

“That accursed thing is still in one piece?”

The elf spoke. He stood with arms crossed and seemed to be leaning back, though there was nothing to support him. He wore a robe of white. “The abomination created by the renegade Galan Dracos has been removed from Argaen Ravenshadow’s stronghold. We cannot allow it to be returned to Vingaard, not after what happened the first time.”

“Speaking for my uncle, the Grand Master,” Bennett added, “I have agreed to turn it over to the elves. They intend to bury it in a secret place far, far below the surface of Krynn. Farther than even the dwarves would ever dare dig.”

“Why bury it? It should be destroyed!”

“We have tried.” For the first time, the elf seemed annoyed. “We have failed, though I cannot say what still holds it together now that Galan Dracos is truly dead. Should we find a way to destroy it in the future, we will do so. The emerald sphere by itself is not dangerous. It is only, as you know, a means of drawing power from other sources, especially chaos.”

“No one will ever use it again,” Bennett finished.

Kaz nodded, but he was not completely satisfied. He fervently hoped the emerald sphere would stay where the elves buried it, at least until Kaz had gone to join his ancestors.

“The enemy’s morale failed when they saw that no one defended inside the keep anymore,” Darius offered. “Many are dead or captured, and the rest are scattered loosely about the mountain chain. They will never be a coherent force again. That leaves the ogres in the north with no allies.”

“When Solamnia is stronger, we will deal with them,” Bennett commented.

Greatly relieved, Kaz turned his attention to Delbin. “What about you? I thought you were dead! I saw the guardsman strike you!”

Tesela, who moved to stand beside Darius, explained, “He only had a large bump on his head. Delbin must’ve been struck with the flat of the blade. Judging by what was going on, I’d say that his attacker didn’t have time to be bothered with killing a kender.”

“How fortunate.” Kaz patted his companion’s back. “I want to thank you for coming after me, although you shouldn’t have. It was a very brave, very heroic thing to do.”

“The kender has explained as well as possible what happened to Galan Dracos and Argaen Ravenshadow,” the unknown elf interrupted. “An astounding and horrible conclusion. Branchala be praised that you were able to bring about his – their – death before it was too late. There is much I must discuss with my people when I return.” A strained look passed across the elf’s otherwise bland features. “Tell me, minotaur. Sardal Crystalthorn … did he die well?”

“He did.”

“We have recovered the body. I shall leave you now. I know you have many pressing matters to deal with.” The elf nodded to each of them and departed without another word.

Kaz rose haltingly. “What does that mean?”

The humans hesitated, but Delbin, in a sudden reversal of mood, worriedly replied, “They’re out there, Kaz! All of them! There’s a real ugly one – I guess he must be the leader – and there’s even an ogre! You’ve got to get away before —”

From without, a deep voice bellowed, “Come out, coward! Come out and face your people! Face justice! Face honor!”

Kaz stiffened. “When did they get here?”

Bennett turned grim. “About an hour ago. They have already been to Vingaard, Kaz, and my uncle deemed their quest honorable enough to tell them where we were heading.”

“He should never have —” Tesela began, but Kaz quieted her with a wave of his hand.

“The Grand Master did what I’d do, human. I’ve run from them too long. I can’t keep doing that forever. Just once, I’d like to have a little peace and know that no one is trying to track me down.”

“If you need someone to back you up, Kaz” — Darius gripped the handle of his sword — “I owe you my life, and I consider you a friend.”

“No, this is something I’ve got to do alone. It’s a matter of honor.” Kaz looked around for the dwarven battle-axe and then ruefully looked in his left hand, where he was already holding it. The others looked at it in surprise; none of them had noticed it before.

Bennett eyed it with professional interest. “Where did you get that?”

“From a friend.” Kaz hefted the axe and took a deep breath.

“Before you step out there,” Bennett added, “I think you might like to know that they have spent much of the time arguing about you. There seems to be a difference of opinion.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The minotaur departed from the tent.

Silence reigned as Kaz stepped out of the tent into the open. Several knights paused in their duties to watch the confrontation.

About a dozen minotaurs stood before him, gathered in a half-circle. Two he recognized for certain – the brother and sister, Hecar and Helati, respectively. Kaz allowed himself a moment to admire Helati, who was easily the most attractive of the handful of females in the party, then turned to face a scarred menace who was the apparent leader.

“I am Scurn. I am leader.”

A movement by Hecar indicated a difference of opinion, but Scurn deigned not to notice it. Kaz concentrated on the disfigured minotaur who stood before him, knowing that if he was the leader, it was because he was the most powerful fighter.

Scurn seemed to require a reply.

“You know who I am.”

Scurn’s eyes burned. There would be no dealing reasonably with this one, Kaz realized sourly. The scarred minotaur could barely contain himself.

Someone moved behind the line of minotaurs. It was the ogre. Kaz tried to make out the ugly visage, but the ogre kept himself at least partly obscured.

Eyes sweeping over Kaz, Scurn said, “You are accused of murder, the murder of the ogre captain you served under. Struck down from behind during the confusion of battle, he had no chance to defend himself. Our dislike for their kind is no secret, but such an act was a dishonor to your clan and to your people, and a crime in any civilized part of the world.” The scarred minotaur gave him a nasty smile. “That murder also required the breaking of an honor-binding oath of loyalty sworn before the elders and your emperor, a terrible deed unheard of, and was compounded by your cowardice when you fled rather than face proper punishment. When your crimes became known to the elders and the emperor, a proclamation for your capture and judgment was issued, and we were sent out to bring you to justice. Will you admit your guilt? Will you save what honor you have left?”

“He deserved to die,” Kaz said quite bluntly. He was only now remembering how long-winded his people could be when speaking of matters of honor.

“You broke your oath and brought dishonor on your clan – our clan. The dishonor was greater because of who you were, a champion of the arena, one who might have brought the crown of emperor back to our clan. You ran, shaming all of our ancestors who gave their lives in combat. You did not even face your victim in fair combat, but instead slew him from behind!”

“Untrue,” Kaz replied coldly.

“You have no honor!” Scurn intoned.

“Life without honor is not worth living,” the other minotaurs chanted automatically in unison. It seemed to Kaz that some of them, however, spoke the words with little conviction.

“You are a proven coward.”

“A coward weakens the race.” This time, more than one hesitated in the recital.

Hecar threw down his axe. “This is a travesty! I will not take part in it! It would be a stain on our own honor!”

Scurn turned his murderous glare from Kaz to the other minotaur. “Know your place, Hecar!”

“I know you could easily defeat me, Scurn, but I would consider myself a coward if I did not speak the truth! You know what Kaz has done this time!”

“It changes nothing!”

Helati stepped up and joined her brother. “It means everything! I find it difficult to condemn one who has proven his courage and strength as Kaz has done! The Grand Master’s own nephew calls him one of the most honorable comrades he has fought with. I question more the myriad tangles in our code of honor that make us slave-soldiers to his kind!”

The ogre stiffened, knowing that Helati was speaking of him, but he stayed in the background nonetheless. It was surprising, Kaz thought, that his accuser was even here.

“Present deeds do not make up for past crimes, Helati! You would also do well to remember your place!” Scurn waved a huge, clawed hand, as if wiping the conversation away. “We waste enough time! Either accept your fate, Kaz, and return with us, or we will settle things now!”

“Then let’s settle it now.” Kaz threw his battle-axe to the earth. “I’ve no time to make a weapon with my own hands, as custom dictates, so I’ll make do with my hands alone.”

Kaz heard footfalls behind him and knew that the others had followed him out of the tent. The humans wouldn’t understand what was going on. Kaz had chosen to face his fate, and that meant a trial by combat, with the odds greatly slanted against him. Under other circumstances, he would have been allowed a few days to prepare himself and to fashion a weapon from the land around him; only a self-made weapon was allowed to the condemned. Although technically Kaz was not sentenced to death, the odds were so great that few facing such a trial ever survived. It was intended that way. Dying in a battle against incredible odds was one of few accepted ways for a minotaur to regain his honor in the eyes of his people.

After five years, Kaz was only now understanding the extent of his race’s madness and hypocrisy. Little good it would do him.

“He’s going to fight all of them?” Tesela asked someone unbelievingly. “He’ll be slaughtered!”

“This is minotaur law, cleric,” Bennett replied, though it was evident from his tone that he liked the situation as little as she did. “I cannot interfere. His honor is at stake.”

“His life is at stake!” she muttered, but quieted after that.

Kaz was relieved. He was afraid that someone would try to interfere. Vastly outnumbered as they were, the minotaurs would cut a bloody swath through his companions if they were forced to defend themselves. He wanted no one else to be injured, much less killed. This was his battle alone.

By rights, the minotaurs should have spread out, encircling Kaz. One at a time or in groups, they were then to attack until either he was dead or triumphant.

Scurn looked at the others in open frustration. “Take your places!”

Hecar, who had still not recovered his weapon, stepped away. “I withdraw from this group. I find the murder of which Kaz stands accused questionable despite the evidence. I came because honor was at stake, but I see nothing here to make me believe that Kaz has shamed our clan and our race. He is no coward, and after the trials he has faced – whose outcome has undoubtedly affected the future of our people as well as the lesser races – I believe he has redeemed himself, if he ever truly needed to.”

Helati joined her brother. “I will not take part in this travesty, either. Kaz broke a sacred oath of loyalty, yes, but I question whether those he swore it to were ever worthy of that oath in the first place. Honor has many faces, but I never saw one that resembled an ogre.”

With mounting rage, Scurn looked left and right as others of his companions abandoned him. Of the entire party, only two minotaurs stayed with the disfigured leader. He looked at them and roared, “Get back with the rest of them! I’ll fight him alone! You heard me!”

Hesitantly, the two stepped back. Scurn, smiling nastily, moved within an arm’s length of Kaz. The scarred minotaur was an inch or two taller than he and carried a battle-axe, a monstrous weapon far larger than Honor’s Face, a true minotaur’s axe. Still staring at Kaz, Scurn threw the axe aside.

“I’ve no need of weapons to defeat you!”

Kaz snorted in wry amusement. “This is what you want, is it?”

“Pray to the ancestors while you still have time.”

“I’ll give thanks to them that any blood they shared between our lines is so far in the past that I don’t even have to consider you one of my kin.”

Scurn bared his teeth. “Whenever you are ready …”

There was no signal to begin. The two combatants merely tensed and, in unspoken agreement, threw themselves at each other. Scurn caught hold of Kaz’s left arm with his right and tried to drive a stiff hand below Kaz’s rib cage. Kaz caught the hand just in time and forced it to one side. With his free hand, Kaz shoved his opponent back.

The two minotaurs separated. Again they came together. Kaz tried to put a foot around the back of one of Scum’s legs, but the other minotaur would have none of it. Instead of catching his opponent’s leg and tripping him backward to the ground, Kaz suddenly found himself balancing on one foot as Scurn caught the other with his hand and pulled it up. Only a quick twist by Kaz prevented him from falling, but the scarred minotaur now had an advantage in balance and took it, charging into Kaz’s side headfirst.

Kaz grunted in pain as the tip of one of Scurn’s horns caught him in his midsection. He put a restraining hand against the other’s head and kept him at bay. Blood trickled down his legs.

While Scurn sought to impale him, Kaz reached up with his other hand and chopped downward as hard as possible. His first blow hit Scurn on the head, a fairly hard spot on a minotaur. His second blow, however, landed on the softest part of the back of his opponent’s neck.

Scurn cursed and pulled himself away with amazing strength. Kaz refused to let up and charged, one hand held high in front of him. He took hold of one of Scurn’s horns while the other minotaur was still backing away, and he turned. The motion pulled his adversary forward to the ground, muzzle first.

Kaz leapt down, but Scurn was already rolling away, and all the former got for his efforts was a faceful of dirt and a sharp rattle through every bone in his body. Both minotaurs moved away, quickly rising to their feet. Scurn was breathing heavily, but not because of exhaustion. He was caught up in the feverish excitement of the fight. He was one of those who lived for battle. Kaz, an older veteran, eyed him with distaste and a little shame; he, too, had once been like the disfigured minotaur.

Again and again they struggled, neither gaining much advantage. After ten long minutes of constant engagement, both were battered and bleeding, but ready for the next round. The other minotaurs and several of the knights cheered them on.

One who did not share the mood of those around him was the ogre, Molok. In the beginning, he had watched eagerly, hoping for a quick humiliation and death for Kaz. That no longer appeared possible. Scurn might even lose, and then Kaz would see Molok and know him for who he was.

The ogre rubbed the side of his head, thinking of where Kaz had struck his brother down all those years ago. Most races believed ogres had almost as little love for one another as they did for outsiders, but such was not true. Like the minotaurs, ogres had some belief in clan, and Molok’s brother had been all he had in the way of blood family. With the dragons gone and Takhisis exiled from Krynn, it was all the ogres could do to keep from being overrun by their enemies and former slaves. They had no time for a single ogre’s vengeance. But vengeance was an ogre trait, and Molok, devious and determined even for one of his kind, at last hit upon a plan that would not only end in the death of Kaz, but also reveal the minotaur’s complete dishonor in the eyes of the minotaur race. Honor meant little to Molok, but he knew that Kaz’s people lived and died for it. To kill and shame his brother’s murderer was the best revenge he could ask. The mage he had paid to create a false truthcrystal had done his work well. The minotaurs, both condescending and ignorant concerning magic, had taken the bait.

All that work would be for naught, however, if Kaz lived.

Of course the minotaurs had expropriated the ogre’s weapons. Now there were other choices, however, for some of the horned ones, in their rebellion against Scurn, had laid aside their own weapons. Molok simply had to lay his hands on the proper one. …

As strong and skilled as Scurn was, he had not faced nearly as many challenges in his life as Kaz had. Experience finally began to show as the latter struck more and more telling blows. The scarred minotaur backed away, shaking his head, but Kaz would not let up. He caught Scurn’s arm while it was still raised in defense and twisted it inward, forcing his opponent to turn with it or have it broken. As the other minotaur turned, he came in line with Kaz’s knee.

Kaz bent his leg and swung the knee upward. He did not strike Scurn in the face, as some would have, but rather on the unprotected neck. His kneecap caught Scurn directly in the throat, and the younger minotaur choked. While his adversary fell to his knees and tried desperately to breathe, Kaz put both hands together and hit him squarely in the lower jaw. The first blow, combined with his other injuries, stunned Scurn. He sat back and tried to focus on Kaz, his breathing labored.

Everyone waited for the final blow. It was all Kaz needed to vindicate himself in the eyes of his fellows. He raised his clenched hands high … and then lowered them, unclenching them as he did.

He stared at the other minotaurs. “No more! To continue would be dishonorable. I will not strike down a defenseless opponent.”

“No!” Scurn croaked, but he could do no more than shake a fist. Kaz’s knee kick to his throat had been the deciding blow; he could barely breathe. “Kill me! I’m shamed!”

Kaz snorted in disgust. “That’s your problem.” He turned his attention back to the rest of his people. “Is there anyone else who wishes to challenge me? Have I proven myself? If so, I —”

There was a commotion to his right, and Kaz whirled to see Helati standing there, a grim but satisfied look on her face. In her hand, she held a knife. Little more than the handle was visible, for the entire length of the blade – and minotaurs use extremely long blades – was buried in the chest of the ogre, who stood gaping at Kaz with hateful but dying eyes. A short sword, hidden between the ogre’s massive arm and chest, slipped to the ground.

The ogre, gasping uselessly, collapsed.

Minotaurs and humans turned, stunned and uncomfortable. Bennett swore as Kaz had never heard him swear, surprising many. In the excitement of the ritual combat, no one had paid attention to the ogre. No one had expected a lone ogre to attempt anything, surrounded as he was by countless armed humans and more than a few minotaurs.

Helati wiped her blade off on the ogre’s corpse. “I thought he was moving around to get a better view. I didn’t think even an ogre could be so suicidal. He really wanted you dead.”

“I should have known not to give an ogre the benefit of honor,” Bennett interjected. “Their kind could never know anything but killing.”

“Less than six years ago, Bennett, you would’ve said the same thing of me.” Kaz studied the face of the ogre, still twisted in hate despite death. His eyes widened in rueful surprise. “In the case of this one, however, I think you’re justified. Their ugly faces are all pretty much the same, but I think this ogre and the one I’m supposed to have murdered are blood kin. There are clan markings that look familiar even after all this time.” He grunted ruefully. “I’d no idea that ogres had such loyalty to one another.”

“The truthcrystal —” one of the minotaurs started to mutter.

Kaz shook his head at the simpleness of a race that prides itself on its supposed superiority. “If the rest of you had seen as much sorcery as I have, you’d have long ago realized that any good mage could create one with a false image.”

No one replied, but Hecar nodded. Kaz was glad to see that there was at least one reasonable mind among them. He looked down at Scurn, who was still kneeling in the dirt. Now that he had fought Kaz and lost, he seemed not to have any purpose anymore.

“I take it I’m free to go,” Kaz finally said. No one contradicted him. Kaz looked down at Scurn one last time. “Someone see to him. He fought a good battle. His death would’ve been a waste.”

Without another word, he turned and walked back to the tent, stopping only to retrieve his battle-axe.

His friends, seeing the set expression on his face, said nothing. Even Delbin remained quiet.

Only when he was back in the tent, alone, did Kaz relax. Exhaling sharply, he threw his battle-axe on top of the mat where he had slept and, smiling tiredly, whispered to himself, “At last!”

Chapter 24

Bennett was staying in the south to coordinate things with the keeps in that general region, cleaning up what little resistance remained and resupplying Vingaard with both men and materials. He had chosen Darius as his liaison. Tesela remained with the knights as well. There were injuries to heal, she explained to Kaz, but he knew that she and Darius shared a mutual interest in one another.

Bennett wanted to provide Kaz with an escort to Vingaard Keep, where he swore that his uncle would honor the minotaur with the highest decorations an outsider could receive. Kaz thanked him, but declined that offer and others, except Bennett’s offer of strong horses for each of the minotaurs.

As for his own people, Kaz saw them off the very next morning. Scurn was in no condition to lead the party; he was one of those who had lived believing in his invincibility, and with that illusion shattered, he seemed to have nothing left. The others were surprised when Kaz refused to return with them. They had grown accustomed to thinking that the only reason he roamed throughout Ansalon was to escape his shame. Only two of them could understand his desire to travel and live among the “lesser” races.

Hecar and his sister Helati were staying behind as well. Kaz was pleased to have them, especially Helati, who attracted his eye. The smiles she returned gave him hope for the future.

At the moment, Kaz walked with Bennett toward where the other two minotaurs were preparing the mounts. Kaz and Bennett had talked much during the morning, and there was a deeper respect, a deeper friendship between the knight and the minotaur, than there had ever been before.

“Where will you go next?” Bennett asked.

“I don’t really know. I think I’ll let them decide,” Kaz replied, indicating the other two. “As long as it’s peaceful, that’s all I ask.”

Bennett smiled slightly. “You would get bored in a matter of days. You live for challenge.”

Kaz grunted. “Maybe, but not as much as I used to. I’ve had enough to last me for some time.”

Helati looked up, saw Kaz, and smiled. He could not help but smile back.

“Is she … pretty?” the knight asked quietly, almost reluctant to broach such a personal matter.

“One of the most beautiful females I’ve ever seen.”

“Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, then.”

“We’re ready,” Helati called out to them.

“Mount up. I’ll be with you in a moment.” He reached out and shook hands with Bennett. Kaz gave him a toothy smile. “May Paladine watch your backside.”

“Yours as well, Kaz.”

“Kaz! Wait up! I think I’ve got everything, but people keep asking me to return things that don’t belong to me even though I don’t know how they got into my pockets and where they —”

“Take a breath, Delbin.” The kender, leading his pony by its reins, hurried over to the others.

“You’re taking him with you?” Bennett’s expression showed relief at the prospect of the kender leaving his camp, but puzzlement that anyone would want to travel with one of Delbin’s race.

“Someone has to watch over him.” There was genuine affection for the kender in Kaz’s eyes.

“Do you think that three minotaurs are enough?” Bennett asked.

Kaz shook his head in a display of mock sorrow. “I doubt it.”

The minotaur mounted, and as he did, Bennett had a good look at the dwarven battle-axe that Kaz had hooked securely into his back harness. It seemed to glisten.

Assuring himself that the others, especially Delbin, were ready, Kaz looked down at the human one more time. His mood grew serious.

“Keep the knighthood vigilant, Bennett. Takhisis is out there, far beyond Krynn, but she has her eye on our home. Someday she might find a way to return to Krynn without the likes of demons such as Galan Dracos or fools such as Argaen Ravenshadow. That’s who we really fought – her, not a mad mage or a magic thief.”

“We have learned, Kaz. We will be more careful.”

“I hope so.” With an abrupt change of emotion, he turned with a smile to Helati and asked, “Well, where would you like to go first?”

She looked at her brother, then returned her gaze to Kaz. “You mentioned something about the icy regions to the south. …”

“South it is, then!” Kaz saluted Bennett and winked. “It should be fairly quiet down there this time of year!”

The human chuckled and watched as the minotaur led his companions away. Kaz looked back once and waved. Bennett silently wished him luck. With a kender riding alongside him, and with Kaz’s own propensity for getting into trouble, the knight was certain he would need it.

Bennett almost wished he were going along.

Land of the Minotaurs

(ca. 1010 PC)

Chapter 1

A BALANCE TO MAINTAIN

Nethosak had obviously prospered in the past few years and yet to Hecar there was a hint of something poisonous in the air, as if the grand, imperial city of his people had somehow begun to spoil at the core.

Perhaps the stories are true, then, thought the tall minotaur. Perhaps the travelers were not exaggerating after all when they said that the empire had become corrupted, though even they had been at a loss to say exactly how.

The imperial capital of the minotaur empire had not only more than recovered in the eight years since the fall of the Dark Queen, it had swelled in both grandeur and might. Even three years ago, when Hecar and his sister had last bid farewell to it, Nethosak had not looked so masterful.

Nethosak was a city of immense marble structures, great buildings whose entrances were flanked by columns carved in the shapes of triumphant minotaur warriors. Many of these were clan houses. The house of Orilg, to which Hecar belonged, was, fortunately for him, situated far on the other side of the city. The houses here were of lesser clans. Nearby were shops, trade buildings, and many smithies, for weaponry was in constant demand in an empire bent on expansion. All of the buildings appeared clean and new, though many were centuries old.

Minotaurs tall and short, dark and light, hurried along, ignoring the lone figure who stood to the side of the orderly, nearly unblemished street. The lane was covered in stone not unlike a pearly marble, so that it looked almost as though the structures around Hecar were melting into the path. Very little garbage littered the street and, even as he watched, a gully dwarf with a collar around his throat scurried to pick up what he could. Hecar’s people had finally found a use for the dirty, childlike creatures.

The watcher’s mouth curled into a sour smile. Such a wonderful folk his kind were. Three years away from them had made Hecar see the minotaurs as others did, and he was not pleased by this insight.

In the distance, other, taller buildings jutted toward the sky. The tall, wide edifice with the arched roof was the palace of the emperor. Up close, it very much resembled the clan houses, save for the great roof. Marble columns, a long series of wide steps, a few windows on the upper levels … and the same blank, colorless walls that marked nearly every building in Mithas and Kothas. Having lived in the woodlands, Hecar found his old home drab and emotionless in ways that had annoyed him only vaguely when he had resided in Nethosak.

Flanking the palace – but from a supposedly respectful distance – were two other large, even more utilitarian edifices. The rounded building was the central temple of the Holy Orders of the Stars, where the high priest of the state religion resided. Here acolytes were trained and clerics were given the word of Sargas, the Great Horned One. Humans continued to insist that the god was Sargonnas, the Dark Queen’s consort, but even Hecar could not accept that. Whether true or false, he really did not care, for he was more inclined toward the smaller, less organized belief in Kiri-Jolith, the bison-headed god of just cause. The house of Orilg was that god’s bastion, which of times meant trouble with the state priests.

On the other side was the plain, boxlike building that served as the central quarters of the Supreme Circle, the eight minotaurs who oversaw the administration of the empire. Each member of the circle claimed a great number of followers, subordinates, and personal guards. There were clans smaller than the numbers who obeyed the dictates of any one circle member. Even more important, all government workers, including the strong and ever-present State Guard, which policed not only Nethosak but the entire realm, acknowledged the superiority of the Supreme Circle. Of course, the circle and the priesthood were supposed to bow to the commands of the emperor, yet there were circumstances when both could not only bypass his authority, but dictate to him.

Overall, the system had always seemed a proper, efficient one to Hecar, until now. After hearing about the doubts and uncertainties of those who had departed the empire, he had to wonder.

A distant roar made him turn his gaze to the only structure in the distance that dwarfed even the palace.

The Great Circus.

It was as massive a colosseum as any built on the face of Ansalon, perhaps all of Krynn. Its architects had designed it with the thought that the entire minotaur race could be seated within, there to watch matters of justice and honor settled in hand-to-hand combat, as was the way of Hecar’s kind. While the population had long ago outgrown the Great Circus, it still allowed a good portion of the imperial city’s citizenry to enjoy the spectacles. There was no other building as important to minotaurs as the Great Circus, not even the palace, the central temple, or the headquarters of the Supreme Circle. The Great Circus was where the mightiest champions fought one another to prove their supremacy. It was where entire clans could be displaced from power.

It was where any minotaur who had proven himself worthy enough, who had risen in rank beyond all other champions, could challenge the present emperor and, if successful, succeed him as ruler. The imperial palace and everything within it would then belong to the victor. He or she would be the hand of the empire, guiding the race ever closer to its destiny. One day soon, so the priesthood kept proclaiming, a minotaur who would lead his people to dominate Krynn would sit upon the throne.

Hecar snorted. Of course, a challenger was just as likely to end up dead in the circus, killed by the emperor. Even when an emperor was replaced, which seemed to happen not very often these days, nothing much changed. The past few emperors, including the ones Hecar’s father could recall, seemed interchangeably alike.

By the time we’re finally ready to conquer the other races, he thought in some bitterness, the Last Day will have come and gone. We’ll be masters of nothing.

From the distant, circular edifice came another roar of approval. There was a good match going on today, for which Hecar was grateful. That meant that a great many minotaurs he had no desire to see just yet would be at the circus, cheering and betting on the possible demise of their fellows. The traveler could go about his business and, with any luck, be gone from Nethosak before nightfall. Hecar did not want to stay even one night in the imperial capital. Simply setting foot in the city after three years of self-imposed exile was enough to make him realize how little he missed the politics and folly, both often intertwined in Nethosak, and how true had been the words of his sister Helati’s mate, who had spoken to him just before his departure two weeks earlier. He had been warned that, having tasted freedom, neither he nor the other minotaurs living in the small settlement to the south would ever feel comfortable visiting the great city again. Hecar had laughed, recalling good memories, but those had paled even before the minotaur had reached the city gates.

What is it, though? Why do I feel so ill at ease?

The gully dwarf suddenly hustled to a spot just in front of him, the creature’s gaze riveted by a small piece of refuse. The squat, ugly little figure, a male, snatched it up as if it were gold, then glanced up at the looming minotaur.

“Galump make clean, Master! Galump make clean!”

There was such fear in the gully dwarf’s face that Hecar, taken aback, could think of nothing to say. Galump took the silence for approval and rushed off to snare another bit of garbage. Rather than laugh at the dwarf’s desperation, something he might well have done long ago, Hecar felt disgusted. There was something dishonorable, he believed, about mistreating such a weak and helpless race. The gully dwarves were pathetic, but did that make the minotaurs admirable simply because they could dominate the simple creatures and force them to do such menial tasks?

It’s because we’ve failed to conquer any other folk, Hecar thought. There, in the form of an ugly, weak thing with the mind of an infant, stands the sum total of our national ambition for conquest.

The gully dwarf was not even a slave actually taken in war. Galump’s people had no real home, not even much in the way of leadership or combat skills. Hecar could picture in his mind what had probably happened. Someone had likely spotted one of the tribes wandering through the hills and sent a small force to round them up with nets. Catching a gully dwarf was easier than catching a legless rabbit. They generally froze in terror at the sight of a minotaur on horseback.

It was amazing that someone had managed to teach them how to pick up trash in so careful and thorough a manner. Hecar suspected that the gully dwarf’s training had included torture of some sort.

With great effort, he tore himself from the familiar area he had so often frequented and headed deeper into the city. The streets were wide and the buildings tall, something that made him feel uncomfortable after so long in the woodlands. Hecar already found himself longing for the soft earth beneath his feet and the sweet, clean air that he had not breathed since coming within a day’s journey of the overcrowded capital. He was welcomed not only by the smell of the sea, which, as a veteran sailor, he appreciated, but also a rancid odor prevalent in most minotaur cities, and especially so here.

Hecar’s path took him closer to the docks, where the scent of the sea was stronger. The minotaur sniffed, recalling adventures from his younger days when he had sailed off on his first major expedition aboard the Gladiator. There were times he wished he had remained with the ship after his first two years, but if he had, he would have gone down with Master Ganth’s vessel during the veteran captain’s special mission for the empire. No one had seen or heard of the ship again, save for a few loose articles found by another vessel. For more reasons than one, Hecar missed Master Ganth. The captain had been a good teacher and a prime exponent of minotaur honor and strength. As a member of the same clan house as his first captain, Hecar always felt proud to recall that he had served with the stalwart minotaur.

All memory of his sailing days faded abruptly as he drank in the sight before him. It was not by chance that he had journeyed near the docks. Some of the news he and his companions had picked up from minotaurs who had recently departed Nethosak concerned a new fleet being built. What those newcomers had failed to emphasize was just how great a fleet had already been completed.

There were ships and ships and ships. All of them were obviously new, the oldest little more than three years. In all his life, Hecar could not recall so many fighting vessels docked at the capital. Nethosak had always been the busiest port in either kingdom, but it was clear that most of the vessels here were moored for some grand strategy. They were being saved for what had to be a substantial sea assault.

While the effort it must have taken the empire to build so many ships in the past few years was both astonishing and admirable, the fact that so much work had gone on since his departure disturbed Hecar. There had been some build-up of forces in the first five years after the minotaurs escaped the servitude of the Dark Lady, but the incredible rate of the last three years spoke of obsession.

It’s far too soon to be thinking of conquest, Hecar thought, shaking his head at the sight, far too soon. The empire will be heading for another downfall if this continues. “What mad fool has become emperor since I left? What’re the priesthood and the Supreme Circle doing?”

His questions had been muttered quietly. When a voice behind him responded, it took the visiting minotaur by surprise.

“You should be careful what you ask around here, Boy.”

The owner of the voice was a scarred, light brown-furred, weatherworn minotaur with only half a right arm. He carried a heavy sack in the other one and was obviously a dockworker. His snout was long and wrinkled.

“Lost the arm to a shark I killed after my ship went down, Boy,” remarked the elder, noting Hecar’s glance. “Ended up eating him instead of the other way around.” The older minotaur chuckled, then grew serious. “Talking out loud’s not good sometimes.”

“Just mouthing a few harmless thoughts, Elder.” Why was this other so concerned about what he had said?

“Suit yourself.” The other peered at him. “Been away for a while have you? Far away?”

“Far enough.”

“Come in on a ship?”

He had not, but for some reason Hecar decided to nod. “Long voyage.”

“Was it? Probably you had better luck on your voyage than I had on my last, Boy. … Which ship was that?”

“Gladiator,” Hecar immediately replied, hoping his inquisitive companion did not know that the remains of that particular ship rotted away at the bottom of the sea. He shifted his weight, adding, “I’ve business to attend to, Elder. May your ancestors guide you.”

“And may yours guide you, Boy.”

The old minotaur seemed innocent enough, but Hecar did not relax his guard. He had the distinct notion that he had been questioned for some reason. Perhaps he was just being paranoid. He had, after all, spent several days of travel worrying about the rumors and rumblings of the minotaurs who had joined the settlement.

Yet, more than ever, Hecar was certain that something was different in the empire, something that had not yet come to fruition but which held the potential for disaster.

His quickened pace brought him to his destination sooner than he expected. The dwelling was of the modest type that a minotaur who had reached a respectable status would choose. Like most minotaur dwellings, it was little more than a cube-shaped structure, two stories tall and surrounded in front by a stone wall about three feet high. A wooden plaque bore the sign of that minotaur’s clan house and his own personal marks.

Modest though it was, it was still more extravagant than the sort of dwellings lower-ranking minotaurs inhabited. Those dwellings, deeper in the core of the city and generally near the smaller arenas, were, more often than not, squat, single-room apartments of an unremarkable gray stone. They were stacked six high in some places, more than a dozen per floor, and were not as immaculate as the rest of the city. The inhabitants, usually striving to achieve better status, rarely considered those places permanent homes.

Hecar was glad that he had chosen to live in the barracks of the great clan house. In return for three years’ guard service, he had been given a clean, small abode. Granted some of his bedmates had not been the friendliest of comrades, but he still considered those years better spent than if he had been forced to abide in squalor. Of course, many minotaurs had no choice.

The marks on the wall were the same ones that he recalled from when he had last visited. Hecar was pleased that the one he sought still lived here, but oddly disappointed at the same time. Surely Jopfer could have raised his status in three years. While more studious than some minotaurs, Jopfer de-Teskos, youngest son of the master of the Teskos clan, had been a favorite of one member of the Supreme Circle. In fact, when last they had talked, Jopfer had hinted that his master intended to groom him for a position as one of his senior aides.

By this time you’d think Jopfer would have risen to be one of the Eight, Hecar thought. Certainly if he knew anyone who fit the criteria for becoming one of the eight minotaurs overseeing the administration of the empire, it was old Jopfer. Yet an aide to a member of the circle would certainly not choose to reside in a place such as this. Such status demanded something larger and more impressive, nearer his master’s quarters.

“Only one way to find out,” he grunted. Marching to the tall, wooden door, Hecar slammed his fist against it. The sound against the wood echoed loudly. Anyone within would have to acknowledge such a racket.

Yet there was no answer. Hecar slammed his fist against the door again. He waited for what he thought a reasonable time, then snorted in annoyance. Either Jopfer’s entire household had departed or everyone within was ignoring visitors. His short time in Nethosak made Hecar seriously consider the latter. Was there some reason that Jopfer would fear visitors?

“Come on, you bookworm!” he growled under his breath. “Answer!”

Still no one came. Stubborn as he was, the minotaur finally tired of waiting. If his friend was not available, then Hecar’s only recourse was to go to his own clan house. He was not certain how the clan would greet him after his and his sister’s decision to stay away, but certainly, after all this time, they could not still be angry with the pair. The others of their party who had returned to Nethosak after that idiotic chase would have explained Hecar’s and Helati’s reasons for remaining behind. All except Scurn, of course, but then he would have returned in shame. No one would have listened much to him.

The sun was already dipping downward. Hecar grimaced, realizing that if he visited the House of Orilg, he would be required to stay the night. It would be a dishonor to the clan if he appeared after an absence so long, only to leave again an hour or two later. The patriarch would certainly think ill of him, something Hecar did not desire. Orilg could not boast of an emperor on the throne in some seven generations – a point of great aggravation – yet Orilg was still one of the strongest clans. Falling out of favor with the present patriarch would have repercussions, especially where Hecar’s immediate family was concerned.

His thoughts entangled over the proper way to present himself to his lord, Hecar did not at first notice the small form darting by. Only when it collided with him did the minotaur take notice of the gully dwarf.

“Sorry, Great One! Galump is sorry!” The dwarf bowed quickly, then ran off, his litter bag falling to the ground as he rushed away in near panic.

“You! Come back here!” His cry went unheeded. Hecar watched as the gully dwarf disappeared into the shadows. He was one of the quickest of the short creatures the minotaur had ever seen.

Hecar had more important things to concern himself with than chasing a gully dwarf whose only crime was carelessness. The dwarf would likely be punished for losing his bag, and in the process littering the very streets he was supposed to clean. But despite the compassion for unfortunate creatures that Hecar had learned from his sister’s mate, the minotaur could do nothing to help save pick up the bag and place it neatly to the side.

He was just in the process of doing that when he heard the clink of metal. Tensing, Hecar stretched his hands around toward his back. Most minotaurs favored heavy battle-axes and many, including Hecar, carried them in back harnesses. All he had to do was reach a few inches more, and the axe would be in his grasp, ready to taste the blood of any adversaries.

“May Sargas watch over you, Brother,” intoned a voice.

Hecar lowered his hands as he turned. He knew the imperious tone, as did all minotaurs. A cleric of the Holy Orders of the Stars. To humans, a minotaur cleric might seem a somewhat humorous sight, for, unlike Hecar and most of his kind, who wore kilts and armor but little else, a cleric was usually clad in a solemn black robe covering him or her from foot to head. The hood and shoulders of the robe were crimson. Both colors were said to be favored by Sargas himself.

Only the cleric’s muzzle was visible, the rest of his face shadowed by the hood. His hands were clasped together and, as he walked toward Hecar, there was the faint clink of metal, indicating that under his garment the robed figure was both armed and armored.

Behind him trailed a pair of warriors with the look of the guard on their cold features. Members of the guard were generally recruited from the more fanatical warriors in the armies. This pair carried long swords as opposed to axes and looked ready to run Hecar through if he dared resist.

And what is it I’m supposed to resist? wondered the traveler. “May your ancestors guide you, Brother.”

“You have business with Jopfer de-Teskos?”

“I sought out an old friend, Cleric. He wasn’t home.”

“So I know. How do you know him, Brother?” The cleric reached up and pulled back his hood. The cleric was surprisingly gaunt for a minotaur and much younger than Hecar would have guessed. However, the chill eyes warned that it would be a mistake to cross him.

“He’s an old friend. I’ve just arrived here and thought I would visit since I was close by.”

“Did you come by ship?”

A slight sound behind him warned Hecar that the three figures were not alone. He gave no sign that he had heard the others sneaking up behind him, but shifted so as to get his hands as close to his axe as he dared without giving his movements away. “Aye, I came from a ship. Been away for a while.”

The cleric nodded, mouth set. He neither smiled nor frowned. “The Gladiator, wasn’t it?”

Hecar twitched before he could control himself. He had given the name to the old male on the dock, not long before. “Aye, Gladiator.”

The cleric nodded, closed his eyes, and a moment later uttered, “The Gladiator, lost at sea more than a decade ago. Nearly all hands lost with it.” He opened his eyes and stared without emotion at the tense Hecar. “Therefore, you could not have just arrived on it.”

Hecar said nothing. His hands were close to the handle of his axe. Any nearer and he would be committing himself to battling a cleric of high standing in the orders, not to mention several members of the guard. Yet, what could he do? He was not as clever as Helati’s mate. Not nearly as clever as Kaz.

“What is your name?”

He was still debating how he should answer when one of the warriors behind him announced, “His name’s Hecar, of the clan Orilg, Holiness. I thought I recognized him earlier.”

The voice was so familiar that Hecar dared peek over his shoulder. There were three minotaurs behind him, one with a sword and the other pair with axes. It was one of the latter who had spoken. The tall, scarred figure grinned at him.

“Your house, is it not, Captain Scurn?” the cleric asked.

“The guard is my clan now, Holiness.”

“Scurn?” When last he had seen the disfigured minotaur, Scurn had been an object of pity, defeated in combat by Kaz. The other minotaurs had been forced to lead their companion by hand from Solamnia all the way back to the empire, so broken was he by his loss. This incarnation, however, did not look at all defeated. In fact, he looked even uglier and more vicious than Hecar could ever recall.

“We are always happy to welcome a lost one back into the fold,” commented the cleric. “Come with us, Brother Hecar.”

Scurn and the other minotaurs closed in.

Hecar reached for his axe … and found that something held it firmly in its harness. The minotaur pulled harder but, despite his great strength, the axe remained stuck fast.

The gully dwarf? He was the only one who had come within touching distance of Hecar. Had he done something to the harness when they had collided?

Hecar glanced around, judged the expressions on the guards, and decided that he was surrounded and defenseless.

What, he wondered, would Kaz do under these circumstances? Of course, being far more clever, Kaz would not have made such a journey in the first place. He had warned Hecar from doing it, but the latter had been too curious and headstrong.

What would Kaz do in his position? There was really only one choice. If Scurn was the captain of this lot, going voluntarily with them did not vouchsafe Hecar’s continued well-being.

Snarling, he charged the cleric. The robed figure was surprisingly swift, so much so that he was easily able to dodge his attacker. The two guards beside the cleric moved in to seize Hecar, as did the three others. Hecar swung a fist wildly and succeeded in catching one guard on the underside of the jaw. His attacker stumbled backward, but did not fall. The other guard who had stood with the priest seized Hecar’s arm and twisted it viciously.

Roaring in pain, Hecar still managed to keep his footing. He brought one foot up and struck his adversary in the back of the leg, just below the knee joint. The guard fell to his knees, losing his grip.

“Alive!” shouted Scurn. “Alive!”

A heavy foot caught Hecar in the small of the back. He fell forward. Something hard and flat struck him on the head just behind the horns. The world spun.

“Not too hard, Captain. Save something for the circus.”

Darkness began to creep over Hecar. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it, thinking, What’s happening? What by Kiri-Jolith’s axe is responsible for this madness? I’ve done nothing!

Then he was struck hard again. Oddly, the last thing he heard was a voice, a calming voice, say, “There is a balance to maintain. I am sorry.”

Chapter 2

KAZ’S MISSION

Still no word from Hecar, Kaz thought as he gazed over the small settlement. “Small” was perhaps not the proper word anymore, for there had to be at least sixty minotaurs in the vicinity and another thirty down by the river. What had started out as a home for Helati and him, with Hecar, her brother, deciding to remain nearby, had grown into a village. Most of the newcomers had only just arrived during the past year and a half, and the population increased every couple of weeks. Word had somehow gotten back to minotaurs disenchanted with the reborn empire that a free settlement existed. If things continued at this pace, the race could soon claim three kingdoms instead of two.

And they’ll probably try to make me emperor at that point. He snorted, not so much out of the ridiculousness of the possibility but rather at the realization that he was already well on his way to becoming such a figurehead. Already the others looked to Kaz as their leader. His reputation, instead of being sullied by rebellion against his former masters, had earned him respect in the eyes of many. His past glories in the circus also lent him an air of strength, for he was the only one of his rank who had ever chosen retirement rather than demanding his right to challenge the emperor for the throne.

Kaz grunted. He knew he had to return to Helati and tell her that her brother had missed yet another rendezvous. Hecar should have returned from the capital long ago. There was no denying now that something must have happened. Paladine protect you, Hecar! Why couldn’t you listen to me? Going back to Nethosak was asking for trouble!

The tall, dark-furred minotaur started back to the dwelling he shared with his mate of two years’ standing. Perhaps it would have been better to remain in the icy south, but after the snow wraiths and dwarves of frozen Farahngrad, the warmer and quieter north had looked extremely inviting. More important, the time in the south had brought Kaz and Helati closer to one another in a shorter time than even he could have dreamt. Instead of journeying across all of Ansalon, the two had instead decided to settle in a quiet, wooded region far south of their homeland. Hecar, never one to abandon his sister, had decided to build a place there, too.

In settling down, Kaz had found a peace that had escaped him all his life. He had really known nothing but battle since he had been young enough to train, and now he realized that quiet solitude, combined with sharing that quiet with someone he loved, was preferable. He and Helati had made a home for themselves, acting in many ways more like humans than like minotaurs. Kaz saw nothing demeaning in that. Despite his race’s obvious superiority in some matters, the minotaurs truly were deficient in most important aspects of life. Humans could appreciate things that most minotaurs, not understanding, would have scoffed at. Humans were not perfect, but they were admirable in some ways.

Of course, he had met one of the greatest humans, so perhaps, Kaz thought, his opinion was biased. Huma of the Lance, the now legendary hero of the war against Takhisis, the dark goddess, had been one of the bravest, most honorable warriors Kaz had ever known. It was a friendship that should not have thrived, but it had, ending only when the young knight had died vanquishing the Dragon Queen. Kaz had been there, a part of the epic battle. He had witnessed the humanity behind the hero, and the lesson had stayed with him, influencing his own decisions and behavior. Like Huma, he had come to want only peace and a quiet life.

But that never seems to be the way. He snorted. I try to live in peace and only end up mired in one battle after another. Not that I haven’t purposely walked straight into a few.

The first newcomers arrived shortly after the trio had settled here. Once the first travelers arrived, it seemed to him as if half the minotaurs in the empire followed. Worse, they all seemed to know who he was … and had been. The past that Kaz had thought buried seemed more alive than ever.

I will not go back to Nethosak! he thought, snarling quietly. I will not go back there again!

Yet if Hecar was in danger, what else could Kaz do?

He found Helati exactly where he expected her to be, cradling the newly born twins and trying to sing them to sleep. For a minotaur, his mate’s voice was surprisingly melodious. He had thought it pleasant from the very first time he had heard it. Then, Kaz had been a prisoner of a band of minotaurs, hunters sent to bring him back on a mission of honorable purpose. The leaders of the band did not have any intention of giving him the opportunity to defend his actions, but a few had believed in him. Helati and her brother had been among those. When the matter had been settled, they remained with him. He could not have been more pleased. She was still the most beautiful female he had ever seen, and a fine companion in battle as well.

Her features were refined, gentle. Standing, she was a bit shorter than he was. Helati’s horns were about half as long as his own. None of this meant that she was weak. She had been a seasoned warrior when he first met her, and the tricks he had taught her since made her better than most larger and stronger warriors.

The twins shifted restlessly. Both the male and the female were fitful like Kaz, though in looks they favored their mother. He wondered if that would change as they grew older. He wondered if he would be around to witness the changes.

The dwelling he and Helati had built was simple, a stone-and-wood hut with three small rooms. Some of the newcomers had built larger homes, but Kaz wanted only what his family needed. He was not in competition for status. Perhaps that was why the other minotaurs looked to him for guidance. They knew he cared nothing about fighting for dominance; he intended to live simply, as he and Helati desired.

Helati looked up as he neared. His expression was all she needed to see. “You’re going, aren’t you?”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t, Helati, I know you will.”

There was no denying that. “Hecar is my brother, Kaz. By rights, I should be the one to search for him.”

“And if there was not something more important for you to deal with,” he said, indicating the two squirming bundles, “then I might let you go.” But he wouldn’t, in any case. If it weren’t for the children, Kaz still would have sought some excuse to prevent his mate from riding off to treacherous Nethosak.

She looked down at the pair. Kyris, the boy, had a broader face and tiny buds that would someday grow into horns as great in length as those of his father. His sister, Sekra, was just a little smaller and more narrow, but darker-furred. The stubs where her horns would come in were barely noticeable, as a female’s horns grew in later and to a lesser size than those of a male. Both children were, of course, perfect in the eyes of their parents.

“You could just as easily take care of them as I.” Her tone was hesitant, however, caught as she was between her care for her brother and her love for her children.

“You know they cooperate with you much more than they do with me, Helati.” She could not deny that. The infants loved their father, but their mother had what seemed a sort of magic touch. Where Kaz might take all night to coax them to sleep, Helati would need only an hour … or two. The twins shared his rebellious nature, all right. “And we can’t take them with us, now can we? Not if something’s amiss in Nethosak.”

Looking up, she locked gazes with him. “You know it might be dangerous for you to go back.”

“Go back where?” asked another voice.

A shorter, muscular minotaur with a mixture of black and brown fur and a long snout came trotting toward them. One broken horn spoke of his past in the Great Circus. Brogan never talked about his experience there, much the way Kaz never did. Brogan visited them often, possibly because he had no family in the settlement, not even distant kin.

Kaz saw no reason to hide the truth. The others would notice his absence. “I’m going back. Hecar hasn’t returned from Nethosak. I’m going to find him.”

Snorting, Brogan replied, “I’ll gather the others. We’ll be ready when you are.”

“I’m going alone.”

“Alone?” The other minotaur snorted again. His thick hands curled into fists. “Not alone! You don’t know what it’s like back there —”

“Brogan.” Kaz’s quiet tone commanded silence. “I can’t very well go riding into the imperial capital with a conspicuous force behind me. A lone rider will make less disturbance than fifty. Besides, it’s been over eight years. It’s less likely someone will recognize me. The war and the time since then have made changes.”

“We could follow you.”

“You haven’t been gone that long. People will spot you or the others more easily than they would me. Besides, I work better alone.” That was not entirely true, but other than Helati or Hecar, there was no one he would trust to follow his lead. … Well, there was one more, but “trust” was not exactly the right word where a kender was concerned. “Desperately hope” to follow his lead was more accurate. Fortunately, the kender concerned was not here.

Brogan looked unconvinced. He turned to Helati, but she looked away. Helati, more than anyone else, knew how Kaz worked best. It was not to her liking, but Helati was aware that he had a better chance of success without others to betray his presence.

“Was there something you wanted, Brogan?”

Blinking, the short minotaur nodded. “Aye, but it’ll wait. Just some of us wanting permission to put your mark on our places. I told’em to wait until we knew it was fine with you. It can wait, though.”

He turned and stalked away before Kaz could pull himself together to respond. Helati gazed up at her mate, seeing the consternation in his face.

“My mark on their homes? They’re supposed to put their clan markings there.”

“Perhaps they’ve decided they belong to a different clan now.”

Kaz was uncomfortable with the image of his name carved into the simple structures. That was reserved for the clan name, which was the way by which minotaurs asked their ancestors to watch over a new home. By putting his mark on instead, they were acknowledging him as clan leader, much the way Orilg himself had been chosen.

Clan Kaziganthi … or rather Clan Kaz … since there was a tendency to shorten the title. At one time, Kaz would have felt honored. Now he was unnerved.

“I leave before dawn, Helati. That should let me escape the others. I can’t take them with me. You know that.”

“I know.” She rose, careful not to disturb the infants, who were still wakeful. “Would you like to hold them for a while?”

Kaz nodded, taking his children in his arms. To his surprise, they nestled in close to his chest and began to drift off into slumber. It was the first time they had ever fallen asleep so smoothly. He was almost disappointed. This might be the last time he saw them before he departed.

Helati turned toward their dwelling. “I’ve got some things I want to prepare for your journey. Do you want to put the children to bed or hold them a while longer?”

“I’ll hold them until you’re ready to take them.”

She nodded, then went inside. The massive minotaur watched her disappear, then returned his gaze to the twins. At the moment, Kaz did not feel like a former champion of the circus, a veteran mariner, or a seasoned warrior. He felt like a proud father, and the feeling was a good one.

Enjoy it while you can, he suddenly reminded himself. It may be the last time you feel this way for days … or ever again.

Cradling the twins closer, Kaz looked north.

*

Dawn was still nearly two hours away when Kaz began the final preparations for departure. His great war-horse, a cherished gift from the Knights of Solamnia, was impatient to go. Kaz needed only one more item to complete his gear, something long mounted on one of the walls of his dwelling.

The battle-axe he pulled from the wall was one that had been given him by an elf named Sardal Crystalthorn, an elf who had been dead for more than three years now. Even in the dark, the long, double-edged weapon somehow gleamed, its mirror face able to catch even the slightest illumination. The unknown dwarf who had crafted it had created a masterpiece. The balance was perfect. It had saved Kaz’s life many times.

The runes on the side spelled out its name: Honor’s Face. It was a name with magical connotations, for the mirrorlike finish enabled the minotaur to see whether a person was or was not to be trusted. Those with honor reflected brightly in its finish; those who sought to betray showed no reflection at all.

There were other things Honor’s Face could do, but Kaz had no time to reflect. He gripped the axe in one hand and swung it with practiced ease into the back harness he had strapped on. It was a strange yet comfortable sensation. He had not carried the axe with him in at least three months. For chopping wood he used a more mundane household axe, not a well-honed weapon.

Kaz did not doubt that he would have reason to wield the axe on his journey.

Helati was waiting for him by the entrance. The children slept, the first time they had made it through the night without waking. Kaz wondered if that was somehow prophetic. Did they sleep unconcerned because they knew their father would return unharmed, or was it an omen of a doomed mission?

He was glad he could not ask them.

“You are ready.”

“As ready as I can be.”

They were embracing when a commotion from the darkness made them turn. Kaz had the axe out and ready without thinking. The clink of metal and the thud of hooves, accompanied by the snorting of horses, warned him that an armed party was coming.

The newcomers were shadowy forms, but it was clear that they were all minotaurs. One of the nearest rode close enough so that Kaz could make out the one broken horn.

“Brogan! Paladine’s sword! What’s the meaning of this?”

“We’re ready to go with you, Kaz.” Behind Brogan rode at least a dozen or more minotaurs. The darkness made it nigh impossible to say how many or who each of them was.

He was warmed by their loyalty and concern, but angered by their disregard for his wishes. “I told you I needed to go alone. It’ll be easier that way. A party like this will attract the notice of the guard miles before arriving at the city gates!”

“Nethosak is dangerous these days,” insisted another faceless minotaur. “More dangerous than it has ever been.”

To Kaz, who had faced fearsome dragons, rampaging soldiers, dark mages, and darker gods, Nethosak was no worse nor better than any other danger of the past. He knew it would be treacherous, but he also knew he had no right to endanger anyone’s life but his own.

He propped Honor’s Face shaft-down on the ground, giving all a good view of its mirror side. “Your loyalty and bravery are commendable,” Kaz returned, playing on those traits the minotaur race respected most. “And I am honored by your actions. But this is a thing I have to do on my own. It must be done this way, for in crowded Nethosak, stealth will serve me better than an army.” He dipped his head in gratitude. “I appreciate that you want to help, but I must reject the offer.”

Brogan was not to be put off. “Kaz —”

Straightening to his full height, Kaz growled, “That is my command, Brogan.”

The riders grew silent. Brogan finally nodded. “We will wait for you, then … but if you do not return after a reasonable time, we will come to help you.” Others nodded or grunted their agreement. The one-horned minotaur raised a hand. “Victorious journey, Kaziganthi.”

One by one, the other minotaurs followed suit until the entire band had saluted him. Kaz raised a hand in return. Then, with Brogan leading, the riders turned their mounts and rode off, heading for their dwellings.

“You realize now they won’t stop at simply putting your mark on the entrance of their dwellings, don’t you? You’ve started giving them outright commands. By doing so, you’ve acquiesced to being their leader … their clan leader.”

Kaz almost dropped the axe. “I don’t want that! I should go after them now and —”

“And do nothing.” Helati sighed. “My love, you might not want to be clan leader, but I know you too well. You won’t let others take a risk that you can take yourself. To our people, that is the sign of a true leader, not like those who rule our race now.”

“Then our race consists of a bunch of fools – with me the biggest fool of all.”

“And I am a bigger fool for loving you.” She embraced him. “I wish there were another way. I don’t want to lose both you and my brother.”

Kaz snorted, trying to sound like the reckless warrior he had once been. “You won’t lose us. I’ll bring Hecar back. He’s probably stopped to talk to every female in the kingdom, that’s all.”

Stepping away, the minotaur warrior swung the axe back into its harness. He mounted, purposely looking away from Helati as he did. The thought of leaving her was almost unbearable.

“May your father watch over you, Kaz.”

He pictured Ganth, so tall in the memory of his son. It was Ganth’s example that Kaz had followed all his life. At that moment, Kaz realized he had become more like his father since his encounter with Huma and the others. Would his father or his mother, Kyri, for whom he had named his son, have journeyed back to Nethosak on such an insane quest? Both of them had gone down with their vessel, Gladiator.

It doesn’t really matter what anyone else would do, Kaz decided. I’m the one going.

“Kaz …”

He looked down at Helati. Even in the dark, he could see the set expression on her face.

“If you don’t come back soon, I, too, will follow. Somehow I will.”

“I’ll be back.”

Turning away, he prodded the horse. The animal started off at a fast trot. He did not look back. He did not dare to do so. If he had, the minotaur was certain he would have turned around and stayed home, never leaving the solace of his mate’s side again.

Nothing else slowed him as he left the settlement. The other dwellings were dark, but Kaz knew that not only those who had tried to join him but also many who had not were peering from the shadows. He had never wanted to be a leader, not really, but he could not help feeling some pride.

Before long, there was nothing to give sign that anyone lived in the area at all. Kaz had initially chosen the location because of its remoteness. He cared little for visitors or passersby. While he had become resigned to the influx of new settlers, he was pleased that few others sojourned to this hard land. There had been the occasional trader and, once, a foolhardy band of robbers who had not understood what it meant to steal from a minotaur, but otherwise his people lived in peace. That would change someday, but hopefully not too soon.

Dawn came and went. The day was cool and a little overcast, fair traveling weather. Kaz paused only to deal with necessities, such as feeding and watering his mount. The empire city was far enough without wasting time. He prayed to Paladine and Kiri-Jolith that nothing terrible had happened to Helati’s brother. If Hecar was harmed, however, Kaz would see to it that the perpetrator regretted his act for the short time he still lived. Kaz had not become so peaceful that he was above meting out justice in time-honored minotaur fashion.

By nightfall Kaz had to admit that it might be better to bed down than continue on. It was an oddly starless evening, so dark that he could barely see even the shadow of his hand in front of his face. He found a reasonable site, two intertwined trees that would give him some concealment and allow him room to fight if the need arose, then set about taking care of the horse and building a camp.

It had been a good day’s journey. As he settled down by his small fire, Honor’s Face beside him, Kaz hoped that for the next several days he would be able to make similar progress. Near the lands of the twin kingdoms the going would be slower, but he saw no reason why the trek to that point should not proceed smoothly. The landscape consisted mainly of wooded areas until the extensive mountain range running along the upper half of the eastern edge of Ansalon. Fortunately, one could ride on the east or the west slope and avoid having to cross the heights. Only when he reached the southern borders of his people’s self-proclaimed empire would the peaks cause him some difficulty, but Kaz, like most minotaurs, knew the best paths.

Kaz only hoped Hecar was not in any immediate trouble. He stared at the fire, wondering what it would be like to return to the homeland.

When he started to doze, he could not say. It was only when he saw that the fire was about to go out that Kaz realized he had fallen asleep. His hand gripped the shaft of the axe, but there was no obvious sign of danger. Kaz snorted in annoyance at his own jumpiness and started to work on the fire.

He had just finished rekindling the fire when he heard a branch snap.

Kaz eased his way to Honor’s Face, clutching the axe and slowly bringing it to hand. Having wandered for several years before settling down with Helati, the minotaur was more than familiar with night visitors. It was the best time for beasts and bandits to ply their trade, and he had met more than his share of both during his various travels. Once he had even faced a scaled abomination resembling a dragon, the result of a mad mage’s effort to create the perfect warrior for the Dark Queen. That had been the worst of the lot, as far as Kaz was concerned.

Abomination or bandit, I’ve no time for such games anymore, Kaz thought as he peered into the darkness. If it won’t come to me, I’ll go to it.

He really had no evidence that it was anything more than an animal, but Kaz had discovered long ago that he had some sort of instinct, a sixth sense, that more often than not differentiated between what was simply a deer or raccoon and what was worse. It might not be a threat, but then again …

His horse, too, was alert, though from long training it did not budge. Kaz stepped away from the fire, trying to determine exactly from which direction the noise had come. To his left, he decided. Cautiously, the seasoned warrior started that way, moving with surprising silence for one of his bulk. Most assumed a minotaur relied on brute strength and was therefore neither swift nor cunning. Being underestimated by his adversaries had proven to Kaz’s advantage more than once.

As he stepped between two trees, he heard another twig snap, this time from his right. Kaz immediately turned, holding the axe close in order to avoid snagging it on a branch. The woods were not too thick here, otherwise he would have resorted to his knife. Honor’s Face was his weapon of choice, but Kaz was expert with blades long and short, thick and thin, not to mention a variety of other weapons that were all a part of his training.

The source of the noise had to be only a few feet from where he now stood. Kaz readied the axe, gauging the limitations created by the various trees and shrubs he could only vaguely make out in the darkness. It would be close quarters if it came to fighting, but not too close. He had made excellent use of the axe in cramped battle conditions before.

Another branch cracked … from behind him.

Paladine’s sword! Is the creature that swift or am I surrounded? Kaz turned cautiously this time, not wanting to make the obvious move and leave himself open to an attack from behind as he shifted in the new direction.

No attack came. Exhaling quietly, Kaz moved again, heading back to his campsite. His heart beat faster as he wondered if he had been so naive as to have fallen for a ploy leading him away from the fire so that bandits could plunder his belongings. If so, they were about to learn what the fury of a minotaur was like … for the few seconds that remained of their foul lives.

Throwing caution to the wind, Kaz charged toward the camp, the flickering flames his beacon.

In the light of the fire, he first noted the smaller mount tied not too far from his own. Then his gaze alighted on the short, cloaked figure squatting in the exact location the minotaur had vacated moments earlier. The hood of the other’s travel cloak was pulled forward, obscuring any glimpse of the face within.

Positioned as the newcomer was, it was hard to tell the race. An elf, perhaps, albeit a fairly short one. Slim for a dwarf, but not for a gnome, though what a gnome would be doing here was beyond Kaz. A human was a likely bet, Kaz thought as he edged closer, axe gripped tight, but the size was more that of an adolescent, not an adult. That really left only one other race. …

No, it couldn’t be …

From within the hood came a booming voice. “Greetings, O Great Warrior —” The voice broke off, then became a higher, merrier one unable to control itself. “That was a fun game, wasn’t it?”

Slim, tapered fingers fit for a pickpocket reached up and pulled back the hood, revealing a dark-haired, handsome, yet childlike face. The figure stood, revealing that he was no more than an inch or two over four feet – tall for his kind, but unmistakably a member of the most annoying race ordained by the gods on Krynn.

A kender.

A kender named Delbin Knotwillow.

Chapter 3

UNWELCOME COMPANIONS

“What are you doing here, Delbin?”

“I came to see you, Kaz.” The kender flashed a smile.

Leaning the axe handle against his shoulder, the minotaur eyed his companion with suspicion. It looked like Delbin, but looks, as he knew from experience, could be deceiving. “You just happen to be here in the middle of nowhere waiting for me?”

The kender laughed. “Actually, I had to catch up with you because when I got to your home Helati said you’d gone off to some place called Nethosak, which I remembered was somewhere in the minotaur lands but a place I’d never been to, so I thought I should tag along because —”

“Take a breath, Delbin.” Kaz relaxed some. It was his companion of old, all right. There was no mistaking that voice whenever it ran on about everything under the sun. Delbin was part of a small sect of kender who had the fool notion of writing some history of modern Krynn, which would have been fine if he ever got around to it. Plus, almost every time Delbin reached into his pouch for his supposed book, he managed to pull out something that had once belonged to someone else.

Still, Kaz could not deny that the kender had proven a worthy comrade on occasion, even risking his life to save the minotaur’s. He was not willing to admit it to anyone but Helati, but Kaz had grown fond of the small creature. That, of course, did not mean he wanted a kender’s company on this journey.

“When morning comes, you’ll go back to wherever you came from and stay there. What I have to do, I do alone.”

“But, Kaz, I’ve never seen a whole empire of minotaurs, and Helati seemed so worried, which I couldn’t blame her for, what with the dream I had – which is why I knew you’d be traveling in the first place, and since you’re traveling, you need someone to go with you, which ought to be me, of course —”

Not for the first time Kaz wondered if the kender followed him because even his own race would not put up with his incessant talk. Then, a part of what Delbin had said caught his attention. “What’s that about a dream you say you had?”

“I had a dream and —” Delbin hesitated when he saw the minotaur’s expression. Speaking much slower, he continued. “It was about you, Kaz! You were riding toward a big place with a cheering crowd and other minotaurs fighting. Then something big, bigger than a bird, flew over, and —”

“That was it?”

“No, then you were fighting yourself in this place – I guess it was an arena – while a tall, really tall, minotaur in cleric robes looked down. Then he turned into a bird and flew away.” Delbin smiled. “Wasn’t that an interesting dream? Oh … I forgot about the gray man!”

“What gray man?” Kaz regretted asking the talkative kender to explain his dream. Of what possible use could such information be to the minotaur? Still, he listened.

“He was all gray, Kaz! Even his face and beard. He wore gray robes and carried a gray staff. I never saw a human so very, very, very gray.”

The description sparked a vague memory. Someone else had told the minotaur about such a gray man long ago. Much to his regret, however, Kaz could not summon the wraithlike memory. “All gray, then?”

“Yes, and he said you were leaving soon, so I should hurry to find you, and when I woke up I knew I better go, even though it was a dream – I just knew that I had to go.”

Rarely had the minotaur seen the kender so adamant. But to let Delbin come with him into the heart of the minotaur realm was to sign the creature’s death warrant. Minotaurs were not tolerant, especially when it came to kender. Delbin’s people were considered to be on a par with rats and other vermin.

“No. You can’t go, Delbin. It’s for your own good. You don’t know what the empire, much less Nethosak, is like. They would have you executed simply for being yourself.”

Delbin Knotwillow looked down at himself. “What’s wrong with me? So I’m a little big for a kender!”

“It’s not your height, and you know it, Delbin. Unlike me, most minotaurs aren’t very tolerant where kender are concerned. Most minotaurs would just as soon cut a kender up into fish bait …” Kaz despised himself for talking so, but he wanted to frighten his friend into turning back. “Go back.”

“The man in gray said I had to come.” Delbin crossed his arms, putting together as severe and determined an expression as a kender could muster. “So I am.”

“That was a dream.”

“A big dream.” Delbin cracked a smile. “So what’s Nethosak like, Kaz? Are there a lot of minotaurs there? Why are there two kingdoms called Mithas and Kothas, and do they look exactly the same?” Before Kaz could say another word, Delbin reached into a pouch at his side. “I need my book! I should write this all – gee, I wonder where this came from?”

The object in the kender’s hand was hard to make out in the fire’s flickering light. Kaz stepped closer, forgetting for the moment his anger and frustration. The object was vaguely familiar, a medallion of some sort.

At first Kaz had the strange notion it was the medallion of Paladine he had taken from the hand of Huma after Takhisis’s defeat, but that medallion he had hung on a tree branch not far from the great knight’s tomb. Besides, Huma’s medallion showed the symbol of Paladine, while this one featured another god, one just as familiar to Kaz as Huma’s deity, if not as respected by him as he once was.

Sargas. It did not look like a cleric’s medallion, however.

“Let me see that, Delbin.” The kender turned the round object over to him. Kaz held it near the flames. Memories began to wash over him as he at last recognized the medallion for what it was. Years ago, he had worn one exactly like it.

“‘Champion of all,’” Kaz muttered, reading the script that circled the edge. “‘Hero of the people.’ Where did you get this, Delbin? Come on, now. Think hard.”

The kender screwed up his face in concentration, then grinned. “I remember! The man in gray gave it to me!”

“A man in a dream gave it to you? You know that can’t be.”

“But he did! I remember! After he told me to go to you, he gave me the medallion. I think he said you lost it! Isn’t that neat? That’s what I mean about the dream. It’s important. I’ve never had a dream like it before.”

Kaz almost threw the medallion into the fire. He had indeed worn one that resembled it … until the day he decided that his life would not be lived – or lost – in the arena. Fighting as a slave-soldier under the human and ogre masters had seemed preferable to the insanity and hypocrisy of the circus.

This could not be the same medallion … could it?

“Do you know what it is, Kaz?” asked Delbin.

Kaz knew exactly what it was, a medallion given to the supreme champion of the games, the greatest warrior of any of the arenas, including, of course, the Great Circus. The supreme champion could challenge the emperor to single combat for the throne, and the emperor would have to agree to fight or lose face. When the two met, it was always to the death. Combatants did not leave their rivals alive to foment discord or challenge them again and perhaps win the next time.

The Great Circus made for glorious entertainment for the masses.

“No,” Kaz finally replied, putting the medallion into a pouch attached to the belt of his kilt. His eyes watched the campfire’s darting flames. “No, I don’t.”

He sat down, leaning his axe nearby. Delbin watched him solemnly, wisely saying nothing. Kaz had forgotten about the kender. The dancing tentacles of the fire resurrected images of past opponents locked in duels. Kaz watched himself wrestle to the ground a reddish black minotaur taller than him, but then that adversary became a shorter but more muscular one carrying an axe longer than Honor’s Face. Kaz deflected the blow with an axe of his own, then countered with a bone-cutting swing. The images went on and on, battle after battle, until somewhere along the way Kaz fell asleep.

*

When the next day came, Kaz said nothing to the kender about the previous night’s conversation. For the time being, he allowed Delbin to ride beside him. He still did not want to put Delbin at risk, but silently welcomed the kender’s company. Delbin could be so diverting that Kaz might forget for a time the dangers awaiting him in the imperial capital of the minotaur kingdom of Mithas.

For the next two days, they traveled in relative peace, the only vexation being the kender’s relentless questions about the minotaur lands. Some of them Kaz had answered more than once over the years, ever since he first encountered Delbin on a dock in the southern reaches of Ansalon. Now and then the kender asked a question about the minotaur’s own life, which Kaz deflected by telling him something fascinating about his homeland.

“One thing I can never understand – why are there two kingdoms?” Delbin asked, for the umpteenth time.

“Because it’s more competitive. Each kingdom strives to raise the greatest champions.” Although there was only one emperor, the minotaur homeland was divided between the kingdoms of Mithas and Kothas. Mithas, with the imperial capital located within its boundaries, had some advantage, but Kothas was known for its own share of emperors.

“You were in the arena, weren’t you?”

“All minotaurs go to the arenas.”

“But you were in the arena a lot! You must have been a great champion! Don’t champions become emperor if they defeat the old emperor, because that’s what I heard, and you said something like that once, so if you were a great champion, then you could have become emperor, which —”

“Take a breath, Delbin!” Kaz suddenly snarled. He tried to be patient with the kender, but couldn’t help the occasional angry outburst. The kender overflowed with questions, and endlessly repeated his favorite ones. This time Delbin shut his mouth and remained silent for nearly a mile, something approaching a miracle.

On the fourth night, they made camp near a range of hills. The woods had grown thicker. The forest covered everything. Kaz was vaguely familiar with the lay of the land, but their progress was slowed a bit. All the better – each day’s travel brought Kaz nearer a place to which he had no desire to return, a place that in some ways he feared.

After tethering the horses, Kaz decided it was time to tell Delbin that he could go no farther. His life would be in jeopardy. The minotaur was surprised at how guilty he felt about letting his small companion ride this far. But the woodlands would provide good cover for him as he retraced his steps and found other kender to rejoin.

“Delbin —” Kaz started to say, turning … but the kender was nowhere to be seen. His mount was tied up and some of his belongings lay near the fire, but Delbin himself had vanished.

The moon Solinari was only a wisp in the heavens, but the stars were visible this night. Trust Delbin to go exploring now. Snorting in annoyance, Kaz searched the ground for some sign of the direction in which the kender had departed. Delbin’s race was notoriously light-footed. The minotaur knelt to peer for tracks.

“Kaz! Look what I fou – What’re you doing there? Did you lose something? Can I help?” Delbin materialized out of nowhere beside the minotaur and fell to his knees. He earnestly began surveying the ground for whatever he thought Kaz had dropped.

“I was looking for you!” Rising, the beast-man looked down at his small comrade. “That’s it!” He overplayed his attitude, pretending to be very annoyed. “Come tomorrow, Delbin, you’re heading back to your kind! You can’t go running off at night in the middle of nowhere … or even during the day, for that matter!”

“I was just curious —”

Kaz thrust a finger at the kender. “In Nethosak, or any other place in the homelands, being curious like that will get you killed, Delbin … and me along with you, by the way! I want you to promise to return to your people at first light!”

Delbin Knotwillow looked down. He seemed tiny and vulnerable at the moment, so chastened that Kaz found himself feeling guilty again.

“I … I don’t want to. They all think I’m so serious! All my friends stay away from me!”

“What? Why?”

“Because I get bored with them! They’re not as much fun as you and Helati are, Kaz! Not in the same way! You always come up with interesting things to do, interesting places to see! I told them all about everything we’ve done, and they were interested at first, but then they got tired of hearing about minotaurs and wanted to hear about anything else, and Noppel even made fun of you, and I didn’t like that, so —”

“Take a breath, Delbin.” The minotaur blinked. “So this … Noppel … made fun of me, and you got angry because of that?”

A wide smile spread across the kender’s childlike features. “You’re my friend, Kaz!”

And obviously a worse influence on you than I could have imagined, the minotaur thought. He felt a slight twinge of shame for making his companion a veritable outcast among his own people. He could not send the kender away … not after learning that Delbin had stuck up for him … well, at least not right away.

“What did you find?” Kaz asked.

Smiling, Delbin reached into his pouch. “You should see it! I think I know what it is, but … Hey, here’s my book! Just what I was looking for!”

It was one of the few times that Kaz could recall having ever seen the fabled book. It was battered and filled with loose sheets of paper that he suspected had been “borrowed” from everywhere the kender had visited. Somehow the sheets stayed more or less within the battered leather cover. Before Kaz could make out the lettering, though, Delbin put the tiny book back into the pouch and removed something else.

“Here it is!”

The kender’s latest acquisition was almost as unnerving as the medallion. Every muscle in the minotaur’s body tensed. Suddenly the forest seemed even darker, more filled with danger, than before.

“Isn’t this a neat knife? You know, I think this handle is bone, which makes a pretty sturdy handle, I guess, because bones hold our bodies up pretty good, don’t they —?”

“Be quiet, Delbin!” the warrior whispered. He seized the knife, turning it over. The handle was made of bone, just as his companion had said. But what Delbin did not know was that the bone had probably come from a thinking creature, possibly a human or even a minotaur.

Ogres did, after all, have preferences.

The knife was in very good condition and hardly rusted at all. “Did you clean this up?”

“No, I found it just like this —”

Kaz waved him silent and glanced out at the shadowy forest. The knife could have been lost some time ago, depending on the weather, but the very thought that ogres had ventured this far south almost made Kaz want to head back and warn the others. It occurred to him, however, that with the number of minotaurs now living in the settlement, it would take a fairly large force of ogres to attack them. Such a large force could certainly not have remained hidden in this region. Ogres were too clumsy not to leave signs of their passing.

“Show me where you found this.”

The kender did. The place was surprisingly close to the campsite. Delbin had found the knife lying next to a tree. It was proof of just how superior the short creature’s night vision was that he could have spotted it. Kaz found no other trace of ogres, but he knew the darkness might be masking some proof. When he rose at first light, he would do a thorough search of the vicinity.

The two of them returned to the fire, Kaz still clutching the blade. First the medallion … his medallion … and now this ogre weapon. There could not possibly be any connection between the two other than Delbin finding both, yet, the weary minotaur could not help but wonder.

Delbin sat, with a hopeful expression, next to the fire. Kaz realized that the kender wanted the knife back. It was a treasure to Delbin. The minotaur started to hand the blade over, then hesitated. He grunted. “I’ll give this back to you on one condition, Delbin.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t find anything else for a while, okay?”

The smile widened. “I’ll try real hard, Kaz.”

Snorting, Kaz handed back the knife. He turned his attention to food, his stomach reminding him that it had been a long time since either of them had eaten. The minotaur looked forward to his simple meal. Food had a way of temporarily erasing worries.

Often in the past he had grumbled to himself and others that the gods must surely be out to test him. How else to explain the rocky path Kaz had journeyed over the past several years? In his mind, he had suffered more than his share of trial and tribulation. The short time he had spent in the home he and Helati had built had been the only peaceful period in his life that he could recall. That respite was over now, though. Once more, it seemed as if he had become a pawn of the gods.

Maybe I’m just tired, he thought as he passed a bit of bread to Delbin. Maybe it’s just my imagination that the gods are steering me toward some dire adventure.

His arm came to rest against the pouch into which he had placed the medallion Delbin had supposedly been given by the gray man. He yanked the arm away and, ignoring the kender’s curious glance, chewed his food as if doing battle with it.

*

Tap-tap went the staff of the man sitting on the high rock.

“On the path again … but do you know the way?”

Kaz stood in the middle of a mountain path. High peaks rose on each side of him. Ahead, the path seemed narrow, barely wide enough for him to pass. Behind him, it was wide and flat. In that direction, the minotaur could make out a beautiful forest and in that forest a dwelling he recognized as his own.

From the mountains in the other direction he heard what sounded like a child crying.

“He who hesitates is lost, they say. Are you lost?” The questioner tapped his staff against the rock again. He was a tall, elderly human … elderly but certainly not frail. He wore a hooded cloak that covered most of his form, and on his hands he wore long gloves that went up his wrists, eventually disappearing into his sleeves. On his feet the human wore boots that rose up almost knee high.

A long gray beard obscured what was a plain yet somehow intelligent face. The gray beard blended into a gray face, which in turn blended into the gray coloring of the cloak.

Kaz’s eyes narrowed. Everything about the man was gray, even his teeth, tongue, and eyes.

The crying continued.

“Will that crying never cease?” Kaz rumbled.

“He is out of balance.” The explanation seemed to suit the gray man despite its vagueness. “Hail to you, Supreme Champion.”

“NO!” roared Kaz, waving his hand in denial. “I’ve not worn that title or —” He suddenly realized that the medallion hung around his neck. With one massive hand, he tore the medallion from its chain and threw it as far as he could. The gray man watched him do it, his expression perfectly bland. “Not worn that title or that medallion since I left Nethosak! I reject what it stands for!”

“But what swings one way must always swing the other. What one rejects, one must later accept – if one is to remain in balance.”

The crying grew more shrill, as if demanding to be heard.

Kaz tried to ignore the sound. “I’m not putting up with such nonsense! I’m going home!”

He turned toward the path leading to the woods, only to discover that instead of the forest, he faced the Great Circus of Nethosak. Cheering rose from inside, and a line of minotaurs stood at attention, awaiting him.

Kaz stepped back, but as his foot came down, the mountain path transformed into the flat, sandy floor of the arena. Instead of the gray man and the rock, a high wooden platform stood before him. The platform was several yards across and towered above him. A dozen of Kaz’s kinsmen struggled at levers, their efforts causing the structure to slowly rotate.

Frozen, Kaz watched as a figure hove into view. The figure slowly came nearer as the rotating platform brought him around.

Still the child cried, but now he sounded older … not adult … but definitely older.

The face of the figure on the platform came into view.

It was his own face.

“About time you got here,” the other Kaz called.

Kaz tried to speak, but as he opened his mouth, a great shadow darkened the sky. The other Kaz looked up … and was swallowed by that darkness. The arena was gone.

“Definitely out of balance,” remarked the gray man, now standing next to Kaz. “The past should be past by this time.”

Eyes widening, the minotaur glared at his peculiar gray companion. “I know you, don’t I? I’ve forgotten you, somehow. I remember about Huma and —” His words were cut off as the shrill voice cried still louder. It was too much for him to stand. “By Paladine and Kiri-Jolith! Can nothing be done about that?”

“I can do nothing.” The gray man held up his hands, which were bound by what seemed a twisted version of his own staff. He seemed indifferent. “You must complete what you have left undone.”

Kaz did not care to ask what the gray man meant, his gaze already turning back to the mountainous trail. The cry for help was stronger, closer. He wished he had his axe, then realized it was in his hands. That was the one thing that so far did not disturb him; Honor’s Face always returned to his hands when he most needed it. One of its magical qualities.

“Paladine preserve me!” Kaz grunted, starting up the trail.

“Perhaps he will,” replied the gray man from behind him. “He understands the need for balance.”

This made the minotaur turn, but when he looked, the man in gray was gone. Snorting his annoyance, Kaz listened again to the cry. It was stronger, closer, but now he thought he heard the sound of running feet and the heavy breathing of determined pursuers. Someone was after the voice.

“Did you hear that, Kaz?” asked Delbin, but the kender was nowhere to be seen.

Keeping the axe ready, the minotaur picked up his pace. If there were others, he had to hurry. They might catch up with their prey at any moment.

Despite his hurried pace, though, it seemed as if he walked through a miasma. Ever so slowly, Kaz made progress along the path, but with each renewed cry, he knew he would be too late.

Then the cry came again, so close that he knew its source must be just out of sight. All he had to do was reach the point where the path before him twisted to the right. There was still time.

Suddenly Kaz was at the turn. He raised Honor’s Face in preparation for a swing and followed the twist in the path.

A shadow loomed over him.

It was a dragon.

*

Kaz woke with a start, realizing that everything had been but a dream. The minotaur cursed. It was still dark outside. Kaz estimated that he had been asleep for perhaps an hour, possibly two, but no more. He peered around the camp, muttered in annoyance, and tried to settle back down to sleep.

He did not hear the single figure that had been observing the camp move off into the night.

*

“I told you that story earlier.”

“I want to hear it again.”

“Not now, Delbin.”

“Please? It’ll help pass the time, and I always like to hear about it, especially the part —”

“All right.” It would be easier simply to relate the tale … again.

“Thanks, Kaz!” piped in Delbin. He reached for his pouch. “I should write it down this time! I always forget. It would – say, I wonder where this came from?”

Kaz eyed the newfound object with some trepidation, but it turned out to be only one of his own fire flints. Giving the kender a look, he reached out and retrieved his property. “Just forget the book for now, Delbin, or I won’t tell the story.”

That gave the kender pause. Kaz sighed, then began, “In the beginning, there were the ogres. They were not the animals we know today, but beautiful creatures, the envy of all other races, including the elves. They built glorious cities and created great works in all fields. All respected their accomplishments and abilities.”

“What happened to them?” asked Delbin. He asked the same questions at the same points in the story every time Kaz related it.

“They were decadent, vain. They wasted their achievements, instead playing with power that should’ve been cultivated in order to cement their greatness. Some of them, however, saw that they were destined for savagery if they continued like that and tried to speak sense to their brothers. The others wouldn’t listen, and the race sank further and further into degeneracy. They fell from the grace of the Great Horned One, Sargas, so the story goes, and he finally cast out the ogres, condemning them to be the animals they truly were. Those are the ogres of today, degenerate monsters who can’t even recall the wonders of their own ancestors.”

“But the minotaurs …”

“It’s said that Sargas took pity on those who tried to remain on the path of glory.” Kaz disliked mentioning Sargas; he no longer followed that god, who many believed was also known as Sargannon, consort to the Dark Queen. Still, this was the story as it had always been told, and Kaz was a believer in the traditions. “Reaching down, he took those most worthy and placed them far from the other ogres. In order to mark them as his true children, he reshaped their forms, making them look like himself.”

Kaz leaned forward so that the kender could get a good close-up of his features. It was a theatrical habit he had picked up from his father, who had told the story to him many times when Kaz was a child. The kender shivered, but more in pleasure at hearing the tale than because he was really scared.

“We’ve taken up the destiny that the ogres tossed aside.” Kaz closed his eyes. “‘We have been enslaved but have always thrown off our shackles. We have been driven back, but always returned to the fray stronger than before. We have risen to new heights when all other races have fallen into decay. We are the future of Krynn, the fated masters of the entire world. We are the children of destiny.’ That’s an old minotaur saying.”

“I heard it was the Graygem that changed ogres into minotaurs,” Delbin cheerfully interjected. “It just moved through the area, and after it left there were ogres and there were —”

Kaz growled. “Minotaurs weren’t created by magical happenstance!” He looked at the kender. “If you want to hear the story again, you’ll never repeat such foolishness to me, understand?”

“Yes, Kaz. Sorry.”

“Good. Now try to keep quiet for a little while. We have a long day ahead of us.”

“What’s the minotaur kingdom like?” asked his companion, already ignoring his injunction to be silent.

“Not now, Delbin. Later.”

His tone was ominous, and the kender obeyed. The rest of the day passed without incident, as did the night that followed. They were able to get an early start the next morning. The minotaur could scarcely believe their good fortune. Usually, it seemed, his journeys were fraught with daily peril.

“See those mountains in the distance?” Kaz asked, feeling less moody than the day before. “Those are the first signs that we’re nearing the minotaur kingdom. We’ve still got the last part of the journey, though.”

“I like mountains,” his companion commented, staring at the distant peaks. “Especially ones with caverns.”

Kaz shuddered. He did not like caverns. Too many things had happened to him in caverns. “I don’t think we need to worry about caverns.”

“You found a dragon in a cavern once, didn’t you?” Delbin grew more excited. “It was just after the war with the Dark Queen, when dragons were supposed to be gone, but you accidentally found a whole dragon, and she was trapped by this evil sorcerer who —”

“Take a breath, Delbin.” Kaz had told the kender the tale once long ago, but had refused to tell that one ever again. He’d hoped Delbin had forgotten. Thinking of dragons always made him recall the silver dragon who, in human form, had loved Huma of the Lance. Memories of Huma were painful, for the knight had been – would always be – Kaz’s truest friend. “I don’t want to talk about that now.”

“But you flew a dragon once, didn’t you? I remember you mentioning that, too.”

Despite himself, the minotaur smiled slightly as he recalled that particular dragon. “I flew one during the battle in which Takhisis was defeated. His name was Bolt. Young, eager, and as battle-hungry as I was. He was a bronze dragon, brash but brave.” Kaz grunted, the memory turning dark again. “They all vanished after the war was over, both the dragons of light and their darker counterparts.”

“But you found the other one after that.”

Seeing that the kender would not be put off, which was how things generally went, Kaz finally nodded with a sigh. “Only a short time after the war. The dragons had all disappeared. I’d just left Solamnia” – he had left Solamnia after paying his last respects to his friend and comrade – “and was simply traveling. Times were still dangerous, though, and many didn’t trust my kind since we’d served as slave-soldiers to the Dark Queen. I was often forced to run rather than hurt innocent fools.”

“Don’t forget the monster!” piped up Delbin.

“It wasn’t a monster, Delbin —”

“You said it was a dragon-man! That sounds like a neat monster. I wish I’d seen it. You said it was taller than you and all scaly! It was made by the mage who captured the dragon and her eggs —” The kender shut his mouth when he realized that Kaz was glaring at him again. “Sorry …”

“Why do you even ask me to tell the stories? You seem to know them by heart.”

“Please tell it again! I like to hear you tell them, Kaz. You lived them!”

Yes, he had lived them. Images of the past racing through his mind, Kaz related the short battle between himself and the creature, who had fled into the night, and then his own capture not long after by a sinister mage. The mage, a human named Brenn, had indeed captured a dragon, a great silver female. He had captured her by stealing her eggs and luring the frantic mother into a trap, using the eggs as bait.

“He was turning her eggs into monsters, wasn’t he, Kaz? Making more dragon-men!” Again, it took a severe look from the minotaur to quiet the overeager kender, who still managed to ask one more question. “Why didn’t the dragon stop him?”

Kaz recalled all too well. “An illusion. He threatened her eggs, placing an illusion of them just out of her grasp. In return for their safety, he demanded her magic to aid his own in an experiment. She couldn’t know that he was using her magic on the real eggs, changing the young into beast-men.”

“What happened?”

“With her help, I killed Brenn and his monster, but she died.” Her dedication reminded him of Huma’s silver companion. “I took what eggs I could find and brought them to a place where I thought her mate, who had also remained behind, would likely come.” He exhaled. The story dredged up other memories. “I waited nearly three weeks before he came, and when he did, I thought he would die as well.” Kaz eyed the kender as if daring him to interrupt.

Delbin was wisely silent.

“He and his mate had not been the only dragons left, after all. How it also could have been there, I don’t know, but there was a great black, one of the most evil of dragons. The silver fought the black, killed it … with a little help from me … but was so badly wounded that he could barely carry the eggs. You see, once free of the mage’s spell, they grew at their normal pace. By the time he came, they were close to hatching.”

The kender’s mouth formed an O of wonder. “Did he live?” he blurted.

“The last I saw of him, he was flying off … I think it was to the north … with the eggs in a sling that I’d made for him. He couldn’t even transform. His magic barely worked.” Kaz scratched his chin. “I never knew the female’s name, but his was Tiberion, I think.”

“That’s a good story!” Delbin reached for his pouch. “Oops! I should write it down so I don’t forget it!”

Kaz, who had no inclination to discover just what Delbin would pull from his pouch this time, quickly said, “Forget that for now. We’ve got to pick up the pace. I want to make those lower hills by tonight. Besides, you know the story almost as well as I do. You can always write it down later.”

Delbin pouted but obeyed.

They did make the hills by nightfall, albeit barely. Kaz was grateful for yet another uneventful day of travel and hoped it was a good sign. Once they entered the minotaur lands, he would have to be even more on his guard, but until then, the minotaur wanted to be able to relax and build up his strength.

They located a likely spot for camp and dismounted. Kaz took charge of both animals while Delbin cleared the grounds.

“Delbin, see if you can find some food. I’ll work on the fire.” Regardless of his other traits, the kender was an expert gatherer and trapper when he put his wandering mind to it. Seven times out of ten he was likely to bring both meat and fruit back with him, along with a few items that Kaz had to be convinced to try eating.

The kender scurried off. He would be back within the hour. When he and Kaz had traveled together, they often set traps in the hopes of catching game that they could use for the next day’s meals. Kaz would set a few of his own before the evening was over, but he had spent so many years living off the land that this work seldom took long. So far, they had been fortunate, catching a good supply of rabbits and an occasional bird. Nuts and berries added to their repasts.

Kaz had just finished his own tasks when the kender reappeared. The fire was burning merrily, the camp in good order.

“Kaz! Look what I caught! They practically jumped into my hands!”

The minotaur snorted. Typical kender luck. The kender had two rabbits on a string – rabbits mostly for Kaz’s benefit – plus a full bag that likely contained fruits and whatever other plant life Delbin thought edible.

They settled down to sleep not long after eating. Kaz was so relaxed, he immediately drifted off.

He was awakened soon after by a sound he could not identify, save that it somehow seemed out of place with his surroundings. A sense of foreboding coursed through him.

“Did you hear that, Kaz?” asked Delbin, rising from the other side of the fire.

“Quiet!” the minotaur whispered, rising at the same time. He seized the great battle-axe by the handle. “Stay here, Delbin.”

“But, Kaz —” The kender clamped his mouth shut at the sight of his companion’s ferocious visage.

Staring into the dark forest, Kaz estimated where the noise, whatever it had been, had originated. He took off on foot. His present circumstances reminded him of his dream. True, he was in the forest rather than the mountains, but other than that he felt as if the two were somehow connected.

That was what he was thinking about when a figure as tall as the minotaur nearly crashed into him.

The ogre was as surprised as Kaz, possibly more so. Armed with a studded club, it gaped at the horned warrior, then grunted and attacked.

Kaz met the blow with his axe. Honor’s Face cut through the club unhindered, sending a good third of the ogre’s weapon flying. The ogre was stubborn, however, and pulled the weapon back for yet another try. Even in the dim light of the moon, Kaz could see the murderous intent in his adversary’s flat, brutish face. The ogre snarled, revealing long, vicious teeth accustomed to tearing raw flesh from either a fresh kill or an enemy warrior … which was often the same thing to one of its kind.

Kaz did not wait. Even before the ogre could complete its second swing, Honor’s Face sliced under the monster’s guard, digging in deep at the midsection.

With a cry, Kaz’s foe fell back, the ruined club dropping from a lifeless hand. The ogre ceased breathing even before its body struck the ground.

There was more thrashing in the woods as other figures moved in his direction. Kaz made a quick estimate based on the patterns of noise and counted at least four other ogres, all heading his way. One was bad enough, two worse, but if he had to face three, possibly four, at the same time, then he was dead.

Kaz abandoned his position for one farther to his left. He could hear the movements of but one figure over there … so he hoped, anyway … and against one ogre he would prevail.

The newcomer continued to trample through the forest. Ogres were less concerned with stealth than minotaurs. Brute strength was all that mattered to most of them, though it was never wise to underestimate them. Kaz had been forced to serve under ogres when he had been a slave-soldier in the armies of the Queen of Darkness, and he was fully aware just how cunning and treacherous they could be.

A dim shape materialized, a shape that coalesced into an ogre, with an axe almost as long as Kaz’s. The ogre was breathing heavily. It paused and sniffed the air.

Kaz gave no warning. The minotaur warrior emerged from his hiding place with the axe already in flight. To its credit, however, the ogre succeeded in dodging the blow.

“Minotaur,” growled the toothy monster. “What do you think you are doing?”

“I would’ve thought that obvious.” Kaz did not want to waste time talking, but the ogre’s attitude confused him.

“We’ve not failed,” insisted the ogre. “Camp is near.”

They were interrupted by the sudden arrival of a second ogre, this one wild-eyed. “Minotaur …”

Two now. Kaz shifted to compensate for the change in numbers. The second ogre carried both a sword and net, the latter one of the throwing kind used by some races when hunting prey.

This ogre eyed Kaz’s axe. “Squallin dead … by axe.”

“You not be from Nethosak,” blurted the first at the minotaur. Its axe rose.

Its words were punctuated by a pained growl as Honor’s Face caught its weapon arm, leaving a great gash. The axe dropped from the ogre’s hand. As the creature grabbed its wounded limb, Kaz whirled on the second one, who was already advancing.

A web enveloped him. Quicker than its partner, the second ogre had tossed the net with accuracy. It covered the minotaur well. The angle made it difficult to properly wield his axe, leaving Kaz nearly defenseless. The ogre’s mouth widened in triumph. It raised its sword for a killing stroke.

Bending forward, Kaz charged.

The attack was not what the ogre expected. Kaz’s horns plunged into the wide torso of the minotaur’s foe, the force behind them more than enough to pierce the ogre’s thick hide. The monster’s gasp was as much from surprise as pain. As Kaz pulled away, the ogre gasped again and tried to stanch the flow of blood.

The first ogre had retrieved its axe, but its attempt to swat the tangled minotaur with it was spoiled by its awkward swing. Kaz dodged the axe and backed away, at the same time using one hand to pull himself free of the net. The ogre he had gored collapsed.

He had the net half off when the other ogre attacked again. Although he was able to raise his own weapon to defend himself, the angle was such that his opponent’s axe clattered and slid down along the handle. Kaz grunted in pain as the edge scraped his arm, nearly making him lose his grip.

Once more the ogre brought the axe up, but obviously being more used to using its other hand, it moved slowly and without precision. It gave the minotaur time to free himself completely and still raise Honor’s Face in time to deflect the next attack.

Far to his right Kaz heard a gruff shout. Taking advantage of the distraction, the minotaur charged, battle-axe swinging low and fast. The ogre brought its own axe down in an attempt to pin Kaz’s to the ground, but over-compensated. The ogre weapon sank into the earth and before its master could pull it up, Honor’s Face cut across both legs.

Its legs collapsing beneath it, the ogre fell forward. Kaz pulled away. Unable to stop, the ogre impaled itself on the head of its own double-edged axe.

Kaz turned to face any newcomers. To his surprise, not only were there no new attackers, but it sounded as if the others were retreating.

They were heading in the direction of the camp.

Delbin was alone.

Snarling epithets at random gods, Kaz ran as fast as he could, fearing he was already too late.

Chapter 4

OGRE ATTACK

It was only a few minutes before the first of the hunters came within sight. He was only a black outline, but Kaz had no trouble identifying him as another ogre. The hunter carried a net and club.

Just a moment later, a second shadow moved toward the camp, what looked like an axe in one hand and possibly a net in the other. They were surprisingly deft for their kind, but to Kaz they were noisy enough to wake the dead. Leaning Honor’s Face against a tree, he removed a knife from the belt of his kilt and moved silently toward the nearest ogre.

The ogre never noticed him, so intent was it on the lone figure by the campfire. Kaz came up behind the stalker, then, when the ogre paused to scout the area, the minotaur struck. With one hand he covered the ogre’s mouth. Then, before the creature could comprehend what was happening, Kaz drove the blade into his adversary’s throat. The minotaur had no qualms about doing so; the ogre would have done the same – or worse.

With a muffled gasp, the ogre slumped. Kaz held on, cushioning the body to prevent it from falling to the ground too heavily. He gently lowered his victim, then, wiping the blade, looked around.

The other ogre was no longer in sight, but Kaz had a fairly good idea of where it had gone. Crouching as low as he could, yet still move swiftly, the minotaur darted among the trees. Suddenly, he spotted the second ogre waiting impatiently for some signal. Kaz moved at an incautious pace. He was almost on top of the ogre. Only a few steps more …

Then something, some slight movement on the minotaur’s part, made the hunter turn. The ogre spotted Kaz and hesitated. It would be only a moment before his opponent realized that Kaz was not an ally, so the minotaur did the only thing he could. He threw his blade, burying the knife deep in the ogre’s chest. The creature dropped its weapons and tried to reach for the blade, but its life was already draining from it. It fell before its hands were even halfway to the hilt.

Kaz rushed to the body, hoping no one had heard it fall, and reached to retrieve his knife.

A bird called out. The minotaur froze, knowing that such birds were not usually in the habit of chattering at night.

From the other side of the campsite there came the rustling of vegetation and the heavy grunting of moving figures. Kaz heard a gasp that had to have come from Delbin. A deep voice snarled an unintelligible order.

The minotaur cursed. Seizing his blade, he thrust it into his belt and ran for the camp. Even before he reached it, he was able to make out what was happening. His heart sank.

There were five of them, two minotaurs and three ogres. One ogre was trying to hold a squirming Delbin while the others looked around for obstacles to their fun. All of them looked very disappointed.

He did not hesitate. Roaring at the top of his voice, Kaz leapt into camp just behind one of the ogres. The hunters looked up in time to see him raise his arm and open his empty hand. The look of surprise in their eyes when Honor’s Face materialized in his grip amused Kaz even though he had already witnessed that shocked look countless times in the past. The magical axe always had returned to him when he most needed it, and certainly now figured to be a time of need.

He cut down the first ogre while the creature was still gaping. The one holding Delbin tossed the kender aside and readied its weapon. One of the minotaurs started forward while the second backed quickly away, retreating into the woods.

Kaz met the ogre axe against axe. The ogre was a veteran warrior, so the two traded blows at first. The other minotaur moved in after that to give the ogre a hand, forcing Kaz back. Behind them he could see the remaining ogre turn on Delbin menacingly.

Hard-pressed as he was to concentrate on anything but his two opponents, Kaz did not at first know why the ogre in the rear abruptly slipped and fell. Only when Delbin’s small figure darted past his field of vision did he guess what might have happened.

“Stand still!” cursed the second ogre, rising. It had a sword nearly as long as Kaz’s axe and was trying to cleave the moving kender in two. Kaz would have laughed, if not for the fact that his own enemies were separating in order to further divide his attention.

“Surrender and we’ll see that your death is swift,” the minotaur in the woods demanded.

“I don’t surrender to those without honor.”

His words angered the other minotaur, who swung carelessly with his blade. Kaz used that anger to his advantage, catching his foe’s weapon by the hilt with the edge of his axe and tearing the sword free. The blade flew at the ogre, who, though it was in no danger of being hurt by it, stepped back in astonishment.

His minotaur antagonist tried to stop the flow of blood from his wounded hand. Kaz immediately turned to the ogre. Its advantage lost and its footing awkward from backing away, the ogre swung its axe far too high. Kaz ducked enough to allow the weapon to pass harmlessly over his head, then brought his own battle-axe down on the ogre’s forearm.

Honor’s Face cut through the arm with as much ease as it did most everything else. The ogre screamed and pulled away, leaving behind its hand and part of its forearm. The wounded minotaur had retreated.

“Sargas take all of you!” cursed the second minotaur from the darkness, his words for his companions, not Kaz and Delbin. Seeing Kaz about to battle against it, the remaining ogre decided that escape was the best course of action.

Not willing to let any more of his foes escape, Kaz charged after the fleeing ogre. However, he had only reached the edge of the campsite when he suddenly became entangled in a number of tree limbs that materialized before him. Kaz tried to shove them aside, only to discover that they clung to him with the tenacity of serpents.

One of the nearest trees started to move, its branches reaching out in what looked to be an attempt to seize his axe.

“Paladine!” He tugged Honor’s Face back before the tree could succeed, then swung it around, slicing through the harassing branches. As they clattered to the ground, more sought to seize him, but he cut through those as well. No normal axe could have severed so many limbs so quickly. If Kaz had used any other weapon, he was fairly certain he quickly would have become trapped … or worse.

The animated tree suddenly loomed above him, black shadow in the black night. Kaz hefted his weapon, but as he prepared to strike, another tree moved toward him. It now appeared that the trees intended to crush him on all sides.

Unwilling to accept such a fate, the minotaur gripped his weapon and leapt into the nearest tree, which tried unsuccessfully to seize him. Kaz continued climbing into the upper reaches, avoiding branches from below that tried to drag him down.

Peering down, Kaz caught sight of an unnatural red gleam. He faintly glimpsed a minotaur holding something aloft in his left hand, an item that was the source of the gleam … and likely the reason the trees had become so lively. Hooking the axe into his harness, Kaz crawled swiftly along a strong limb that led toward the mysterious minotaur.

Movement to his left and right informed him that the other trees were squeezing in closer. Kaz took one look each way, estimated the distance to the other minotaur, and jumped.

He landed just short, but his abrupt appearance so startled the second minotaur that the latter dropped the gleaming red artifact, a crystal. Kaz, charging forward, did not waste time. The other minotaur tried to retrieve the magic talisman, placing a hand on it just as Kaz reached him. The pair collided, and the gem flew away.

Neither had time for words. The darkness made the battle more confusing. Kaz sought to get a grip on the other minotaur’s arm in the hope of twisting it, when he backed into a tree that he did not think should have been there. His amazement might have given the advantage to his foe, but for the fact that the tree pushed Kaz forward, sending both minotaurs scrambling.

What in Kiri-Jolith’s name? wondered Kaz. Then he realized the truth. The gem gave the minotaur crude command over the trees he had animated. The trees were ordered to capture or possibly kill Kaz, and if the other minotaur got in the way, they would not notice the difference.

His foe crawled out from underneath him, but instead of trying to continue the fight, he took one look at the oncoming monsters and rushed off after his comrades. Kaz did not have much respect for his fellow’s sense of duty and honor, though he did have some regard for his common sense. There was no use dying needlessly.

Tree limbs sought him again, but he managed to roll away. Kaz landed against another trunk, this one belonging to a stationary tree. The minotaur took momentary cover.

Attacking with Honor’s Face occurred to him, but Kaz did not like the idea of wading into the huge monsters no matter how formidable his battle-axe. There had to be another way. He could outrun ogres, but then he was afraid some other person might run afoul of the animated creatures. Kaz had no idea how long the enchantment would last. The only one who could have answered that question was the minotaur who had been controlling the gem —

The gem! I’ve been a fool! He quickly scanned the darkness for it, seeking the red gleam. A faint crimson glowed in the foliage to his far left. It could be only the talisman.

One of the trees had shifted closer to try to seize him, but he managed to evade it. Behind him Kaz could hear the animated trees pursuing. Kaz gritted his teeth. He was not far away now. Just a few more yards.

His legs became entangled in some branches. Kaz lost his balance and fell face forward. Almost before he had even hit the ground the hapless warrior found himself being dragged backward. He tried to reach for his axe, but it was difficult. The trees had him in their clutches.

A small figure suddenly materialized near him. “Kaz?”

“Delbin! Find the red gem! It glows in the dark!”

Even under these dire circumstances, the kender’s tone was merry. “It does? Gee, that’d be neat to see! I —”

Another set of tree limbs caught hold of his legs. Kaz managed to seize hold of the axe, but doubted he could wield it successfully from his present position on his stomach. “Be quiet, Delbin! Find the gem! Quickly! It’s over to your side.”

Delbin looked around. “I don’t see it!”

Under other circumstances, the kender could have found the tiniest trinket, even if it had been lost and buried for years. Kaz wondered whether he should just surrender to his fate now.

His companion turned his head. “Oh! There it is!” He hurried over to the gem and picked it up. “I’ve got it, Kaz!”

About time, the harried minotaur thought. “Hold it in your hand and command the trees to stop!”

“It’ll make them do that? I never saw —”

“Delbin!”

The kender immediately raised the gem high, shouting at the same time, “Stop, trees!”

Nothing happened. The trees continued their work. One of them was trying to lift Kaz by his legs. The minotaur had the axe out, but trying to strike effectively from upside down was not easy, even with his cherished weapon.

“I said that you should stop, you trees! Stop that!” Delbin paused. “I don’t think it’s working, Kaz!”

“Break the damned thing!” It was the only other idea he could think of at the moment.

“I don’t have anything to break it with. It’s pretty hard, Kaz!”

The warrior could think of only one article that either of them owned that might be able to shatter the magical gem. Loathe as he was to give up his only defense, Kaz focused on the kender, cocked his arm, and tossed Honor’s Face toward the small figure. “Use the axe! Hurry!”

The other trees clustered around him. His view of Delbin was blocked off. He did hear the kender moving around, but that was all.

“The axe is heavy, Kaz!”

“You don’t need to raise it very high!”

His inhuman foes closed on him. Kaz’s position became untenable. In minutes the trees would crush him between their trunks.

A brilliant flash of crimson light illuminated the immediate area.

The trees ceased moving. Kaz held his breath, waiting for them to resume, but they did not. He exhaled and laughed.

“Kaz? Are you okay?” Delbin’s upside-down head appeared between two of the trees.

“Good enough.” He had the arm wound and a splitting headache now, but that was negligible in comparison to what could have happened. “I think I’m going to need your help in freeing myself, though.”

“Okay.”

With his companion’s aid, Kaz was soon able to free himself from the tight little copse. There was no sign of the other attackers. Kaz guessed that he had seen the end of them. Not a very competent group, he thought, not even the minotaurs. He thought about pursuing them, but decided that it was not wise to chase around in the dark. Turning to Delbin again, he asked, “How about you? Are you all right?”

The kender nodded. If anything, he looked thrilled by the night’s festivities. It was yet another trait of the race that Kaz would never understand.

Feeling guilty for having left his companion alone, the minotaur added, “Sorry I had to do things that way. I thought we’d have a better chance if I could catch some of them unaware. I’d hoped to do more damage.” He was slipping a little, though. He and his companion very well could have been killed. Had his time trying to raise a family dulled his wits some? “I’m sorry.”

Delbin appeared unconcerned. The kender looked at the dead ogre and surveyed the remnants of the attack. “It’s okay, Kaz. I knew you’d save us.”

The statement was said so confidently that Kaz could not dispute it. Delbin resolutely believed in him. Kaz felt embarrassed.

“I knew you’d save us,” the kender repeated, looking up and smiling. “The man in the dream said so just before I woke up.”

“The what?” Now that had an unsettlingly familiar ring to it. Kaz’s eyes narrowed. “The man in gray?”

“Yes, Kaz! He said not to worry, because the time hadn’t come yet to test the balance. He said you’d see us through to that point. We have to be somewhere else for the balancing test.”

“By Paladine! That does it!” The minotaur turned his gaze skyward. “I don’t know which one of you it is, but I’ll not be your puppet again! I’m going to rescue Hecar and then I’m going straight home to my mate and children! Get another to play your infernal game, whatever it is!”

Kaz doubted that the Great Dragon, as the Lord of Good was called by some, was behind this. Paladine was just and fair, but there were other gods, either of Good, Neutrality, or Evil, that, in his eyes, toyed with creatures when they themselves could not act outwardly.

The night sky, of course, did not respond. Kaz snorted in anger and looked at his companion. The kender seemed interested in his words, but made no comment, for which Kaz was grateful. At that moment he came to a decision that he felt was right under the circumstances. It was what he should have done in the first place.

“Tomorrow you’ll head south to the settlement and Helati, Delbin. You’ll go there and you’ll stay there.”

The kender started to protest, but Kaz turned his back on him, beginning the grisly task of disposing of the ogre remains. He did not look at or talk to his companion again for the rest of the night.

*

When the next morning came, Delbin raised a protest. “I want to go with you!”

“There were minotaurs with that band that tried to capture us, maybe even kill us. I don’t know how they knew we were there or why they wanted us in the first place, but some of them escaped.” Kaz did have certain suspicions, but none he wanted to voice just yet. The only ones who had known he was coming to the homeland were the minotaurs of the settlement. “That means we might come across them again, maybe even in Nethosak. They make mincemeat out of kender. I’ve enough to worry about without worrying about you as well. Go visit Helati again, Delbin. She’ll treat you kindly. Wait for me there.”

“But, Kaz,” interrupted the kender, who was bringing the horses. “I told you! The gray man said I have to go with you to help you.”

“Maybe you misunderstood him, Delbin. Maybe he wanted you to be around to help me last night. You’ve done that, so now you can go back.”

The kender thought this over. “Do you think so?”

“I’m sure of that.”

“But I don’t want to leave! You’re my friend!”

The minotaur sighed. Kaz was indeed fond of the kender, which was why Delbin had to leave. He did not want to see him hurt; nor was he very comfortable baring his emotions in this way.

“Listen to me. The minotaur lands are near. They’re dangerous. Nethosak is the worst of all. I was a fool to bring you this far, and last night’s attack only verified that. I don’t know why they wanted us … But I think that bringing you to my homeland will only endanger you further. You have to understand that I’m sending you south because I don’t want any harm to come to you.”

The short figure stared at the ground. “I don’t want to go …”

“Delbin.” The kender looked up. “I hope you understand how serious this is. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I know, Kaz.”

“You’ll go south, like I asked?”

“Yes, Kaz, but —”

“No.” The minotaur folded his arms, looking as impressive and stern as he could. “Helati needs your help, since I am gone. She has children to take care of.” Inside, Kaz winced. Helati would not soon forgive him for making a kender even a short-term member of her household. She cared for Delbin in much the same way as Kaz, but kender had a habit of “accidentally” removing any item left sitting around for more than a minute. Still, Delbin did have a way with children, even minotaur infants, which might prove valuable. That might assuage Helati some.

“I understand,” Delbin replied, trying to look big and solemn. Breaking into a smile, he said, “I do like Helati, too! She cooks well for a minotaur and can hunt and knows neat tricks with a dagger, which she showed me once when she hit a target real far away …”

The kender babbled on and, although the constant flow of words drove Kaz to distraction, he allowed Delbin to talk freely. And when the kender at last departed, less than an hour later, Kaz felt strangely hollow.

Pull yourself together, he reprimanded himself, once Delbin was out of sight. You’re a minotaur, a warrior. That’s the way you have to act when you enter the empire. Hecar needs you to be strong.

Thinking of Helati’s brother helped strengthen his resolve. Prior to departing, Kaz searched for signs of the hunters’ retreat. He counted only five mounts. It was possible there were reinforcements elsewhere. He was positive that his decision to send the kender back had been the correct one. Ogres and minotaurs did not willingly work together unless there was a good reason.

He would find Hecar. There was no question about that.

The day passed slowly. Kaz found that he missed the kender’s company more than he could have imagined. Delbin had been as loyal a comrade to him as any he had known … more loyal than most.

The woods grew thinner and thinner, becoming simply grassy hills dotted with the occasional copse of trees. The southern end of the mountain range that marked the border of the minotaur kingdoms was only a few days away. As he rode north, Kaz also experienced some bad weather. The wind picked up, with cloud cover coming not long after. It started to rain just before the sun set, and the rain intensified soon after that, becoming a full-fledged storm. Ragged bolts of lightning striking in the hills ahead made him finally decide to make camp.

Kaz found an overhang large enough to conceal both him and his horse. It was no surprise to find it there; he recalled it from another journey long ago. There was no way he could start a fire, so the minotaur satisfied himself with eating cold, cooked meat and fruit left from his portion of the supplies. The rest he had given to Delbin. The kender had been more than fortunate in his scavenging, so he and Kaz both had plenty of food.

The storm grew worse. Unable to sleep, Kaz stared out at the countryside, identifying landmarks. In his thoughts, he considered what he would do when he arrived in Nethosak. Possibly his best bet for aid would be from the House of Orilg. While his relationship with his clan was not as good as it once was, the house had no reason to turn him away. Kaz had cleared himself of any accusations of dishonor, and his reputation outside of the homelands had even given him a unique prestige among his own kind. It was known that the Knights of Solamnia, one of the few human organizations the minotaurs respected, honored him as a warrior.

Of course, Orilg aside, Kaz had one or two other contacts, providing they were still alive. He touched the pouch that contained the medallion Delbin claimed had been given to him in a dream. As much as he hated to lay claim to his past status in the circus, there were those who would aid him simply because he had once owned the rank of supreme champion.

A particularly brilliant flash of lightning lit up the landscape. Kaz leapt to his feet, momentarily disturbing his mount. He could have sworn that he had seen a figure standing untouched in the storm, a bearded figure clad in a long, flowing robe and bearing a staff. It was a figure that, even from a distance, looked much like the gray man from his dream.

“Well, I’m awake now!” he snarled. Suddenly oblivious to the elements, he charged out into the storm, heading for the spot where he had glimpsed the gray man.

Lightning crackled across the sky, but nothing illuminated the figure. Kaz moved swiftly, fearing not only that he might lose his quarry in the dark, but also that he might have imagined everything in the first place. His axe remained behind, but the minotaur did not worry; Honor’s Face would be in his grip when he needed it.

Thunder rolled. The rain worsened, slowing Kaz. He peered through the storm. Kaz wondered if the gray man, despite not wearing either the red, black, or white robes of the calling, was indeed a mage; he certainly had the look of one. Something about him was familiar, too, and not just from the dream. It had to do with Huma of the Lance, of that he felt certain, though in all honesty he could not have said why.

Another brilliant bolt lit up the area, revealing to Kaz a form huddled near where he had last seen the gray man. Despite being drenched, the minotaur allowed himself a toothy grin. He had the elusive figure at last.

“Get up!” he roared as he neared the dark, huddled mass. “Get up! You’ve got some things to answer to!”

Lightning flashed again and, for the first time, Kaz saw that the figure before him was not the man in gray.

It was Delbin … and he was bleeding.

Chapter 5

THE MINOTAUR KINGDOMS

Water splashed in Hecar’s face. He flinched and coughed but could do nothing; his hands were manacled. After a few moments, though, he was able to blink his eyes clear enough to see … not that there was anything he needed to see. It was the same grimy cell and the same, squat, scarred minotaur, many years Hecar’s elder, who grinned down at the prisoner with a mouth only half filled with teeth.

Molus, so old he was completely gray-furred, was an enthusiastic jailer, ever delighting in ways to further strip his charges of their dignity. “Time to fight again, criminal. Got a good match for you today.”

Behind Molus waited four well-armed members of the State Guard. Scurn was not among them. Hecar had not seen Scurn since his arrest, though he was fairly certain the disfigured minotaur had graced the stands at least once.

Every muscle in his body ached, reminding him that at least he was still alive. By rights, he should be dead. Combats involving criminals of the state were usually balanced so that the outcome went against the convicted.

Hecar had fought two combats so far, one against two skilled warriors and the other involving a very hungry bear obviously taunted into savagery by its trainers. He had won both combats, in great part due to tricks he had learned from Kaz, but for some reason his captors were holding back the worst. He knew that many prisoners faced even greater odds. His combats were winnable, as he had proven. Hecar was no champion of the level that Kaz had once been; he was good, even better than average for his kind, but not great.

It seemed as if they were giving him a chance to live longer, and that worried him. It meant they wanted something they thought he could give them.

“Unlock those manacles,” Molus commanded. As one of the guards obeyed, he added to Hecar, “Today you fight an ogre … then, if you survive, Captain Scurn wants a word with you.”

Another fixed combat, this one more winnable than the others. What did they want?

I should have listened to you, Kaz. I should have listened to you —

Kaz? As the soldiers dragged him to his feet, Hecar wondered if he had stumbled on the answer. Was he somehow being given the chance to survive because of his relationship with Kaz?

Scurn might hold the answer to that, providing Hecar survived this latest combat. Perhaps today was when everything would begin to make sense. Hecar snorted, knowing that he had to triumph if only to assuage his own growing curiosity.

He almost pitied the ogre.

*

Kaz allowed Delbin to continue to slumber while he readied things for the journey. It was clear that he was stuck with Delbin. The wound, which had turned out to be little more than a scratch on the kender’s right leg, was the result of an encounter with a far-ranging minotaur scout who had chased the kender for several miles. Of course, Delbin admitted that he had been trailing Kaz, hoping to rejoin him at some later point. Kaz surrendered himself to the fact that he would have to allow Delbin to travel with him or forever look over his shoulder for the irrepressible kender.

The storm had cleared just before sunrise, but the sky was still greatly obscured by clouds. Kaz had the horse saddled and ready by the time Delbin managed to wake. The kender rubbed his eyes, looked around in temporary confusion, then smiled at Kaz. “It’s stopped raining.”

“That it has. How do you feel?”

“Better.”

Most kender, of course, possessed strong constitutions. Delbin seemed almost completely recovered. Kaz, who still felt some of his own aches and pains, marveled at Delbin’s recuperative powers.

“Do you remember now how you found me?”

“I just knew.” The kender’s face was all innocence.

Kaz dropped the question. “You were supposed to go to Helati and the other minotaurs. Paladine’s shield! You’re likely walking into danger if you stay with me!”

Crossing his arms, Delbin, trying to look firm, replied, “I’m not going back. I want to go with you.”

“Oh, you’re going to come with me, all right. I don’t really have a choice now. Any time wasted means Hecar might die … if he isn’t dead already. You should’ve kept going south, but now that you’re with me, understand this. Don’t stray. Obey every command I give you, even if it seems demeaning or confusing. You’re going to act as my slave as long as we’re in the kingdoms. I’ll have to treat you like one. It’s your only chance of coming out of this in one living piece. You understand that, Delbin?”

The kender was undaunted. “I understand … and I’m not afraid. Not with you by me, Kaz.”

Kaz released an audible sigh. “You’ve got too much faith in me … or did your man in gray tell you something else?”

“No, he didn’t say anything else in the dream.”

“Did you dream about him while you were riding south? Is that why you came back after me?”

“I only dreamt about him once.” Delbin seemed sincerely perplexed.

“You didn’t see him during the storm?”

“No, Kaz.”

The minotaur gave up. “All right. Mount up. I’ll lead the horse a little while until the trail gets better, then we’ll ride together for a time. Remember what I said. We may start running across my people, especially an outland patrol or something.”

“I’ll do good, Kaz. You’ll see.”

“You’ll have to.”

The sky never completely cleared, but no additional rain fell. The good weather stayed with them the entire day and the next two as well, by which time they had reached the empire’s southernmost border. They were fortunate, at least as far as Kaz was concerned, not to meet anyone else, but that changed as soon as the pair, both mounted, entered the first border pass. A party approached in the opposite direction. Kaz quickly made Delbin dismount. He then looped a noose he had made earlier over the kender’s head, tightening it just enough for appearances.

“Looks like a patrol, Delbin. You know what we discussed. Stay quiet and act frightened and obedient. Pretend you’ve been walking for a while.”

“Okay, Kaz.” Neither the kender’s giggle nor his smile bolstered Kaz’s confidence.

They were spotted moments later. The other party immediately turned toward them, cutting them off. The newcomers were indeed members of a patrol, one that had been out in the wilds for some time. The leader, an elder female with two fingers missing from her right hand, called for the two to halt.

“Who’re you and what are you doing coming up through this passage?”

“My name’s Edder of the clan Mascun.” Mascun was an obscure clan that Kaz knew about only because one of his close comrades, during the years he had fought as a slave-soldier, belonged to it. Edder had been a competent warrior whose lack of originality had finally gotten him run through by a Solamnic lancer. No one, not even a minotaur, ought to stand fast when a trained knight on a war-horse came barreling toward him with a long, sturdy lance aimed for his chest. In his excitement, Edder had forgotten that critical bit of common sense.

The female seemed satisfied with his answer, but frowned at Kaz’s companion. With her mutilated hand she pointed at Delbin. “And what in the name of Sargas is that thing doing with you?”

“I caught him trying to steal food from my camp. He seemed fit enough, so I made him a deal. He serves me or he dies. He’s found out it’s safer to serve me. It is only proper. After all, we are destined to be the masters of all soon enough, aren’t we?” Kaz looked meaningfully at the others. All of them had served as slave-soldiers. Becoming masters of slaves would certainly be to their liking if they were typical of the minotaurs he recalled from his own experience.

The other minotaurs nodded or muttered agreement. The female smiled. “Before long, maybe we’ll all have one of those.”

“A kender? Why bother?” snorted another. “Let’s just wipe’em all out. Let’s wipe out all the lesser races! All of Krynn will belong to us then! We should start with this one here. The only good kender is a dead one, eh?”

More than one member of the patrol seemed to find this an agreeable thought. Kaz decided to cut off the notion before it could gain further support. “And do you feel like cleaning the streets or dumping the refuse? Scrubbing the docks clean? Why should we do that when there are lessers to do it for us! We’re meant for battle and adventure, not demeaning tasks like that! If we are to be the masters of Krynn, then we must have menials to command.”

“I like the thought of a few slaves of my own,” agreed the patrol leader. “I spent all my life obeying humans and ogres who I could’ve squeezed to death with just this hand!” She held up the three-fingered hand for him to see, grinning. “I like that thought a lot.”

“And it’ll be soon, won’t it, Telia?” called one of her comrades.

She nodded, her attention still fixed on Kaz. “But not soon enough for me, y’know?”

Kaz grinned back. “I’d sell you this one, but I think I’ve got him trained real nice. Maybe on my way back out … if I’m tired of him by then.” Kaz urged the horse along. “May your ancestors guide you.”

To his hidden relief, Telia replied, “And yours.” She shook her head. “Watch that kender, though. Give me a human slave over one of those. I wouldn’t trust a mischievous kender.”

“He learned what happens when he disobeys.” Kaz showed them the wound on the leg. “Come along!” he snarled at Delbin. “We’ve got a long way to go yet.” The kender, mouth clamped, hurried to keep up.

“Mind you watch yourself, Edder,” the patrol leader called. “The clerics have been touchy the past few weeks. They’ve had the guard clamp more than a few in irons for not cooperating. Do what they say and do it fast, and maybe you’ll be all right.”

“My thanks.” He waved, then turned so that none of them could see his face. Whispering, Kaz said to Delbin, “You’ll have to hold out until we’re far enough so that they won’t see us. Then I’ll let you ride for a while. A couple more days, though, and we’ll both have to walk most of the time. The trail winds.”

The kender said nothing, but nodded ever so slightly. Kaz was impressed. Delbin was clever enough to know to keep his mouth shut, and trotted alongside the horse as if he could have done so all day.

They were troubled no more that day, though at one point they did see a trio of riders heading south. Kaz studied them from hiding. While he had nurtured the wild hope that one of them might be Hecar, none of them was. The riders stayed to another trail and soon were lost from sight. Kaz let Delbin ride a little, knowing he would soon have to make the kender walk almost all the time.

On the third day in the mountains, during their midday meal, Delbin looked around at the high peaks and said, with typical kender awe, “I’ve never seen mountains so high, Kaz!”

“They’re among the highest.”

“Were there ever dragons here?”

Kaz snorted. “Oh, there were dragons here, all right! Mostly blacks, reds, and blues. This was a favored ground of theirs during the war. More to the north, though. That’s where the warlord Crynus kept the bulk of his army. Now there was a true monster, worse than any dragon. Remember what I told you about him?”

As Delbin nodded, Kaz recalled the story he had related to the kender. Until his death, Crynus, a human, had been the Dark Queen’s favorite commander. Under his command, her forces had brought desolation to much of the northern and eastern parts of Ansalon. If not for Huma, Gwyneth the silver dragon, and Kaz himself, Crynus likely would have crushed the knighthood and brought Ansalon under his lady’s sway. Huma, though, had cleaved the warlord’s head from his body in an epic combat … then had been forced to find another way to kill him when that had not proven sufficient detriment.

Kaz shuddered at the memory. It had taken a dragon’s fire to finally rid Ansalon of the undying Crynus.

“Do the mountains surround the kingdoms?” asked his companion, breaking the spell of Kaz’s memories.

“No, they mostly run across the western side and through much of the southern. There are breaks north of here, and to the east there are flatlands, but the journey takes much too long if we circle around to the east.” He recalled something from his childhood. “They say that it was Sargas who raised the mountains right after he took the worthy ogres and turned them into minotaurs. The mountains were to protect his children while they recouped their strength and worked to assume their proper place as lords of all Krynn.” Kaz thought of his years as a slave-soldier and how often in the past minotaurs had been the slaves, not the masters, of others. The mountains had not done their job very well. “Didn’t protect us very well, considering he is a god, did he?”

Weather slowed them by about a day’s journey, but two days later they left the mountains and entered the lands of the minotaur kingdoms. At first glance, the landscape seemed no different from where Kaz and Helati made their home. The only change was a definite hint of the sea in the air and a steady wind that seemed to blow from the east. The temperature was also slightly lower, and while this did not bother the fur-covered minotaur much, Delbin required more covering at night.

A day later, they sighted a vast city far to the east.

“What is that place?” asked the kender. He had taken to staring wide-eyed at everything, even though Kaz himself could see nothing remarkable about the area. Of course, a kender tended to find almost anything he saw new and noteworthy, even if he had seen it only a couple dozen times before.

“That’s Morthosak, the seat of power in the kingdom of Kothas. Other than Nethosak, it’s the greatest place in the twin kingdoms. It spreads all the way to the sea. The port is actually larger than Nethosak, but because the imperial government rules from Mithas, there’s more activity up there.”

“Are we going there?”

Kaz shook his head. “No, and be glad. Nethosak has its dangers, but Morthosak has a few unique to itself. We’ll have enough to worry about in the capital.”

Delbin could not completely hide his disappointment at not seeing the port city, but Kaz would not be swayed. He still held hope, fading, to be sure, that Hecar was alive and in one piece in Nethosak. It was still a few days there, and the journey would be further slowed by his having to pretend that his companion was a slave.

Soon the areas they traveled through grew more populated. Larger villages and towns sat nearly side by side as the pair proceeded north. Despite the numbers lost in the war, the minotaur population was by no means depleted. A race used to the rigors of constant battle generally worked to see that its losses were made up for as quickly as possible. Within two generations, the population would be almost at what it was midway through the war, when Crynus had begun recklessly pouring slave-soldiers into the forefront, not caring how he wasted them if it preserved his loyal personal cadre.

Yet, if what Kaz had heard was true, the emperor was not going to wait until his people had fully recovered.

Not all minotaurs lived to fight. It was necessary that there be food to feed the race, so Kaz was prepared for the farms that they began to cross. Minotaur farms were not like those of other races, however, for the state controlled their use. They were lined up next to one another in uniform fashion. A director oversaw the management of each segment of the farm community. Each farm competed with another to raise the best crop, be it vegetable, fruit, or livestock. Honors and promotions were given out to those who achieved the greatest results. There were many rules of order governing how farms were to be run and what allotment of resources each was to receive. All very organized and efficient.

All very much a part of the minotaur way of life.

Delbin stared bright-eyed at everything, but few workers paid attention to him or Kaz, intent as they were on seeing to it that their farm ranked tops in their district. Corn already grew higher and larger than most Kaz had seen during his years of travel. Sheep in one sector were so large that one might have mistaken them for cattle from a distance, save for their woolen coats.

“Everything’s so big, Kaz! Did you see that cow over there?”

“Quiet, Delbin!” Kaz nodded, proud despite his feelings toward those who ruled the empire. “The race is constantly in need of fuel. A healthy child becomes a mighty warrior.”

The kender watched the minotaurs working in the fields. “I thought all minotaurs were fighters.”

“They are. Even these, who some consider the weakest despite the fact that they keep our stomachs full while we do battle on the field. A minotaur fighter is more than equal to any human or elven fighter.” If his people ever did conquer the other races, Kaz suspected that the fittest of the new slaves would be brought to the farms to work, freeing up many minotaurs. There would have to be overseers, of course, but few minotaurs would choose a life of farming over expansion of the empire.

Most of the farms were busy with fieldwork, but now and then they passed areas where the land was barren and had been abandoned. Kaz grunted when he noticed the first of these small wastelands. “The price of too much competition. They’ve ruined the soil.” He noted other farms, lush and active. “The others had better learn from that if they hope to survive. Can’t conquer a world if you can’t feed your armies.”

Kaz avoided the towns and villages at nights, opting for wooded lands that hid them from view of the roads. He kept their fires low, enabling them to pass unnoticed. In order to keep his companion entertained, since a bored kender was an especially worrisome creature, Kaz again told him stories and history whenever possible. More than a few of the tales he told so mixed legend with fact that not even he was certain what was true and what had been inflated by earlier storytellers.

He told Delbin about the minotaurs’ supposed enslavement by the dwarves of Kal-Thax. The dwarves had kept Kaz’s race slaves for years, according to legend, until the minotaurs finally overthrew and destroyed them. Other races often discounted this version of events. Among the legends of that time was one about a minotaur, Belim, who killed a dozen dwarves and freed enough of his fellows to begin the final revolt before he himself went down under the axes of half a dozen more dwarven warriors. Such acts of heroism were grist for the favorite stories of Kaz’s people.

However, the kender’s favorites, perhaps because of the emotion with which Kaz recounted them, involved Ganth, captain of Gladiator. On Kaz’s first voyage, he had sailed with Ganth and Kyri and visited an island that seemed all golden. It was not real gold, which had proved a disappointment, but the voyage itself made everything worthwhile. What Delbin found especially exciting was an earlier adventure of Ganth, when he and his vessel, on one of its first journeys, had approached a mysterious island of giant snakes and great birds. Here Ganth and Kyri had supposedly met Sargas and his daughter, the tempestuous sea goddess Zeboim. Sargas had not wanted to let any of the minotaurs leave the mysterious island, but Kiri-Jolith had intervened and Ganth had killed a giant bird while battling to escape. He and Kyri had married shortly after. Ganth had claimed the episode as the main reason why he had rejected the Great Horned One and become a follower of Kiri-Jolith.

“They had children soon after that adventure. I was their firstborn,” Kaz concluded proudly.

“What were they like?”

“Ganth was a bit of a renegade, someone who always argued against the established way things were done.” Kaz chuckled. “Which is where I get my rebellious nature from, I guess. Kyri was more typical, a good partner in battle. Of course, she chose to make Ganth her comrade for life, so I guess she was a bit of a renegade, too. They raised us well, kept us fit, cherished us.” The minotaur stared off into the distance. “When Gladiator sank, I mourned them well.”

“Oh.” Delbin looked down, momentarily dejected. Then he looked up again, brightening. “But you said ‘us.’ Did they have more than you? You never told me you had brothers and sisters!”

“There were six of us. Four males and two females.” Kaz hesitated, not having thought about his siblings in years. Since he had broken away from his people, he had not contacted anyone from his past, neither friend nor relative.

“Will we meet up with any of them?”

Kaz drifted off. “I don’t know … not Raud … he’s …” He lowered his hand, touching the pouch that still held the medallion. “Not Raud.”

“Who’s —”

“It’s late.” Suddenly rising, Kaz began to gather things together. “We’ve got more traveling to do. We’ll both walk. You’ll have to wear the rope again, Delbin. I’m sorry.”

The small figure silently obeyed, sensing that Kaz did not wish to speak more about his family. There were some memories too painful to recollect even after years.

I was afraid you’d pop up in my mind if I came back, Raud, Kaz admitted silently to himself. I was afraid you would haunt me again.

It would have happened regardless of whether or not Delbin had asked him about his family. Nethosak was where he and Raud had last met. Nethosak was where one critical decision had forever changed Kaz’s life.

It was where Raud had died.

*

Far off in the heart of Nethosak, death was also on the minds of two weary minotaurs now awaiting an audience with the high priest. They had ridden like the wind after the final debacle, leaving behind the last of the ogres, who was likely dead by now from the loss of its limb. The other ogre had deserted one night and fled back to its own kind, not wishing to face the high priest’s wrath. In their hearts, the minotaurs knew they faced punishment for their absolute failure, but pride, so ingrained in most of their kind, had prevented them from simply never returning to the imperial capital. Now they were both regretting the tug of that pride.

The antechamber in which they waited did little to ease their minds. Tapestries depicting the glory of Sargas, especially his punishment of those who had strayed from the path, lined the walls between high marble columns. Carved on each of the columns was the face of Sargas in his manifestation as the Great Horned One. The faces were all set so that they peered down in judgment at those standing before the entrance to the high priest’s sanctum.

The huge iron doors swung open, and a solemn acolyte clad in the red-and-black robes of his calling stepped out to face the pair. “His Holiness will see you now. You will speak only when spoken to and answer all questions completely. Is that absolutely understood?”

Knowing that there was no room for argument, the two minotaurs nodded. The acolyte turned to face the open doorway. “Follow me.”

With growing trepidation, they did, one of them pausing only long enough to stare at the huge relief above the doorway. The carving, a great dragon, seemed to stare hungrily down at anyone who walked beneath it. The minotaur shivered, then hurried to keep pace.

The room they entered was the size of a small arena and surprisingly lacking in decor. There were no windows, and the only illumination came from two torches a few yards ahead of them, one on each side of the vast chamber. The ceiling, what they could see of it, loomed high above, adding to the newcomers’ sense of inadequacy. Here they were nothing but cogs in the grand scheme of Sargas, small parts that could, if necessary, be easily replaced.

“Come forward.”

The voice was strong, commanding, and echoed throughout the chamber. The acolyte stepped aside, indicating that the two should proceed alone.

They had taken no more than three or four steps when high flames rushed from each side, abruptly illuminating the chamber. A row of bright, suddenly flaring torches led to a wide dais more than twice the height of either minotaur. At the top of the dais sat a great stone desk, the front of which also bore the face of Sargas on it.

Behind the desk, quill in one hand, rested the High Priest of the State. His hood and robe were much like the acolyte’s, but decorated with a trim of gold along the hood and cuffs and down the front. Beneath the hood was a thin, studious face, one more appropriate for clerical work than the rigors of battle.

Neither of the pair felt any comfort about that. Everyone knew the high priest’s brutal power.

“We are not to be disturbed,” the high priest commanded the acolyte.

“Yes, Your Holiness.” The acolyte bowed, withdrawing. A moment later, the doors closed, leaving the two newcomers alone with the high priest.

“You were given a task.”

It took them a moment to realize that one of them was supposed to respond. The taller of the two nodded, then quickly added, “Yes, Your Holiness!”

“Your name?”

“Tosher, Your Holiness. This is Cinmac.” At mention of his name, the other minotaur raised a heavily bandaged hand in solemn greeting. Blood had turned most of the bandage red.

The quill did not move. “Where are the others?”

Tosher swallowed, unable to answer. Cinmac finally grunted, “Dead, Your Holiness.”

“All of them.”

“Yes, Your Holiness … except an ogre that ran off.”

At last finding his voice again, Tosher blurted, “They came from all around us, Your Holiness! We were outnumbered, and those damned ogres panicked! We would’ve been slaughtered. We —”

“Silence.” The high priest stared at both minotaurs. “It was not that way, was it, Cinmac?”

“No, Your Holiness.” Cinmac clutched his wounded hand. “I can’t explain it. He was everywhere. It was as if he knew we were coming. I never saw one warrior so effective.”

“And what of the item I supplied you with? Why did you not take him with that? Who decided to avoid its use? Tell me.”

The injured minotaur glanced at his partner before replying. “It didn’t seem right. Not magic. We’re warriors! We know swords and axes, not magical talismans!” Cinmac silently cursed himself for volunteering for the mission, but then, he had thought the favor of the high priest would be invaluable. What he and the others had forgotten was that the disfavor of the high priest was worse to fear. “The blasted ogres surrounded him with the nets, and then we closed in. Don’t know what happened next. Some of the ogres just never followed through.”

“The magic talisman …”

Tosher snorted. “I used it in the end, but he was still too tricky! I made the trees grab him, but he climbed over them and jumped me. He knocked the piece out of my hand. The trees didn’t seem to care who was in their way. They nearly got me by mistake. They probably got him.”

The quill came down hard on the desk. Tosher and Cinmac both stared as it snapped and the tip went flying. The high priest glared at Tosher. “That had better not be the case. I want him alive … at this point. You two have bungled things far more than I could have imagined possible.”

With Tosher silent again, Cinmac tried to explain their failure. “He’s a champion of the arenas, Your Holiness. You said so yourself. I’ve never fought a warrior like that. Give us more soldiers, though, minotaurs – not those untrustworthy ogres – and we’ll capture him this time. He’s got only a” – the warrior shook his head in disbelief – “a kender to help him.”

Tosher snorted. “What sort of minotaur is that who’d have one of those little buggers around?”

“An interesting minotaur,” the high priest unexpectedly replied. “An interesting one.”

“We’ll sneak up on them in the night,” Cinmac added, “but quieter this time. You still want him alive so —”

“Most definitely.” An edge of menace tinged the cleric’s words.

“Well, so this time it’ll be different, especially now that we know what to expect. You take that axe, for example! It had to be magic, too! I’ll swear by Sargas himself that he didn’t have an axe when he appeared, but did just before he cut down one of the ogres!”

“Aye!” dared Tosher again, caught up in the story. “Out of thin air it came, Holiness! An axe that gleamed even in the night!”

“Did it now? Most interesting.” The high priest scratched the underside of his muzzle. “Enough talk from both of you. Even with this axe, I still find it astonishing that one warrior sent both of you fleeing. Is this the way of the warrior as you were taught? I think not. You fled from battle when you should have been willing to die on your feet.”

Neither of the figures before the high priest dared to utter another word. They knew that what he said was truth. Even Cinmac’s terrible wound was not excuse enough.

“I sent you to find one minotaur, one whose presence I require, but whom I do not want others in the kingdom to see again. You cannot track him even though I tell you where he lives, and then you let this one warrior … one warrior! … lay waste to your ranks as though you were children just beginning to learn to walk.” The high priest rose. He was taller than either of his minions, albeit slighter in build. His eyes burned down at the pair. “You have failed me. That is the sum of all your excuses. Even with magic of your own, which I reluctantly decided you needed, you failed miserably.”

“It was that axe! He had better magic!” insisted Tosher. “We would’ve had him if he hadn’t had the axe! We didn’t know we’d be facing that!”

“I grant that, at least. My sources were remiss. You did not know about the magic axe.” Reaching up, the narrow figure pulled back his hood. “That does not excuse your failure. As things stand, Kaziganthi de-Orilg will no doubt make his way into the empire and thereafter make known his presence to others.” He shook his head. “This makes my work far more complicated than it should have been. There is no room in my empire for such ineptitude as you two have exhibited.” The high priest’s eyes flared. “No room at all …”

*

A bell summoned the acolyte to the high priest’s chambers only moments later. He entered the sanctum of his master, but paused just inside the door. The high priest sat at his desk, hand on chin in contemplation. Of the two hunters who had been waiting, there was no immediate sign.

“Come forward.”

The acolyte obeyed, but as he stepped toward the dais, his foot kicked something. He glanced down and saw that it was a hand, half-wrapped in bloody bandages. Nearby was what looked like a foot and the hilt of a sword. The rest of the body was missing.

Trying to ignore the grisly sight, the acolyte stepped past it, then knelt before his master and awaited his command.

“There is a Captain Scurn of the State Guard. Send for him. I have questions I would ask that I believe he might be able to answer.”

“Yes, Holiness.”

“And remove that refuse on your way out.”

The acolyte rose and obeyed. The high priest watched, then, when the acolyte had departed, went back to his contemplations.

“I have waited too long,” he muttered. “I have waited too long to be delayed by one fool of a minotaur. When you return to my empire, Kaziganthi, you will have a choice. Join my grand plan … or be buried by it.”

Chapter 6

A SURPRISE REUNION

Nethosak.

Kaz found himself at its great walls so soon after passing its counterpart to the south that he almost wondered if the twin kingdoms had moved closer in his absence. He knew that the populations of Mithas and Kothas had multiplied and that Nethosak, as the seat of power, had grown even faster, though it was hard to believe that so much growth had occurred in the short time since the war. Even for a people as driven as his own, the changes were astounding.

Delbin was utterly fascinated by the city, so much so that he tended to forget that he was supposed to be a slave. Delbin’s supposed status as slave made it impossible for the kender to ask all of the questions flitting through his head, so Kaz tried to anticipate some of them to prevent Delbin from blurting everything out.

“See that building far over there … toward the center, slave?” Kaz asked, pointing at a tall structure with an arched roof. “That’s the emperor’s palace. Looks a lot like these buildings flanking us only much larger. These are houses of the lesser clans. The great clans are more to the north end of the city, though they’ve got a lot of influence down here, too.” Kaz then pointed out the temple of the state priesthood and the plain, boxlike building that was the quarters of the Supreme Circle. Kaz explained what each of the two groups was, then concluded, “Know them well, slave, for they decide life and death for all and are to be respected, especially by your inferior kind. It’ll be they, under the emperor, who decide the fates of all others when we come to rule this world.”

The rhetoric sounded hollow to Kaz, but he knew how much most of the minotaurs eavesdropping on them believed in it. Such notions were implanted in minotaur minds at an early age, and while those notions did not always sit well with a few, most of his people were well-indoctrinated through the efforts of the priesthood and the circle.

They passed through an area consisting of a number of the functional but hardly appealing domiciles in which the lowest-ranking minotaurs lived. The air was ripe here, and the structures, while not as decrepit as such neighborhoods in a human city, were dirty and needed repair. Only the streets, whose conditions were monitored by the government, were typical of the order and tidiness for which his race was famed.

As he rode slowly through the well-kept streets into more respectable and pristine sectors, Kaz experienced an involuntary shiver. He was not frightened, but being here unsettled him. Memories of his family, his years in the arena, his combat training, and battles as a slave-soldier serving the likes of ogres and dishonorable humans, all washed over him at once. Now and then, Kaz felt certain that he saw a face he recognized, but he never once stopped to talk to anyone. Someone was bound to notice him before long, but until that happened, he preferred to keep his anonymity.

He debated whether or not to go straight to the great clan house of Orilg and present himself, but in the end decided to delay. Having more or less severed his ties with the clan meant he should make his base at an inn, one that would tolerate his kender “slave.”

A small figure darted past his horse, and Kaz’s first thought was that Delbin was running amok in the city. Then he saw that the small figure was squat and dirty, a gully dwarf with a collar, a true slave.

It was all he could do to refrain from showing his disgust. If the minotaurs were using gully dwarves to pick up trash, then a kender trained to care for his horse and belongings would almost seem a logical progression – or illogical, Kaz thought wryly.

The buildings grew neater and more stylish as he rode, a sign that they were owned by high-ranking minotaurs. The nearer to the circus and the emperor’s palace, the better the quality of life in Nethosak. North of the circus were the major land holdings of the great houses and the clans considered among the most powerful in the kingdom … as well as the entire empire. Everyone worked to achieve movement in a northerly direction. Even the lesser clans, whose houses lay in the southern sector, coveted those in the northern neighborhoods. Orilg was one of the first, oldest, and largest clans to have built its domain north of the circus.

The eastern part of the city was near the harbor. After riding through crowded streets for nearly half an hour, then turning and riding east for an equal time, Kaz came across an area of Nethosak that he expected would suit his needs. An inn with the colorful title “The Bloody Axe” seemed the best choice. It was out of the way and looked like the type of place that would respect his privacy … for a price.

As Kaz dismounted, Delbin, who had been a true stalwart for hours, quietly asked, “Kaz, what’s that?”

The minotaur glanced in the direction the kender was pointing and snorted bitterly. The huge arena that caught Delbin’s attention was unmistakable even from a distance. “The Great Circus, the arena where important matters of justice” – he said the last word with distaste, knowing how its definition had changed – “and honor are settled. All grievances and crimes are settled by combat, and the greatest of these takes place each day in the circus.” He looked around apprehensively, but no one was paying attention to him and his companion. “Now please be quiet, Delbin. You’re supposed to be a slave. Your life very much depends on it.”

As Kaz approached the front door of The Bloody Axe, a stout minotaur, one of the few of his type that Kaz could ever recall meeting, came out. His face was as round as his body.

“Welcome in the name of Sargas, warrior. You’ll be wanting a room?”

“Yes, for myself and my servant.”

The innkeeper cocked an eye at Delbin. “A kender servant? First gully dwarves and now … kender? Can our day of mastery be far behind if we’ve already reached this stage?” His remarks bore more than a touch of sarcasm. Turning his gaze back to Kaz, he asked, “Where do you hail from?”

“Southern edge of Kothas.” Kaz gave him the same story he had given the patrol. The innkeeper accepted it without question, then informed Kaz that he did indeed have a room the two could use. As an afterthought, the stout minotaur asked, “Do kender make good slaves? I can’t imagine a thieving little rat like that being good for anything.”

“He’s adequate. But when I return home, he is going to have to start learning more duties in the stable.”

It was clear that the notion of a kender slave appealed to the innkeeper. “If you have trained him to be useful, I might be interested in taking the kender off your hands. …”

“I doubt I’ll sell him just yet, but I’ll keep that in mind.” And if you even touch him while I’m here, Kaz thought, I’ll see that you won’t have a hand left to beat any slave.

The innkeeper introduced himself as Kraggor. Kraggor, no warrior, obviously, commanded little respect in the eyes of other minotaurs. He served a function and was tolerated, but was low in rank. It was a wonder he had survived the war. A slave, however, would have to treat him as if he were the emperor. Kaz did not doubt that if he left Delbin alone at the inn, Kraggor would try to get the kender for himself. In the stables, Kaz informed Delbin that he had better come with him on his mission. Delbin, of course, was happy to be allowed to tag along, but Kaz wished there were some less dangerous option.

The pair drew stares as they walked the city streets, with most minotaurs reacting either curiously or indifferently to the sight of a kender slave. A few looked at the duo with mild disgust, but nobody interfered with them or treated them rudely.

Nightfall was almost upon them. Kaz wanted to reacquaint himself with some of the nearby areas. It might prove necessary to make a quick, unplanned escape at some point.

“Stick close to me, Delbin,” he muttered. “And remember to keep quiet.” Sooner or later he was certain Delbin would revert to his old kender mischief.

Memories continued to rise from the depths, memories concerning every aspect of his life. Some small children were playing sticks, a game in which one tried to trick one’s opponent into losing his or her staff. It was a precursor to the real training that would begin soon for these future warriors. Sticks had determined moves and certain areas of the staff could not be touched without a point going against the attacker. Children were encouraged to play this and other competitive games from the moment they could walk. Kaz noted the hierarchy already developing among the stick players. He saw one with great potential and two who might also become champions of esteem.

Kaz and Delbin entered a market still busy with bartering. If there was one constant in the world, it was the marketplace. Watching his people argue over the price of a new sword or fresh game, Kaz had no trouble envisioning humans in the same milieu doing the same thing with the same sort of gestures and words. He was probably one of the few of his kind who had come to realize just how similar the varied races were. In an ideal world, minotaurs, humans, elves, and the others would live on an equal basis, respecting one another’s place in the scheme of things.

He snorted, knowing full well that such a world would be long in coming … if it ever came. The minotaur race was proof enough of that, although they were certainly not the only ones to be faulted.

“Master?” Delbin called, smothering a giggle.

“What is it?”

“That minotaur over there’s watching you.” To his credit, the kender was subtle about pointing.

“Hmm?” He looked around and let his gaze cross over to where his companion had indicated. He saw no one who looked either familiar or suspicious.

“He’s gone,” Delbin said, keeping his voice low. “But he was watching you, K – Master.”

“You did well. Let me know if you see him again.”

They continued through the market, then entered an area where woodworkers and smiths worked. The smiths were especially busy. By now their counterparts in most human or dwarven cities would be slowing down and preparing to close up for the evening. Here, however, the activity was so great that it was clear there was no intention of quitting until much later in the night. Kaz eyed the activity with some interest. In the days of the war, the smiths had been very productive, as had the shipwrights and others with similar or related occupations. Now, almost a decade after the end of the great conflict, they were working as if war still prevailed.

Now that is interesting, he mused. Working under war conditions when there is no war.

Some of the minotaurs glanced up from their work as he and Delbin passed, but Kaz paid them little mind, caught up as he was in the question of just what his people were doing. Like all minotaurs, he knew that the emperor – all the emperors – preached for the day of dominion. The smiths, the shipbuilders, were always busy, but now they worked as if the war of destiny had been launched at last and someone had forgotten to tell Kaz.

Kaz stumbled, disbelieving. Despite the rumors he had heard from those joining his settlement, he could scarcely believe that the emperor, the circle, and the high priest could be that foolish. A war so soon after the other had just ended? Even with all it had accomplished since the end of the last war, his race had barely recovered. The effects of the Dark Queen’s drive for power would be with it – with all the races – for more than a generation.

His thoughts ever more fixed on the subject, Kaz did not notice the three minotaurs who looked him over, whispered to one another, then continued to stare long after most of the others had returned to their tasks. He became aware of them only a few streets and several minutes later, when the leader of the trio took hold of Kaz by the shoulder and spun him around.

The leader had a short, blunt muzzle, mud-colored fur that was thinning in some places, and red eyes that grew redder as he stared at Kaz. “It is you! I had to follow you to make sure! I couldn’t let you slip away again!”

“Who —?” began Kaz, but then he, in turn, recognized the minotaur’s face. The name escaped him, but he remembered the face from the circus. He also recalled a vicious temper combined with poor fighting skills that chiefly relied on brute strength.

“It’s Angrus, Sargas take you! Angrus!” The bull snorted in rage. His two companions grinned.

Angrus. That was the name. Memories stirred. Twice in Kaz’s early days in the arena, Angrus had faced him; twice Kaz had humiliated him with easy victories. Kaz had thought little about it, but Angrus, who appeared to have risen not much further in all these years, had evidently spent his whole life nursing a grudge against the minotaur he believed had humiliated him. Rising to Supreme Champion had left Kaz with more than one venomous rival, such as the more skilled Scurn. What little Kaz recalled of the minotaur before him included the fact that Angrus was a stupid brute who could never accept blame for his shortcomings, admittedly a trait common to his people. There were always those in the arenas who saw their defeats as the fault of others who had triumphed simply because they used —

“Tricks! You used tricks against me instead of fighting honorably! Thanks to you, I lost face.”

“Which, by this time, you should’ve found again,” Kaz returned. “I can’t be responsible for what has happened to you in the meantime.” He made to go, but Angrus spun him around again.

“I should’ve been supreme champion, not you! I wouldn’t have run away like you did!”

“Let me go, Angrus. I’ve no quarrel with you.”

“But I have a quarrel with you!”

“Then I’ll settle it with you in an arena after I’m through with the business that brought me here.” It was a lie, but Kaz hoped that Angrus would be stupid enough to accept it.

“I can’t go back to an arena!” the red-eyed minotaur snarled. “You did that! They won’t let me compete in the circus or any other arena!”

Kaz had no idea what his old adversary was talking about, but some vague memory of cheating and dishonorable conduct in the arena did come to mind. He did not recall the details. He wasn’t even fighting that day, as he recalled. But somehow Angrus had decided that the second incident was also Kaz’s fault. Minotaurs could be very single-minded. “Angrus —”

A fist struck Kaz in the stomach. He bent over, grunting. A knee caught him in the chin and sent him stumbling back.

“Stop that!” called a voice that he recognized as Delbin’s. “You leave him alone! He’s my friend!”

Don’t get involved, Delbin! he wanted to shout, but he couldn’t do more than grunt when Angrus took the kender roughly by the arm.

“What’s this? A kender slave?” Angrus laughed, a sinister, hacking noise.

A still groggy Kaz leaned forward and bowled into Angrus, who lost his grip on Delbin. Unfortunately, Kaz’s charge was not as overpowering as he had hoped. Angrus, his hands freed, grabbed hold of him and held him tight, keeping Kaz’s horns away. At the same time, the other two minotaurs seized Kaz by the arms.

“No tricks this time!” growled Angrus. “Just strength … my strength!”

He punched Kaz again. Kaz tried to roll with the blow, but it was not possible. The blow left him almost bereft of his senses.

“You shouldn’t have done that, lads!” announced a new voice, one that was strangely familiar to Kaz even in his present state.

The minotaur holding his left arm suddenly released his grip. Kaz pulled himself together and took full advantage of his partial freedom, spinning and punching Angrus’s companion under the jaw. The minotaur went flying backward, landing hard on his back.

The newcomer was battling the third minotaur behind him, but Kaz had no time to even glance at his rescuer. He faced Angrus, who seemed just slightly less confident now. “A minotaur fights with honor and skill, Angrus. You’ve got neither. You’ve got brute strength and no honor at all. I wasn’t responsible for your cheating. You’re no warrior, Angrus. You’re a disgrace to our people.”

Angrus threw himself on Kaz. The power behind his attack gave him a momentary advantage. Kaz, however, used a maneuver that Huma had once shown him, slipping free of his adversary’s grip. He then caught Angrus under the chin with his knuckles. Angrus grunted and stumbled back a step or two.

Kaz did not let up. He struck again, this time in the stomach, then swung again at Angrus’s chin.

Angrus crumpled as easily as he had those many years before.

Behind Kaz, another body hit the street. He turned and saw the last of the trio lying on his side, groaning. The other minotaur towered over his fallen foe, but his back was turned, making it impossible for Kaz to identify his savior.

“You did it, Kaz!” The kender gave him a quick hug of congratulations. “I thought they had you until he came along, but all you needed was a little help. And I was the first to pitch in.”

“Thank you for trying to defend me, Delbin,” Kaz said, interrupting before the kender could begin a much too lengthy rendition of the struggle. “You should’ve run off, though. They would’ve killed you. You understand that?”

The kender quieted. “Yes, Kaz.”

“Now that’s something I’d never thought I’d have heard from you, Lad. Not as wild and proud as you once were.”

Again the voice was familiar, but Kaz could not place it. He looked up and studied the face of the minotaur who had rescued him. It was older than his by many years. He could see that years at sea had weather-worn his features, though his eyes were still lively. In his prime the older minotaur would have had the form of a champion, and Kaz could only hope he would look as strong should he be fortunate enough to live to such an age.

“I thought it was you, Lad, but I could scarcely believe my luck. Have I changed so much you don’t recognize me? I suppose a few years lost at sea did make some changes.”

Lost at sea? Now that he looked closer at his rescuer, the features looked really familiar. If he removed several of the lines on the face, darkened the fur, which was partially gray by now, and managed to straighten the back a little …

“Paladine’s sword!”

“Not a name I’d go shouting, Lad,” warned the other. “The sons of Sargas don’t take kindly to competition. They don’t even like putting up with Kiri-Jolith … something they still seem to blame on me.”

It was impossible for Kaz to believe that the figure before him was still alive. Few ever escaped the raging sea, but if anyone could have … “Father?”

“That’s exactly what your brothers and sisters said, in the same tone yet.” The older minotaur cracked a smile. “Aye, Ganth’s back. The sea goddess hasn’t got me just yet.” The smile faded as he added, “But she took your mother willingly enough.”

“Father?” Kaz repeated, unable to think of any other word to say.

“And I’ll still be your father if you say it a third time, Lad. Now snap to and come with me. You and I have a few things to talk about, including a mutual friend who’s in a lot of trouble for reasons I don’t like to bandy about.”

Delbin peered around Kaz, for the first time drawing the older minotaur’s attention. “He’s the one who was watching you before, Kaz!”

The graying mariner shook his head. “And we’ll have to do something about this little one. By the beard of Kiri-Jolith, Son, you always found the most troublesome companions, you did.” He took Kaz by the arm. “Come with me. I know as good a hiding place as any.”

Still quite numb at the sudden reunion with his father, who wasn’t dead after all, Kaz allowed the elder minotaur to guide him away. Ganth led them from the area, winding through the streets of Nethosak with a determination that finally stirred Kaz from his stupor. This was indeed his father, the famed mariner and explorer. Older, yes, and with a slight limp, but not much off his prime. Somehow he had survived Gladiator’s destruction.

Except … only Ganth had returned, not Kyri as well.

“Here we are.” Kaz’s father brought them before a small dwelling. It was one of Clan Orilg’s holdings, if the markings were to be credited. Orilg, being one of the major houses, had influence in all parts of the empire, but especially in the major cities of Nethosak and Morthosak. The major houses had holdings in various city sectors, places where business was transacted and members of the clan could retire when matters demanded.

We’re more like humans than we think, Kaz mused, thanks to the years under the warlords’ rule. The humans had impressed their values and interests on their slave-soldiers. Now, the drive for influence and profit was almost as great as the drive for war.

Two minotaurs flanked the entrance. Kaz recognized neither, but as young as the two warriors appeared, it was possible he had known them as children.

Neither said a word as Ganth and the others entered, though one warrior glanced skeptically at Delbin. Kaz and the kender were led through a short corridor to an antechamber.

“You’re in need of some food, aren’t you, lads?” When Kaz nodded, Ganth smiled and led them in a different direction. “Then it’s the kitchen for us.”

Kaz found himself smiling also. At times Ganth had been even less inclined to the ways of their people than he was. During the long years of enslavement to Crynus and the ogres, he had dared to protest the way his children were more or less taken from their parents so that they could be “properly” trained by approved minotaurs. For two years after, Gladiator had been sent on a deadly voyage. Another time, Ganth and his crew had actually been stripped of their vessel and put into ranks marching westward during the second great campaign toward Solamnia. Somehow, Ganth had persevered and recovered Gladiator again, only to be sent on another mission of great danger.

Now Gladiator was lost, along with Kyri, his mate.

“Dastrun gave me this ‘prestigious’ post when they brought me and three other survivors back two years ago.” Ganth snorted as he led the pair to a simple bench and table. “Should be something left to eat here.” He banged his fist on the table. Moments later a young female, lithe and tawny, stepped out. Ganth did not wait for her to speak. “Give me whatever you can rustle up, lass, then you can go back to listening behind the door.”

She gave him a disdainful look, but obeyed his commands. Her eyes lingered on the kender as she worked, and it was not until she vanished through the doorway again that Kaz felt comfortable.

“Dastrun’s patriarch of the clan now,” Ganth commented as he tore apart a piece of dry bread. “Master Hestrith died a year ago, but Dastrun was running things before that, I’ve heard. When Hestrith passed away, the emperor stepped in and said that, due to the course our people were taking, it was necessary for him to appoint a patriarch with the vitality and dedication needed to help see that course to the end. The high priest and the circle sanctioned the appointment, and that was that.”

“The emperor chose Dastrun? As our new patriarch?” As with the emperor, the patriarch of the clan – who could also be a matriarch should a female achieve the position – was chosen by rite of combat. A council of elders in the clan usually approved any such match. Emperors had never dared interfere with such important clan matters.

“The high priest and the circle sanctioned it. That was that. No one protested. They were too shocked, I think.”

Dastrun was a cousin of Ganth’s. Dastrun and his ilk were more supportive of the emperor and the Supreme Circle than Ganth and his family had ever been. Many years ago, Hestrith had hinted that he would have preferred giving up his position to one of Ganth’s line, but after Kaz and his father had disappeared, it was inevitable that Dastrun would succeed the patriarch. Dastrun was a clan champion whose ranking was exceeded only by that achieved by Kaz. His claim to the leadership of the clan was legitimate, but there should have been more debate and the ritual of combat. That was how it was done.

Kaz had a twinge of guilt that he was partly responsible. His staying away had helped put Clan Orilg in his distant cousin’s grip. The deadly politics that had developed in the empire since the influence of the Dark Queen’s minions was one of the reasons why he had stayed away. Instead of achieving their status through honor and strength, too many like Dastrun had reached it through guile and deceit.

“You’re staring off into the sea, Lad. You’ve changed. You were always more willing to jump into the fray. What happened?”

It should have been Kaz asking questions. He wanted to know what Ganth had been doing all these years and how he had survived at all. Yet, instead he related his own story, beginning with his battle with his ogre captain, his meeting with Huma, and the change in his life caused by the legendary knight. Delbin had heard most of it many times before, but he still listened, enraptured. Ganth was silent, save for the occasional grunt.

When Kaz was done, his father finally unleashed a startling roar of laughter so loud it might have been heard all the way to Morthosak. “You’ve led a quiet life, haven’t you? By the Just One’s Horns, Kaz! You make me proud of you! I wish I could have seen all of that, or at least met this knight! He sounds like a warrior true, not like these puppets who now command our people.”

“Huma was the greatest warrior, man or minotaur, that I have ever known.”

Ganth ceased laughing. His eyes narrowed, and, in a more serious tone, he added, “I see. Then I truly wish I had met him. There are few such warriors these days, if I’m any judge.”

“Father, about you —”

“Forget me for now, Kaz. I spent several years on an island with half a dozen others, the remainder of a good crew. Some of them perished there, but I and a couple of others survived … not that it seemed to matter much with your mother gone. I kept thinking about the bunch of you, though, and that kept me going. That’s all you need to know, Kaz. You and the rest of our young kept me going … and now I’m glad I survived, because I can see that I was never meant to fight the final battle at sea. There’s too great a battle going on right here in Nethosak.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you wonder, Lad, how I happen to be around just when you arrived?”

“I assumed it was by chance … but from the way you’re talking, I gather it was not.”

Ganth smiled grimly, revealing a good set of strong teeth. “I learned long ago that there’s little chance in the world. Sometimes I think some god, probably old Sargas himself, is still out to plague me.”

Kaz nodded, interested to find out that he and his sire thought similarly.

“No, I wasn’t there by chance. I’ve been watching for you for more than two weeks, ever since he was taken.” Ganth shook his head. His horns were even longer than Kaz’s, but years at sea had weathered the tips, making them rounder. “I thought I’d never see you again, and then I found out that Dastrun’s bunch has known where you were for the past couple years.”

While not completely surprised to hear that the clan had been keeping track of him, Kaz felt a growing unease. If Dastrun had been monitoring his movements, it was possibly because the new patriarch was keeping a wary eye on a potential rival. He supposed that as long as he had remained at the settlement Dastrun had not cared, but if the patriarch discovered that he was now in Nethosak, things might be more precarious.

“Should I be worried about that?”

“Probably not. Dastrun’s not going to undermine his already shaky position by acting against a clan member of your reputation, Lad. Not directly, anyway. You’ve made the clan proud of you even if it doesn’t always admit it. In fact, you’ve become something of a legend to more than just Orilg.”

“I could live without that.”

“Aye, I know that feeling well.” Ganth drank some wine, then tore off a piece of meat. Neither Kaz nor Delbin could keep pace with him. “I knew you’d come. One thing that hasn’t changed is that you’re loyal to your friends … deathly loyal sometimes. When they took him, I knew you’d be by before long. Of course, I’d have done the same thing.”

“Hecar?” Kaz forgot the food and drink. He rose and leaned forward, hopeful and anxious at the same time. “You’re talking about Hecar, aren’t you, Father?”

“The same Hecar whom we both knew. Aye, Kaz. Your friend and mine. A clan member, too, though Dastrun won’t help him, especially as there’s no real blood relation. He’s got to know about what’s happened, but against the high priest and the emperor he won’t do a blessed thing.”

“Where is he? Where is Hecar?”

“Sit yourself down, Lad. You’re squirming around like a dragon shark about to dine after a bloody sea battle. Not as patient as I thought, though I can’t blame you, really. Just give me a chance. You won’t be going anywhere tonight, anyway. Not there, at least.”

Kaz forced himself to calm down. “Where is he, Father?”

“They’ve got him in the circus, Lad, tried and convicted as a criminal.”

“The circus?” Kaz knew what that meant. As a criminal, Hecar would be given an opportunity to redeem his lost honor by facing impossible odds. He would fight to the death … his death. The odds against him would always be too great, but that was how it worked. If he died bravely, he redeemed not only himself, but the clan he had shamed. “I’ve got to get him out of there before it’s too late.”

“Before you do that, let me say something. He’s fought three combats already, Kaz. Think about it. Three.”

“Three —? That’s impossible!” Hecar was good, but not that good. Not under such conditions as the circus would have imposed.

“Three fights that a good warrior like Hecar could win, as difficult as the odds were.” Ganth scratched his chin as he eyed his son. “If I was a suspicious sort, Lad, I’d think they were giving him a fair chance of surviving. Put him in danger, but danger he can handle. That’s not how it works. They’re supposed to give him impossible odds so he can die heroically. Makes me think they really want him to live for some reason.”

“What purpose would that serve?”

“Just a thought,” Ganth replied, shrugging.

“We have to get him out of there, Father.” Kaz paused, “I have to get him out of there.”

“Hecar’s my friend, too, Kaz, not to mention a former crew member of mine. I don’t take kindly to my lads being mistreated, not by the enemy or the emperor, which is almost the same thing these days. We’ll get him out.” Ganth yawned. “But a good battle plan was never forged by slumbering fools. We should get some rest. Hecar’s not scheduled to fight again just yet. I’ve got some friends who know about these things, in case you’re wondering. We can figure out what to do tomorrow.”

Kaz agreed, despite the urge within him to go charging into the circus and kill everyone who stood in the way of rescuing Helati’s sibling. “Tomorrow, then.”

“You’ll stay here. I can find room for you and the … Delbin here. It’ll be safer than anywhere else, and it will save us time.”

“My things are at an inn.”

“Yes. Can’t you leave’em, Lad?”

“Most, but not my horse. It won’t take long. I’ll be back soon.” Kaz made to rise.

“I’ll send someone.”

“The horse won’t like that.” Only those whom Kaz introduced properly to the horse could get near the fierce steed without risk. Delbin was one of the few he could recall who had not had difficulty becoming acquainted with the massive Solamnic war-horse. “I’ll have to do it.”

“I’m going, too!” announced the kender, who had, up to this point, maintained yet another remarkable interlude of silence.

“No, you’re staying here. Your kind isn’t cared for much. I’ll stay with you.”

“I’m going with Kaz!” The kender folded his arms, eyeing his companion.

Kaz looked into those eyes and knew that, if he left the kender here, Delbin would somehow follow him just as he had in the mountains. “I’ll take him with me, Father. If I don’t, I can promise you he’ll find a way to slip away. Better I keep him under my wing for now.”

His companion smiled. Ganth grunted, but held his protest. After a moment’s consideration, he finally said, “Then I might as well go with you and help. Besides, we’ve still got a few things to talk about. You know, they’ll be watching Hecar more than the other prisoners, if only for what he did.”

“What was that? What do they claim he did?”

The elder minotaur looked startled. “Didn’t I tell you? Hecar’s supposed to have killed a cleric … one of the high priest’s staff, yet!”

Chapter 7

THE HIGH PRIEST

Ganth’s words echoed through Kaz’s head as they made their may back to The Bloody Axe. Hecar had killed a ranking priest? That hardly sounded like Helati’s brother. Hecar was no murderous fool, forsaking all sense of honor to strike down one of the state clerics. True, Hecar had little love for them, but even he would not have attacked one without strong cause.

Ganth insisted there was evidence of the incident. Kaz assumed his mate’s brother had acted in self-defense. For some reason, they must have set on Hecar and tried to take him into custody. He had been warned about such happenings. Hecar might have resisted, knowing that his arrest was false, and in the struggle with the guard accidentally killed the cleric.

That made some sense, but did nothing to ease Kaz’s anxiety. A prisoner who was accused of such a monstrous crime would be heavily guarded. The high priest would want to make a prime example of Hecar … which made the fact that Hecar was still alive all the more puzzling.

Not for the first time did Kaz feel like an absolute stranger in the land that had given birth to him. Nothing made sense anymore.

Things had at least partially quieted in the neighborhood near The Bloody Axe. That suited Kaz; the less who noted his presence, the better. He was hoping he could get away before the nosy innkeeper spotted him.

“Do you have things up in your room?” asked Ganth.

“Yes, and it’ll make for less curiosity if I take everything. If I leave some things, they’ll wonder what I’m up to. Someone might start asking questions.”

“Then let me clear out your room while you take care of your mount. Just tell me where to find the stuff. I’ll leave a few coins for the proprietor so he doesn’t bark about your sudden departure.”

Kaz gave Ganth directions, then he and Delbin headed to the stable. It would take his father only a few minutes to return with his things, so Kaz needed to hurry. He hoped there would be no one in the stable. The less talk, though, the better.

It was hard to see in the darkened stable, causing Kaz to momentarily flounder around. Delbin immediately pointed out the animal. Once again the minotaur was impressed with the kender’s keen eyesight.

“Help me with the saddle, Delbin. It’ll be quicker if both of us pitch in.”

“Okay, Kaz.”

They completed their work in short order despite the dim light. Ganth had not yet returned, so Kaz decided to take the horse outside. He had just maneuvered the horse around when a voice near the entrance called out, “Hold right there!”

“It’s all right. This is my mount. I can easily prove that.”

Only after he had spoken did he notice there was more than one shadowy form blocking his path. The owner of the voice was now flanked by two others, and at least one of them carried a glittering blade.

“Kaziganthi de-Orilg, you will surrender yourself and your companion to us in the name of the emperor, the circle, and the Holy Orders of the Stars.”

The State Guard. Kaz snorted, wondering how the guardsmen had tracked him so swiftly and, more important, why they wanted him in the first place. He had done nothing wrong … but then, he doubted Hecar had, either.

“There must be some mistake. Why would you want me to surrender? I’ve done nothing to merit your attention.”

“You will surrender now,” insisted the leader. “Throw the magic axe to the ground and step away from it. Do it now.”

They were determined to arrest him. No amount of protest would deter them. Interesting that they knew about the axe and its abilities. Few minotaurs in the homeland knew. It could be no coincidence; the same power that had sent the hunters in the woods had also dispatched these guards … but who was it? The circle? The priesthood? The emperor himself?

Hecar had killed a high-ranking cleric. That couldn’t be a coincidence either. The priesthood must lie at the heart of the conspiracy.

The warriors began to stalk toward him, swords raised. Kaz took hold of his axe and confronted his dark adversaries.

“Put down your weapon,” commanded the leader, a little uncertain.

“I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m certainly no danger to our people. Why do you want me?”

The guard leader did not answer. Behind the trio Kaz saw two more figures. Here in the crowded stable, Honor’s Face would be limited. The stalls, the posts, and the horses would confine his abilities. Kaz didn’t mind risking his own life, but there was also Delbin’s to consider.

“The kender is of no consequence to you. Leave him be,” Kaz demanded.

They ignored him. A sixth figure appeared some distance behind. The odds mounted against him.

Raising his free hand, the guard leader signaled the others. The figure in back suddenly let out a loud cry and charged into the others from behind.

Taken by surprise, most of the guards were pushed aside. Weapons went flying. One warrior managed to charge Kaz, who met him axe to blade. The close quarters prevented Kaz from making full use of his weapon, but Honor’s Face still presented a respectable threat.

“Away with you!” roared Ganth, his tall figure looming over the pack of warriors trying to regroup. Ganth pulled one up and struck him in the jaw, sending the minotaur falling to the earthen floor.

Two minotaurs faced Kaz’s father. Another warrior joined the one already dueling Kaz. Against both of them he was hard pressed, unable as he was to fully employ his axe.

Beyond his attackers he could hear swordplay. Ganth laughed and said something, but to Kaz the words were unintelligible.

One of his adversaries suddenly shouted in pain and hopped away. Something brushed Kaz’s leg. Delbin, he realized. The kender had something long and sharp in his hands. Kaz identified the shape as a pitchfork the stable hands must have left behind. A brave, loyal companion as always, Kaz thought. It inspired him to fight that much harder.

Thanks to Delbin’s diverting action, he was able to press forward. Ganth, too, looked to be pushing his pair back.

A shout came from outside. The entrance to the stable was filled with more armed figures, one of which barked out commands. Reinforcements had arrived to help the beleaguered soldiers.

There was no hope of Kaz and his father escaping now, but there was a slim chance at least one could be saved. “Delbin! Get out of here! Run and hide! The southern gate’s only a short distance from here!”

“But, Kaz —!”

“Do it! I’ll keep them occupied! Do it for me!”

The kender had more of a chance on his own. The small figure was clever and agile. “Go!” Kaz shouted again.

Delbin dropped the pitchfork and obeyed, not even looking back. The minotaur fighting Kaz turned and tried to seize him, but Kaz thrust and caught him in the side with the upper edge of the axe blade. Grunting, his adversary slumped to his knees, hands covering his wounds.

Angry shouts informed him that Ganth was now under assault. Suddenly Kaz himself had three more warriors pressing him. He was backed into the stall. As he was pushed back near his horse, the animal reared up and, whinnying, struck out at the nearest member of the guard. The unsuspecting warrior was flung backward by the blow, but almost immediately two others moved to take his place.

Again the horse kicked out. Although he missed this time, the stallion prevented anyone from reaching his master. The reprieve was a temporary one at best, but Kaz was grateful to the loyal animal.

“Get back!” commanded a new voice.

Kaz’s opponents retreated. Someone brought a torch into the structure. Kaz found himself facing a minotaur with a scarred visage. It was another familiar face, not Angrus, but a more intelligent opponent.

“Surrender now, criminal.”

He was all too familiar, but Kaz was more immediately concerned with the bound figure four members of the guard were dragging forward. It was Ganth, still struggling. He was bleeding from minor wounds on one arm and his chest. There was also a patch of blood on his face, but it did not appear to be his own.

“Surrender, Kaz, or I may be forced to execute this old one here and now.”

Something in the voice made him remember. “Scurn!”

“Captain Scurn of the State Guard, Kaziganthi de-Orilg.” The way Scurn pronounced the clan name made it seem a vile curse. “And you’ll surrender now. Understand?”

To emphasize the point, one of Scum’s men brought the tip of his sword up against Ganth’s throat. Kaz’s father snorted in contempt. “No honor in the guard anymore, Lad?”

Scurn pretended not to hear him. “What’s it to be, Kaz?”

Lowering his axe, Kaz stepped forward. “All right. I yield to you.”

“Bind him.”

As two of his warriors seized Kaz, Scurn looked around. “Who has the blasted kender?” When he received no response, he grew angry. Scum’s eyes took on a reddish glow. In the flickering light of the torch, his eyes looked wild. “Fools! You let a kender sneak away into the city? Search the area at once!”

Nearly half the patrol immediately departed the stables in search of Delbin. Two others began prodding the corners and the piles of hay in the possibility that the wily little fellow was hiding.

“Lose something?” Ganth asked with a touch of mockery.

“Not as much as you’ll lose, Old One, after His Holiness is finished dealing with you.” He indicated Kaz. “Harboring a fugitive is a criminal offense.”

“Now what would the high priest fear from my little boy? What danger could he be?”

“That’s not for you to know.” As Scurn replied, however, Kaz noted his brief look of annoyance. Evidently, Scurn, too, would have liked an answer to that question. He obviously was not important enough to have earned the right, though, and for someone like Scurn, that fact had to be bothering him.

“Not in here, Captain,” announced one of the pair searching the stables.

“Then get outside and help the others. I don’t want you back until you have that little vermin … and don’t kill him! The high priest might want him since he rides as companion to this one. Anyone who fouls up will be speaking to His Holiness personally.”

That was warning enough for any minotaur. The pair ran outside, leaving only Scurn, the torch-bearer, and the soldiers holding the two prisoners. Kaz’s old enemy walked past him, eyeing the axe, which now lay on the ground, and then the war-horse. “Don’t worry about these, Kaz. I’ll keep them for you until you need them back.” He laughed, then picked up Honor’s Face. In the light of the torch, the axe gleamed. Scurn held it high, admiring the workmanship, especially the mirrorlike finish of the head. “I’ll keep them both safe, all right.” A grunt of surprise escaped the captain’s lips. He glanced at Kaz. “It reflects the torchlight, but there is only a vague image of me in this blade! What sort of trickery is that?”

“A minor one,” Kaz returned. And not surprising, either, he thought, to find that you’ve so little honor left in you, Scurn. He was tempted to tell Scurn the truth, that only those with honor were reflected in the axe face, but decided better of it.

“I’ll examine this oddity later.” He noticed the pouches hanging on the belt of Kaz’s kilt. “What have we here?”

Kaz squirmed, but could not keep Scurn from taking not only the pouches, but also Kaz’s knife. The captain put the blade in his own belt, then inspected the contents of the pouches. One bag he tossed away with disgust, no doubt having located nothing of value. From the other he removed several coins and, lastly, the medallion that Delbin had brought to Kaz from his dream.

“So, a souvenir of greatness.” Scurn snorted in disdain. “Don’t know why you kept this. You never cared about it much.”

If Scurn expected a response from Kaz, the prisoner was more than willing to disappoint him. Kaz watched his captor pocket the medallion. Then Scurn commanded, “Bring these two. The high priest wants to see them.”

“What would the high priest be wanting with simple folks like us?” asked Ganth, still maneuvering for some information.”

“You … nothing. Him …” Scurn used Honor’s Face as a pointer, thrusting it at Kaz. “He’s been in the high priest’s eye for some time now.” The disfigured minotaur snorted with laughter. “When I was told that Hecar was coming here and that I should arrest him, I was glad to do so, even if I didn’t know why. Now I know why … You were baited, Kaz, baited like a fool of a fish.”

One of the searchers came up to them as they departed the stables. He saluted Scurn. “No sign of the kender yet, Captain. It’s as if he vanished. No one’s seen him. We’re questioning everyone nearby.”

Kaz brightened at this news. Grinning, he said, “Looks like the high priest might be a little annoyed with you, Scurn. You let a kender slip out of your grasp and escape into the city. Nethosak will never be the same.”

Scurn spun and struck Kaz with his hand, sending the prisoner staggering back. “It might be that he’ll be annoyed about that, but we’ll find the little pack rat. He can’t escape Nethosak.” To the warrior who had reported, Scurn commanded, “Return to the guard. Get another squadron out. I want the entire southern part of the city searched from top to bottom. He’ll try for the gates at some point, probably before daylight. I want him.”

“Aye, Captain.”

When the warrior had departed again, Scurn studied both of his captives, giving special attention to Ganth. “Now I remember you, Old One. I thought you were dead.”

“I have a way of coming back.”

“Not this time. Not you or your son.” Scurn grinned at Kaz. “Now you’ll answer for everything you’ve done.”

“The past is over. It was settled long ago. I don’t understand you, Scurn. I don’t understand you at all. You still think about the past, even now?”

“You betrayed the dream, Kaz. You turned your back on our destiny. That’s the greatest of your crimes in my eyes. No one can turn their back on our destiny. You’re a coward. You have no honor.”

“Funny,” interjected Ganth, “but I was just thinking the same about you.”

Scurn looked ready to lash out, but chose not to. Instead, he turned on his men. “Well? What’re you waiting for? The high priest wants to see them both right away. Move!”

As they were dragged off, Kaz quickly looked around, searching for some sign of the kender. He saw none. Paladine, hear me, Kaz thought. Let him be careful if he flees to Helati.

There had to be a spy among those in the settlement. That was the only way they could know so much about him. One, possibly more, of the refugees was an agent of the guard. If Delbin went there, the high priest would hear of it. Kaz knew they would stop at nothing to satisfy the high priest … even if it meant destroying the settlement itself and everyone who was a part of it.

“Helati …” he whispered. No one would have any notion of the danger they were in, and Kaz could do nothing to warn them.

*

Delbin ran out of the stables, darting past a minotaur occupied with trying to subdue Kaz’s father. He felt terrible about leaving both of them, but Kaz had said he had to leave, and he always did what Kaz asked … even if he usually changed his mind later and did the opposite. Delbin was determined to rescue his friend, but first he had to make certain he lost any of the bad minotaurs who were dogging his heels.

I’ll rescue you, Kaz. You’ll see! Kaz was a true friend, the nearest thing to a family Delbin really had. Kaz always got uncomfortable when Delbin mentioned what a good friend he was. Yet the minotaur understood him better than other kender did.

Behind him he heard a minotaur shout. The shout was far away and probably didn’t even concern him. Delbin started thinking about where he should go next. The minotaur city was so fascinating that he kept wanting to stop and look at things, but he knew that Kaz was in trouble, so he had to hurry.

I have to do something to help him and Ganth! He liked Ganth, too, in great part because the elder minotaur treated him almost like a grandson. But what could a kender do?

“This way!” roared a deep voice, this time definitely a lot nearer.

Delbin looked behind him and saw an enormous shape closing in. They were very near, all right. He had the advantage of being small, which made it hard to see him in the dark, but he was unfamiliar with the area. It would have been nice to set a few traps for his pursuers, but he was in a hurry. Maybe he’d even have to kill a few of them, albeit in self-defense. Kaz would be proud of him if he did.

“Cover that street!” shouted the voice.

They were even closer now. Delbin spotted a darkened alley ahead of him and giggled. Like all kender, he was good at playing hide-from-the-bad-guys, a game all youngsters of his race learned in their childhood, just in case. The alley looked as if it led to another good hiding place. There were all sorts of good buildings in which to hide.

Delbin giggled again, then shook his head and whispered to himself, “You should be quiet, Delbin, because if you don’t, those soldiers might hear you, and then they’ll catch you before you can kill a few …”

He squeezed down the alley, then slipped through an even more narrow opening between two buildings. The minotaurs could certainly not follow him here. Delbin cracked a smile as he darted around another corner. This was actually fun. He just wished Kaz could be here to enjoy the game.

“Don’t worry about that!” Delbin whispered, reminding himself. “Find a good place to hide, then come up with a plan to rescue Kaz!”

He was certain he would think of something. He had always been a clever fellow. Had not Kaz said so? Delbin had helped him against the dark elf Argaen Ravenshadow and those nasty ghosts down in the cold south. He could certainly help his friend against a few stupid minotaurs.

“I’ll come up with a real good plan, Kaz. You’ll see! I’ll save you and Ganth and Hecar, and then we’ll all ride home together. I’ll make it a really good plan that you’ll be proud of and all the other minotaurs will be surprised about!”

Delbin, of course, was blissfully unaware of how Kaz, not to mention the others, would have cringed at hearing any plan of his. A kender plan was more likely to backfire on those involved than it was destined to succeed. Of course, to kender, that was part of the fun.

They just could not understand why others never seemed to see it that way.

*

Their captors dragged Kaz and Ganth to the temple, where the high priest awaited them. Inside, the acolytes were very attentive. One of them guided the party through the temple. He led Scurn and the others to two great doors. There, two more acolytes opened the doors, then stepped away. Scurn paused at the entrance, giving Kaz a moment to study the place in detail. The artwork did not concern him at all. What he wanted was some way out should the opportunity arise.

His eyes drifted to the carvings. Most, especially the faces of Sargas, were familiar to him, since copies appeared on structures throughout the empire, but the dragon was something uncommon. It was startlingly real. It unnerved him almost as much as the thought of facing the high priest.

“Your party may enter, Captain Scurn.”

The voice echoed throughout the nearly black chamber and caused the hair on the back of Kaz’s head to stiffen. Like all minotaurs, he had been raised with a healthy respect for the high priest. But, just standing there, he felt an unreasoning terror. This is nonsense, he told himself. The cleric’s as mortal as anyone else here. An axe in the hand will cleave him in two just as easily as it would Scurn.

Nonetheless, it was all he could do to keep from quavering when they pulled him forward.

Torches suddenly blazed, revealing not only the immense chamber, but the dais ahead of the party. Seated at the desk atop the dais was the high priest, who stared down at them.

Studious features were half-shadowed by the cleric’s hood. Kaz had met this particular minotaur before, but he could not recall when. Was his past out to destroy him? It seemed that everyone he had ever met was turning up in his life again, wanting to dispose of him.

Scurn led the prisoners up to the dais. Kaz was pleased to note that his captors seemed nervous, too. Everyone was afraid of this high priest.

The high priest leaned forward, studying the two prisoners. His eyes raked Kaz, then Ganth, almost as if he intended to dine on their corpses. The hooded figure studied them for a moment or two longer, then turned his burning gaze on Scurn.

“There was a kender, too, was there not? Where is he?”

Steadying himself, Scurn replied, “The guard is still out hunting him, Holiness. He escaped in the confusion when these two resisted.”

“A kender, a lowly kender, escaped a squadron of the guard? Are you becoming that incompetent? The kender should have been the least difficult of the three.”

“We weren’t expecting this one,” protested Scurn as he pointed at Ganth. “We were told to watch for Kaz, not the old one.”

“And who is he?”

“I am Ganthirogani de-Orilg,” announced Kaz’s father, standing proudly. “I’m a loyal son of the empire, which is more than I can say for these bits of flotsam. You should know me —”

“You will not speak again unless spoken to,” intoned the high priest, cutting off Ganth. He leaned back and studied Kaz again. “Kaziganthi of the clan Orilg, we have watched your activities for some time. Your reputation is both a credit and a shame to the minotaur race. You have fought bravely against great foes, but you reject the destiny of your people. You act as an independent when you must play your part in the great plan. Your place is here, working for the future that is to be ours, but you rebel, fomenting discord among your own kind. Because of your past, you could be forgiven, but now you return to the empire, attempting to increase your power at a time when all minotaurs are needed for the grand conquest.”

“That’s ridiculous!” snapped Kaz, surprising himself.

The high priest ignored his effrontery. “What you have achieved is admittedly admirable in many ways, but it cannot be allowed to go on, I’m afraid. For the sake of the future, a settlement such as yours cannot be tolerated. The minotaur race cannot be divided so. We must be one strong axe arm ready to cleave all foes in our path. No minotaur can be allowed to act alone.”

“I always thought we prided ourselves on our fairness,” Kaz returned, more defiant than fearful now that he had heard the high priest’s exalted words. “We are the race where anyone may become emperor, where males and females are equal, and where honor is individual.”

The high priest visibly checked his anger. Putting on a smile as false as his words, the hooded figure shook his head. “This is a time of sacrifice, my son. In the name of the Great Horned One, we must put aside some of our freedoms so that we can sooner claim the world for him. The time is ripe. The unity of the race is now paramount, greater than the personal desires of one rebellious minotaur. You should understand that.”

“I understand much.”

“Do you?” The high priest shifted. “I make you an offer, Kaziganthi. Talent such as yours should not be wasted. There is room for you in the empire, but only in service to the empire. What you have achieved in the wilderness could be put to good use here. Commanders who compel such respect and loyalty from warriors are always invaluable to the cause. You could be the greatest commander since Mesonus, who led the attack against the elves even though he and his warriors were outnumbered three to one!”

“Mesonus lost that battle, however glorious it’s been proclaimed since,” Ganth returned, snorting.

“You will be still, Ganthirogani. Think of it, Kaziganthi. Legions at your command. You are respected by humans. You can be feared by them in the same way. You understand their tactics better than any of our present officers. Your service to your people could lead to the throne itself before long, you know.”

“I’ve no desire to sit on that piece of abused marble.”

“Consider carefully. This offer is not made lightly.”

Kaz snorted. “That’s no offer. That’s a threat. I want nothing to do with your coming debacle.”

At a slight nod from the cleric, Scurn abruptly turned on Kaz and slapped him with the back of his hand, causing his head to rock to the side.

The high priest eyed him quietly for some time, then glanced at Scurn. “Captain, the criminal Kaziganthi is guilty of endangering the integrity of the state. He has become the focus of dissension and has undermined the authority of the emperor himself. The patriarch of Clan Orilg has already agreed that there is a debt of honor here so great that it can only be judged in the circus.”

“What’s that?” Ganth snarled. “Even he wouldn’t agree to such nonsense! You can’t mean that! What could have gotten into you, Jo —”

A member of the guard struck Kaz’s father. Ganth clamped his bleeding mouth shut, but continued to glare at the high priest.

Despite what had happened to his sire, Kaz remained silent. He listened carefully to what the cleric said.

“They will be brought to the circus, there to face a chosen adversary against whom they will be allowed to regain some portion of the honor they have squandered.”

“Yes, Holiness.” Scurn looked at his former opponent with some satisfaction. “You heard. Come with us willingly or be dragged, Kaz.”

Kaz smiled slowly, allowing both the high priest and Scurn to digest the smile. “Let’s go, then.”

His attitude disconcerted not only Scurn, but, much to his satisfaction, even the high priest. The cleric was quick to recover, however, “Remember, my sons, you will be fighting to recover your lost honor. Dwell on that thought.”

And at the same time, remember we’re not supposed to survive, honor or not, Kaz thought. He snorted at the hypocrisy.

“Come on,” growled the captain.

“One more thing, Kaziganthi,” called the hooded figure. “It is always possible for you to avoid this sentence if you see the error of your ways. Not simply you, but also those close to you.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

The high priest turned away from them.

As they were taken from the audience chamber, Ganth muttered, “I can’t believe what’s become of that lad! He’s turned into a foul creature, he has!”

“What’re you talking about?” asked Kaz, only partly paying attention. He had been thinking that despite their predicament, this was still an opportunity. Hecar would be in the circus also. This would be a chance to speak to him. Kaz knew the circus well, including the underground passages and gates. Once they located Hecar, he could see a possibility of the three of them escaping. Honor’s Face would prove invaluable there. Scurn might have it for now, but it would turn up when Kaz needed it. It always did.

“It’s him! Jopfer!” Ganth hissed. “He sailed on Gladiator when Hecar did, then went to work for a member of the circle. He was a studious boy who should’ve been seated in the circle by now. How, by old Sargas, did he come to be the high priest … and why does he act as if he doesn’t know us?”

“Jopfer?” Slowly the name brought recognition. That was why the high priest seemed familiar. Kaz had a memory for faces, even ones he had seen only once, but that had been years ago and Jopfer was much older now.

“He was one of Hecar’s best friends, once.”

Hands shoved both of them forward. “Pick up the pace and stop talking!”

Kaz grunted, wishing his hands were untied. To Ganth, he finally muttered, “Well he’s not one now.”

*

With some concern, the high priest watched the two prisoners depart. Kaziganthi was a minotaur of impressive personality, the type that could be a great asset to his plans if only it were possible to make the prisoner see that his best hopes lay in cooperation, not defiance. A minotaur like this one, however, would be hard to break, much less bend. The techniques that could have been employed would leave him a shell. Someone like Kaziganthi would grow only more stubborn under torture. The high priest knew that. He had spent lifetimes studying the race.

No, Kaziganthi and his equally recalcitrant sire were best left to the circus for the time being. If, in the end, the former could not be convinced to join, not even for the sake of his companions, then the master cleric would see to it that their deaths would make them sterling examples of what happened to those who defied the destiny he had worked so long to impress upon the minds of his children. Their deaths would spell the end of Kaziganthi’s settlement. There would be no more desertions. The plan he had worked on for so long, first for her, and now, astonishingly enough, for himself, had to proceed. There would be a master of Krynn, and it would be he.

I will let neither a rebellious minotaur … nor a potentially volatile infant … destroy what I have worked centuries to build, he thought. The minotaur will die in the arena if necessary, and the female … my female … will remain my permanent guest. So it will be.

Thinking of the other, the one who was most important to his continued existence, the high priest decided it was time to visit again his secret guest. If the fools who followed his commands only knew what she was, they would have fled from the citadel in outright fear. Fortunately, even she did not truly understand the truth.

By the time she did, she would be his puppet. By then, Kaziganthi de-Orilg would also be his to control … or dead and burned, a memory of ashes soon to fade from the minds of his children.

However, there was one matter with which the hooded cleric still had to deal. He reached to his side and pulled an almost invisible cord. A few moments later, one of his chief acolytes appeared.

“Yes, Holiness?”

“Tell the emperor I wish to see him … now.”

“Yes, Holiness.”

The high priest ignored the acolyte’s departure; his thoughts returned to the future. His future.

I will not let this opportunity escape me. The world is ripe for my picking … and the minotaur, if he will not obey, is expendable in the end.

Chapter 8

ESCAPE PLAN

Helati carried the infants outside and stared in the direction in which Kaz had ridden off so many days ago. She knew he would not suddenly come riding up to her, but the desire to see him was so strong that she could not help but continue to wait and hope. The twins were unusually quiet, as if they, too, watched for their father’s return.

“Not back yet, is he?”

She had been so preoccupied that she had not even heard the newcomer. Turning, Helati shook her head and replied, “No, Brogan, but it’s much too early. You know how long it takes to reach the empire, much less Nethosak. He will have just entered the city by this time.”

“Which doesn’t make us any less concerned about him.” Brogan walked up next to her and leaned forward. His voice was steady. “Just say the word, Helati, and I’ll gather the others. We’ll ride to Nethosak and help him.”

“I can’t do that, because he wouldn’t want me to do that. Kaz works best with little assistance from others.”

“Then what about that kender? I still can’t believe you’d tell that little thief where he is but not let us follow! What aid can one of those creatures give a minotaur?”

The twins began acting up. Helati hushed them. “You don’t really know Delbin or you wouldn’t ask that. He’s a kender, true, but he’s come to Kaz’s rescue more than once.”

Brogan snorted. “I find that hard to believe.”

The conversation died abruptly as the sound of hoofbeats made both look up. Helati’s heart pounded, but her wild hope that it was Kaz and her brother faded as she saw that the riders were unfamiliar. There were two, yes, but one was a male and the other a female. New additions to their community, they had a look to them she had come to recognize.

“May your ancestors watch over you,” Helati said, approaching.

“And yours, you,” replied the male. He glanced briefly at Brogan, then returned his gaze to Helati. “I am Zurgas, and this is my mate, Keeli. Is this the clan Kaziganthi? We were told we could find others like us here. Others … who have tired of the old ways.”

Clan Kaziganthi. Helati glanced at Brogan, who, despite their conversation, could not repress a smile. Kaz’s fame had grown more than either of them had realized if the settlement was already being called by such a title among the people.

“This is the place, friends,” Brogan replied, “and you’re welcome here.”

The two riders looked relieved, but Helati, despite her forced smile, was not. If these minotaurs had come to call the settlement the clan of Kaziganthi, then so did others. Soon, if not already, the emperor’s people would hear of this new clan, one that did not acknowledge the power of the emperor, the circle, or the high priest.

What would happen if they heard of this while Kaz was still in Nethosak?

*

It was not until the next day that Kaz was reunited with Hecar.

An older minotaur with half his teeth missing chuckled as they were led into the prison section of the circus. He eyed Kaz with great joy.

“I heard they had you in their clutches! By Sargas! It’ll be good to see you in the circus again, even if it’s for a short time!”

“What’s that, Molus?” asked one of the guards, curious at the jailer’s remark. “Who’s this supposed to be?”

“You’re young. You would’ve been a child. This is Kaziganthi, of the clan Orilg!”

“I know who he is.”

Molus shook his head. “You know a name. This is Kaz the Undefeatable! He fought his way to the rank of Supreme Champion! He was the greatest gladiator in all the empire! There’s been none like him since!”

Kaz pretended indifference but, beside him, Ganth smiled.

The guards were all impressed, but the same one who had asked Molus the question persisted. “If he was supreme champion, why isn’t he emperor or dead?” Those were the only two routes generally left to the supreme champion. He had to challenge the emperor and defeat him or die in the attempt. “What happened?”

Molus eyed Kaz with curiosity. “I don’t know why, but he quit. He abandoned the circus, abandoned everything he’d fought for. He turned down commissions, rank benefits, and every sort of glory that should’ve been heaped on him. He went into the war just a simple warrior!”

The others, save for Ganth, looked at Kaz as if he had suddenly turned into something distasteful. The guards muttered among themselves, trying to understand so uncharacteristic an action. Any warrior who had made it to the most exalted rank of Supreme Champion was expected to seek the throne. It was insane to work so hard and rise so high otherwise.

“Just why did you quit?” Molus asked Kaz.

“I saw no good reason to continue.”

“Maybe he turned coward,” suggested a guard.

“Him?” The jailer laughed. “Not likely. But it doesn’t matter. He’ll be fighting in a day anyway. You boys should watch. It’ll be a good battle, even if it’s a little one-sided.” He turned away. “Bring them this way. They can share the cell with their friend.”

Kaz and Ganth were dragged to the door of a dingy cell that contrasted greatly with the clean environment of Nethosak. Molus unlocked it, signaling the guards to put the prisoners inside.

The cell was dark, which was why they did not see Hecar at first. When the flames of one of the guards’ torches finally revealed the other minotaur, Kaz and Ganth dropped their jaws at the pitiful sight.

“He was … more skilled … than he looked,” Hecar muttered, forcing a smile onto his battered face. “I heard them … talking about you coming here. I’d like to say it’s good to see you, Kaz, but —” Hecar glanced at the other minotaur and frowned. “Ganth?”

Hecar had lost a great deal of weight, and scars covered his chest, arms, and legs. Bandages were wrapped around both his left arm and his right leg. He was covered with the grit and grime of the arena, not to mention a layer of dried blood.

“This is no way to treat a minotaur,” Kaz snarled at his captors, losing his temper for the first time since being led from the sanctum of the high priest. “By right of victory, even as a criminal, his wounds should be cared for and his body cleaned.”

“By right of victory, he should be a free warrior now,” Ganth pointed out, eyeing Molus. To his credit, Molus lost some of his good humor and briefly looked even a little guilty. “He should once more be an honored member of the race.”

“The orders come from the emperor and the high priest,” the jailer mumbled. To the guards he commanded, “Chain these two up next to Hecar. He can entertain them with stories of what to expect.”

“Where’s your honor, Old One?” snarled Kaz, struggling against his captors. “What has happened to the honor of the circus?”

As they forced the two new prisoners to the wall and chained them, Molus whispered, “You idealistic fools wouldn’t understand.”

Moments later, Molus and his guards departed, leaving the trio to themselves. Kaz’s eyes grew accustomed to the cell’s dimness. He looked at Ganth, then at Hecar. “What happened to you, Hecar? How did you end up here?”

“I don’t really know.” Hecar sounded better now that their captors had departed. There was a glint in his eye. He was obviously worn out, but evidently hardier than he wanted the jailer to know. “I’ve broken no laws that I can recall. I looked around, asked a few questions, and suddenly found others asking me questions. I stopped to see an old friend, but I couldn’t find him. That’s when they came for me.” He took a breath. “Kaz, you remember Scurn?”

“We met him,” interjected Ganth. “He brought us in.”

Hecar looked at the older minotaur for some time. “You! You’re supposed to be dead.”

“You should be, too. Give me time.”

“But Gladiator —”

“He’ll explain later, Hecar. Go on with your story.” Kaz needed to hear everything.

“They seemed interested that I knew Jopfer, but —”

“I told you he did, Kaz, remember?” Ganth said, interrupting again. To Hecar he asked, “And did you ever get to see Jopfer?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You would’ve, if you’d been brought before the high priest himself.”

Hecar snorted. “What does that mean?”

“What he’s saying in a roundabout way is that your old friend Jopfer is the high priest now.”

“Jopfer?” The other minotaur sounded incredulous. “Jopfer as high priest? This is a jest, isn’t it? A sorry jest.”

“It was him all right, even if he pretended not to know me. Imagine that. Me!”

“Jopfer?” Hecar still sounded incredulous. “Jopfer never cared much for the calling. He followed Kiri-Jolith if he followed anything.”

“Well, he’s the high priest now, and a mighty strange one,” Ganth concluded.

“Jopfer …” Hecar shook his head. “If he is high priest, then what’s he up to? And why would he throw me into the circus just for asking a few innocent questions?”

“They’re worried about the settlement, Hecar,” Kaz said. He told the other minotaur about what the chief cleric had said and how there had to be at least one spy among the settlers. “This is a nation at war. Everything seems tensed toward some lightning strike. They expect to use a fleet, but whether they intend to travel north or south, I don’t know.”

“I think it might be south, Lad. Good land down there. Makes sense to spread the empire where the resources are best. Doubt if anyone there will be expecting an armada of minotaurs.”

“Maybe, but I’d opt for north, Father. That place, Istar, is growing too, despite the effects of the war. It’ll probably be the next big empire. I’d go there. It would satisfy their taste for revenge, since we’ve been beaten back before, plus it would quickly remove the biggest threat to our western border.”

The old mariner considered that. “You could be right.”

“Which still doesn’t help us any,” Kaz added. He tried the chains, but they were of good minotaur workmanship and easily held despite his most strenuous efforts.

“I’ve tried that over and over with my own chains,” Helati’s brother informed him. “I’ve pretended to be weaker than I really am just so they don’t tax me in the combats. Now that you’re here, though, I guess they won’t worry about keeping me alive.” He grunted. “All I am is bait.”

“The emperor wants to tidy up loose ends before beginning his campaign. Kaz here was a big loose end. He was giving the people an option other than blind obedience to the cause. He told my boy to either join up or meet his end in the circus.” Ganth broke into a smile. “Strange as it might sound, I’m happy to say that he turned the bugger down.”

“I don’t think it’s the emperor as much as the high priest, Father,” Kaz remarked. “I think he runs the empire, not whatever fool happens to sit on the throne.”

“It’s still Polik, Son.”

“Is it?” Kaz grew silent.

Beside him, Ganth snorted in anger. “Polik, yes. They left that scraping cur in power even after he more or less played a puppet on a string for the warlords!”

“He keeps winning all of his blasted challenges,” interjected Hecar. “That’s enough to keep him in power, Master Ganth. He wins about ten to twelve challenges a year, all of them issued by him.”

“And he wins —”

“He killed Raud, Father,” interrupted Kaz, unable to keep the fury within him a secret. “He challenged Raud to combat even though Raud hadn’t achieved the Grand Champion level yet.”

“Raud …” Ganth stared at his son. “By the horns of the Just One!”

“Now that I think about it,” Kaz continued, “the combat had to be sanctioned by the circle … and it was, after support for the emperor’s challenge by the high priest himself. Not Jopfer, but his predecessor, I think.”

“Comes back to the sons of Sargas again,” Ganth muttered. There was still a trembling in his voice. “You had just become supreme champion, then …”

“He should’ve beaten the emperor, Father. Raud was good enough that he could’ve beaten me, eventually … not that he wanted to face me. Raud said he wanted to become a grand champion, then use the title to get the ship he wanted.”

“How’d he lose? How’d Polik beat him?”

How indeed? Kaz recalled the day of the fight. For some reason, he had been kept from visiting his brother, who was preparing for single combat. An emperor could issue his own challenges, in this way eliminating rivals before they were ready to face him, but never could anyone recall someone below the rank of Grand Champion being challenged. Grand Champions were the top gladiators of a minor circus, of which there were eight in each of the two capital cities, Nethosak and Morthosak. Only after achieving this rank could a warrior move on to the next level, the Great Circus.

Although Raud had not been a grand champion, he had risen to fourth on the list at his particular arena and would have achieved his goal in less than a year. Kaz now knew the true reason for the challenge. His other siblings, save for a sister who had just given birth to her firstborn and another sister, Fliara, who was too young herself, had all been active in the arenas; but none had risen as high in ranking as Kaz or Raud, the sons of Ganth and Kyri. They were often touted as the champions of Orilg with the best hope of becoming emperor.

Polik was a tool of his masters. He had been chosen more for his ability to keep the race under control than anything else. It was essential that someone like him and not someone like Kaz be ruler. The human Crynus had desired that. Yet, even the Dark Lady’s most devious warlord had known that to outright assassinate a supreme champion would turn the minotaurs on their masters. Even Polik would be unable to keep the revolt from spreading.

Raud had been challenged. Kaz had been shocked. Something was amiss, and he had tried to convince his younger brother of that, but Raud was too honorable and competitive to reject so important a challenge. He did not want to become emperor, but neither did he care to lose face.

They would not let Kaz see his brother, and so he had sat in the stands with the rest. His brother had come out onto the field, but only Kaz had noticed that he moved a little slower than usual and seemed hesitant. Nonetheless, Raud had made it to the huge, rotating platform where a combat against the emperor always took place. He mounted the platform and faced the emperor with determination. To all, save those who knew him as Kaz did, Raud seemed ready and able.

He died within a minute of the fight’s beginning. His reactions were too slow, his moves foolish, unthinking. There were only two ways to leave an imperial combat: victory, or death. Kaz could do nothing as Polik brought his axe down and ended Raud’s life. He could do nothing, not even voice the truth. Something had been done to his brother to prevent him from making full use of his mind and skills. It was almost as if he had been drugged or bespelled. The outcome had been decided before the start.

Furious, Kaz had almost leapt to the floor of the circus, but then Polik had glanced his way. The look in the emperor’s eyes said many things to him. He understood that if he challenged Polik, he would enter the arena in no greater condition than his brother had. More important, his other siblings would also be marked, not because they would ever be any great threats, but because of Kaz.

Shortly after, he had simply quit the circus, given up his special status, and been added to the ranks of the slave-soldiers. As it worked out, he was suddenly thrust into the war as part of the latest advance. It must have galled Polik that he had survived the war. Paladine knew that it galled Kaz to think Polik still ruled.

“The only way Polik could ever win,” he finally responded to his father’s question.

His statement was enough for Ganth. “Then we can’t expect much when they take us out there. There’ll be none of this foolish stuff they have been doing with Hecar while they preserved him as bait. Whatever we face will be ready and able to kill us.” Ganth tugged at his chain again. “Well, I’ll make them remember how I went down. They’ll be talking about it for years!”

“We have some hope.” Kaz leaned closer to the others. “We have to wait for night before we can do anything, though.”

“What’ve you got in mind, Lad?”

“Given the proper weapon, we could break out of here. That’s why they never give out weapons until we’re sent out onto the field. They can’t know that I have access to a weapon.”

A slight gasp escaped Hecar. “You mean Honor’s Face!”

“Honor’s Face? What’s that?”

Kaz told his father the tale of how the good elf Sardal Crystalthorn had given him the battle-axe, and the powers Kaz had eventually discovered the weapon contained, including its ability to materialize for Kaz whenever the minotaur needed it.

“That was the weapon you carried, and you didn’t mention all that sooner, Boy? I’d have liked to have hefted it once!”

“You’ll get your chance after we’re out of here.”

“Now I understand why you weren’t so disappointed when Jopfer had us sent here.”

“Where is the axe now?” Hecar asked.

“Scurn has it. For some reason, he couldn’t see his face reflected very well in it.”

Helati’s sibling grunted. “I’m not surprised … but I guess he’ll be a little taken aback when the axe disappears.”

“What about your little friend, Lad?” Ganth suddenly asked his son. “Think he’ll be okay? I feel sorry for the little one. I’ve met some kender, and they’re not too bad … from a distance. He’s a good one, though, a real surprise. I hope he makes it to safety.”

“They haven’t told us anything, which makes me think he’s managed to avoid them. I can only hope Delbin gets out of Nethosak and heads west or south. If west, he can join up with his own kind again and disappear. I’m wondering, though, if maybe he might go to the human areas in Solamnia. He always liked the knights. He might very well ask them for help.” Kaz shuddered, thinking what might happen if Lord Oswal or Sir Bennett took Delbin seriously. Would they try to send aid? He hoped not. That would only tangle the situation further.

“He’d go there all by himself?” Hecar asked, astonished the kender was capable of such a trek.

“You’d be unwise to underestimate him, Hecar. Scurn and his bunch have made that mistake. So have a lot of others since I’ve known Delbin. I cannot guarantee that he will make it, but he has a better chance than most.”

“A kender. He’s that dedicated to you?”

“He is. Never underestimate their kind. I know.”

“Well, his chances are better than ours right now, Lads, so what do you say we think on it while we wait for our meal … We do get one, don’t we, Hecar?”

The other minotaur grunted. “Some might call it a meal, Master Ganth. Some might even dare call it food. You’ll see what I mean, but I’ll warn you now not to smell it, or concentrate your hopes on the taste.”

Ganth and Kaz looked at one another. The former finally spoke. “We’d better see about trying to escape soon, then. Dying in combat in the circus is one thing, but dying from bad food would be an embarrassment to our ancestors.”

*

Delbin sat in the dark, in the small room he had discovered the night before, chewing on a piece of meat that had somehow found its way into his hands. Delbin Knotwillow had an amazing tendency to find just what he needed, just when he needed it.

I hope I can get him out.

Delbin was fairly certain that Kaz was somewhere near the circus. Had not Kaz said that matters of justice were decided there? Since he had been taken by the guard, he would probably go to the circus at some point. It sounded good to the kender, who was naive enough to discount a thousand other places the prisoners could have been taken. It also sounded good because Delbin wanted to see the circus anyway.

Delbin had no way to accurately measure time, but he was certain the other minotaurs had long ago ceased searching this area. Still, to go out in the daytime might be too risky, even for him. Kaz would have thought so, and Delbin was trying to think like Kaz as much as possible.

At least he did not have to fear discovery here. Delbin had found a small room in a storage building that was filled with equipment used for sailing … or so the kender had decided after a cursory examination of some half-hidden objects. Delbin had no idea what some of the other various items stored in the building were used for, but they had a military look to them.

I have to go outside soon, Delbin decided. Something terrible might happen to Kaz. Yet, still he did not move. He needed a brilliant plan.

He ate a piece of fruit that had accidentally fallen into his pouch, and wondered where all the food had come from. Fortune had smiled on him.

His journey through the city had been a fun time, despite the danger. Delbin had come seen gully dwarves running around picking up trash, and had used their similar heights to fool a couple of his pursuers. In fact, any time he thought someone might have noticed him, he squatted low and put on a befuddled expression. No one had stopped him, so he was pretty sure they thought him a gully dwarf, though Delbin didn’t think it was right that the poor creatures were forced to clean the streets in the first place.

He thought about Kaz and his possible whereabouts. Kender liked to talk, and so, with no one else to talk to, he went over matters with himself, the most loyal audience any kender had. “He should be at that big arena they call a circus but which really isn’t, because I always thought a circus was a fun place with animals and jesters, but this is supposed to be a really big place where a lot of people just fight one another, and sometimes they must fight animals, because there’s supposed to be a menagerie there, too, but I don’t think —”

Delbin absently took another piece of fruit from his hoard and bit into it. Swallowing, he continued, “I’ll bet they’ve got some cells really deep down below the big arena. They’ve probably got Kaz and Ganth prisoner down there. I’ll bet if I went there, I could find a way to free them …”

The kender thought hard, his expression as intense as possible for one of his kind. Delbin wanted to do his best to find Kaz and rescue him. Kaz would do the same for him, after all.

“I’ll have to wait until night, that’s what I’ll have to do, because then I can go looking in the circus without a bunch of big minotaurs bothering me. I can at least see what’s there, so that I can think of a really good plan.” The kender frowned. The topknot in his hair bobbed back and forth as he shook his head. “But Kaz would want me to stay away from there, because if I go there now and they see me, then maybe they might catch me —”

Delbin straightened, steeling himself. Even if Kaz got mad at him, he had to try to help the minotaur. Ideas began to form, neat, ingenious ideas … at least in the eyes of the kender, that is.

It would be so simple, so masterfully done … and even if there was an element of danger to it, the kender saw that only as added excitement flavoring this new, grand adventure.

“Don’t you worry, Kaz,” he whispered into the dark, eyes shining in anticipation. “I’m coming to save you!”

Chapter 9

A SECRET PRISONER

“I am disappointed in you, Captain Scurn.”

Scurn shivered as he faced the high priest with the news that the blasted kender was still at large. Scurn was no coward and, despite his exalted position, the high priest was more a scholarly type than a great warrior. In single combat the soldier was certain he could easily defeat the figure looking down on him. Of course, that was an opinion he would never dare voice to others.

The high priest was not alone. Acolytes lined the path to the dais, strong sons of Sargas, who Scurn knew would willingly throw themselves at him unarmed if their master so commanded. They stared straight ahead, but the captain knew very well they watched his every move.

“Holiness, the guard is still looking. It’s only a kender, anyway. A mischief-maker, nothing more! My commander —”

“Has nothing to do with this, Captain. You presented yourself to my subordinates as someone striving to rise in rank and who saw, wisely, that such a path must be harmonious with my goals. You have benefitted from my goodwill, but in return you have not given what I required of you.” The high priest leaned forward angrily. “I want the kender found. This creature is loyal to Kaziganthi. Not only might he cause unnecessary and politically embarrassing trouble in some kenderish attempt to redeem his comrade, but it has occurred to me that he of all of them might be used against the prisoner. This Kaziganthi sees himself as something of a champion to the small, I think. Therefore, I want him found. He cannot have escaped the city. The gates are too closely guarded. Find him. Do you understand that, or shall I endeavor to find out if any of your men can do better?”

“No, Your Holiness. I’ll find the little vermin. I will.”

Leaning back, the high priest regained his composure. “You had better.” He waved a hand, dismissing the subject. “You will be pleased to know that on the morrow the criminals will face separate challenges that shall give them a chance to recover the honor of their clan … and shall put an end to at least one of them if Kaziganthi does not cooperate.”

“Tomorrow?” Scurn was unable to hide his surprise. The leader of the temple worked in swift fashion. “Which one?”

“That is undecided, but I believe it will be the one called Hecar. His usefulness is at an end, but as the brother of Kaziganthi’s mate, his death will have a profound impact. It may be enough.”

“That’s good news, Holiness.”

“It will not be such good news if you find yourself joining them, Captain. I still desire the kender. If necessary, I will have Kaz’s family and friends executed one by one until he sees the error of his judgment.” The high priest steepled his fingers and sighed. “The fate of the cause outweighs the regret I feel for being forced to such dire actions. Kaziganthi is a symbol to many, Captain, a symbol that can still be wielded for the greater glory of the minotaur race … but only if he can be turned.”

Scurn got the hint. “I’ll double the number of soldiers involved in the search. By tomorrow, we’ll have the kender … though why the creature is important to Kaz, I’ll never understand.”

“You do not need to understand. That is my concern. Simply find this valuable little creature. And do so very soon, lest you share the fate of the criminals in the field.”

The captain swallowed. Then, realizing he had just been dismissed, Scurn bowed and quickly retreated from the chamber.

When he was gone, the high priest looked down on his subordinates. As one they turned their gazes to him, respect and fear combined in their eyes.

“What word from our own?”

The acolyte nearest his left side replied, “They find nothing so far, Holiness. No sign has been seen of the kender.”

“He has certainly not taken himself from Nethosak through magical means. I think I would have been able to sense that.” The high priest allowed himself a slight look of frustration. “Not that I would expect magic of a kender.”

An acolyte across from the first spoke. “Holiness, there have been rumors.”

“Rumors of what?”

“That a kender has been sighted in the streets. These rumors have not been verified. No trace of any such creature has been discovered —”

“But it is not the type of sighting to arise without substance.” He rubbed his jaw in contemplation. “I wonder … yes … the kender would probably do that. If he’s as loyal as reported, general mischief would be less likely. It’s more possible he will seek to emulate his brave friend. This is good. We shall let the kender wander about.”

“Master?” asked the second acolyte, not understanding.

“If the guard and our own cannot find the kender, perhaps the kender will reveal his whereabouts to us.” The high priest actually smiled. “A determined kender will generally find what it seeks, and this particular one, I think, seeks his minotaur comrade. I will have notices put up, reminding all that the criminals of the state will be sent into the circus on the morrow.”

“But how will this help us find the kender, Holiness?” asked the first acolyte.

The high priest grew visibly annoyed. “The kender has proven through his determination that he cares about his companion, the great minotaur warrior. He will, in his own way, seek to free the minotaur. We must see to it that he is encouraged to investigate the circus just in case he does not understand they are being held there. A way must even be left open for him, the better to trap the insipid creature. The guards at the circus must be forewarned. You, Merriq, for being so inquisitive, have volunteered to lead a group of our own people in searching the circus from top to bottom, after which you will coordinate the successful capture of this pack rat.”

Merriq bowed and asked no further questions, realizing he had already pushed his luck.

The high priest rose and leaned over his desk. “I think perhaps that some of you have grown lax in your work and, perhaps, your faith. We have been entrusted from time immemorial with the heavy task of keeping the vision strong, of preaching to the masses the dream of destiny set down by Sargas when he took a few worthy ogres and transformed them into the first minotaurs. The Supreme Circle is the arm, making certain the empire functions on a physical level. The emperor is the heart, the symbol of perfection that all strive for in battle. We, however, are the soul, and that is the most important of the three. If the people lose faith in their destiny, we have failed. The arm will grow weak and the heart will cease to beat. That is why you must all be strong, determined in your tasks and belief. There can be no room for the weak.”

The acolytes nodded, but remained silent.

Stepping around the desk, the high priest raised his hands high in supplication to the sky. “We stand as warriors in the circus of the soul. We must triumph, or our entire race will fall into the degeneration that befell the ogres. Merriq, you will begin the litany.”

The senior acolyte bowed, then, clearing his throat, began, “We have been enslaved, but have always thrown off our shackles …”

Around him, the others repeated his words. All closed their eyes and, imitating the high priest, raised their hands skyward.

The figure on the dais lowered his hands and watched those below, satisfied that there would be no hesitation, no matter what commands he gave them. They were dedicated to the dream, though they did not know he had altered that dream. They would do anything in the name of Sargas, but in reality it was he they worshipped. He was their god, even if they did not realize it.

Before long, however, everyone would know … and by then it would be too late.

*

Night crept forth, but in the cells below the circus it was hard to tell the difference between darkness and light. Only the change in guards and the fact that they had been fed at least an hour before gave Kaz and his companions any notion of the late hour.

“I feel as if I’ve been rotting down here forever,” Hecar grumbled. “If you’d not come when you did, it’s very likely I’d have lost my next challenge simply to put an end to this infernal monotony.”

“That’s no way to talk. A warrior must always look to victory.”

“This place has a way of sapping any such enthusiasm, Master Ganth. Trust me.”

“We still have to wait a few hours more. They’ll relax their guard by then. No one has ever escaped from these cells.” Kaz tried to make his voice encouraging. “We will be the first.”

Ganth grunted. “Maybe you’ll tell me how well escape even if you get your wonder weapon, Lad. You won’t be able to swing it too well from inside here.”

“You don’t know the power of Honor’s Face, Father. Trust me.”

“I promise not to leave your side just so you can prove me wrong.” The older minotaur chuckled for a moment, then grew silent.

More time passed. Kaz spent the time twisting his wrists this way and that, trying to find the best angles for what he planned. He could succeed with such a mad plan only because of the magical axe. Any other weapon would be either too dull and blunt or too unmanageable. Only his magical battle-axe had the ability to cut through almost anything as if it were water.

He had a suspicion that Polik would be in the audience in the arena tomorrow. He knew the Polik of old well enough to know that the emperor would want to watch the death of his onetime rival personally. That suited Kaz just fine. He had learned to throw his axe great distances with surprising accuracy. After that, the minotaurs would need a new emperor … something that, in his opinion, was long overdue.

Of course, if the high priest was also present, Polik might survive after all. Kaz had a fair notion of who was the true power, and if he had only one chance to throw his axe, Jopfer would be the one.

The hallway outside suddenly resounded with the clatter of arms and the marching of feet. Beside him, Ganth stirred and Hecar, who had been slumbering, woke. They listened in consternation as guards continued through the hall.

“All corridors must be checked! All cells lit! Let no space large enough to hide a rat be left unsearched!”

“What in the name of Kiri-Jolith is going on out there?” Hecar whispered. “Why are they suddenly so active?”

“I don’t know,” Kaz replied, “but it’s some kind of search. Maybe a prisoner has escaped.” He snorted. “Couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”

“Maybe they’ll go away soon and things’ll calm down, Lad.”

“Maybe.” This was no ordinary search, however. It sounded as if they were stationing men as well as searching the cells.

Sure enough, the door to their cell flew open and a pair of the State Guard’s men marched inside, swords ready. Each also bore a torch.

“You should’ve warned us you were coming, lads,” called Ganth. “We would’ve been better prepared. Sorry there’s nothing to eat or drink.”

“Quiet, you!” snarled one of the newcomers. Two of them prodded at dark corners with their swords, then double-checked with their torches.

“I’d be more careful,” Kaz added. “The rats don’t take kindly to being disturbed.”

One of the guards gave him a dark look. “The only rat we’re looking for has got two legs, and we’ll find him yet.”

The guards retreated from the cell. The door was once more bolted shut. However, activity still continued outside.

“What in the name of infernal Sargas is going on out there, Kaz?” Hecar strained to see. The occasional head or axe went by in a blur.

“I don’t know, but pray they quiet down and go away soon or we may not be able to try to escape. Even Honor’s Face won’t be enough to deal with all those soldiers.”

An hour later, however, it was clear that the searchers were not going to leave for quite some time. Kaz fidgeted. He knew how much more difficult it would be to try to enable any of them to escape if they had to do so from the arena itself. But there seemed no choice.

So be it, then. I’ll do what I can for them and die myself if need be. Kaz grimaced. And to think I swore I’d never let myself die in the circus, not for the pleasure of the emperor!

Kaz swore a new oath then, one in which he vowed to make certain that neither Polik nor Jopfer would find pleasure in his death.

The night continued to dwindle. Dawn had to be only two or three hours away. Kaz and the others had just about given up hope that the search would end when the halls suddenly grew quiet and the torchlight dimmed. Hecar nudged Ganth, who had dozed off. Kaz twisted in an attempt to see a little more of the hallway, but the bit of blank wall he could make out told him nothing. There might be a legion of sentries out there, and then again there might not be.

“Are you going to try it, Lad?” whispered his father. “Time is getting short.”

“Maybe in just a minute —” He cut himself off as a clicking noise warned all three that the door to the cell was being opened. Kaz stared, wondering who or why …

The door moved slowly, then stopped before there was barely enough room for a jackrabbit to slither through. A wary breath later, a small figure peered through the crack and smiled at the trio.

“Delbin!” Kaz barely managed to keep it a whisper.

“Hi, Kaz!” Of course, to Delbin the entire situation was probably like a bizarre game of hide-and-seek. “I found you! I knew it must be you in here when people said they brought in some warrior who didn’t have the sense to surrender against a full squad of the guard —”

“Delbin, what are —?”

The wiry figure put a finger to his lips. “Shh! I can’t save you now, Kaz, because the guards are coming right back and you can’t sneak into the places I can, which they did check, but they don’t look very hard or very well, and you wouldn’t want to hide in some of those places anyway …” He clamped his mouth shut, then, much more slowly, added, “I just wanted to tell you I think I found a good way to rescue you —”

“Delbin! Get out of here. I want you to get out of Nethosak as I told you to do the first time!” Only Paladine knew how the kender had been able to get in here, but Delbin was only endangering himself. He could not possibly help Kaz. “Go now!”

“But I wanted to tell you how I’ll rescue you from —”

“Get going,” added Ganth, ears straight as he listened for the return of the State Guard. “Or come morning you might end up helping us entertain the crowds in the arena!”

“You’re going to be in the arena?” The kender’s tone was so cheerful it grated on the minotaurs. “That’ll make it so much easier for me! Just wait!”

To their surprise, the kender stepped back and began closing the door.

“Delbin!” called Kaz as loud as he dared. “Leave the city!”

The door closed, but a moment later, the minotaur’s tiny friend pulled himself up so he could see through the bars. Still smiling, Delbin replied, “Oh, don’t worry, Kaz! I’m not going to leave without all of you! I’ll rescue you tomorrow, real dramatically, when you’re in the arena!”

Before Kaz could say anything else, Delbin abruptly dropped out of sight. Several moments later, a sentry thrust his ugly muzzle against the bars.

“No more noise! Sargas take you, you fools! You should get some rest so you can at least put on a half-decent showing before you’re all killed.” He snorted. “Now quiet down. Soon it’ll be first light.”

He stepped away from the bars as one of his comrades joined him. The second guard was more agitated.

“A representative of the high priest is here! He’s got men of his own, and they’re coming down here to search the area and check on the prisoners!”

The first snorted in disbelief. “We just finished searching this place from top to bottom at the orders of the circle! What’s a cleric going to find that the guard hasn’t?”

“We may find nothing, my son. But then again, we may,” replied a third voice. “It is not for us to question the wise actions of His Holiness.”

“My – my apologies! I didn’t mean —”

Kaz and the others looked at one another. One of Jopfer’s acolytes? With a new band to search the cells?

They obviously had not discovered Delbin or someone would have mentioned it already. That was some relief to Kaz.

“I am Brother Merriq. You shall assist us in any way necessary. Those orders come from both your superiors and the office of the high priest.”

“Yes, Brother Merriq.”

“Search there and there,” the prisoners heard the cleric command. “You search over there.”

“That’s done it, Boys,” Ganth commented sourly. “They aren’t leaving anytime soon. It’s to the arena with us. At least we’ll show them how a true warrior fights!”

Kaz shook his head. “I’ve got a plan for that, too. Riskier, but the only choice we’ve got, it seems.”

“Lad, what could you possibly hope to do in the arena? Is this something to do with that kender?”

He had momentarily forgotten Delbin’s plan … possibly because he did not want to think about what sort of wild notion had been at the core of it. “No, nothing to do with him. We can’t talk about it now, though.”

His words were truer than he thought. A new face suddenly thrust itself into the barred window. Calculating eyes studied the three forms. “This is them, then?”

“Yes, Brother Merriq.”

The representative sniffed. “Not much to look at … and even less to look at come the day. Their combats are scheduled?”

“Aye. Molus has the proper list, but I think the one who’s been here longer goes first, then the old one, and then the one called Kaz.”

“Change that.” Merriq’s eyes focused on Kaz, who stared back, determined not to lose this small but crucial test of willpower. “His Holiness would prefer that Kaziganthi of the clan Orilg be the first of the three to face combat. Here are his orders.”

The sooner I’m out of the way, the better? Or is it that you still think to scare me into renouncing my life and becoming your symbol to the masses?

Clearly Merriq awaited some reaction from Kaz, but when the prisoner did not satisfy his desires, the robed figure turned from the door. “I trust there will be no trouble seeing to it that the change in schedule is made.”

“No, Brother Merriq! I’ll alert the Master of Combat even now if you like.”

“Simply tell him when he arrives. That should prove sufficient, don’t you think? He will not argue with it much, will he?”

“As you say, Brother Merriq.”

“Open the cell door.”

“Yes, Brother Merriq.” The door rattled, then swung wide enough to admit both the high priest’s man and one of the sentries.”

As he entered, Merriq looked around. “This cell was searched from rafter to floor? All corners?”

“Aye, Brother.”

“Then it should be secure, I suppose.” The tall, robed figure strode over to the captives and stared down at Kaz. “You are Kaziganthi de-Orilg.”

“Since you were there when I was brought to your master, that should come as no surprise, even to you.”

“A flippant tongue, typical of a heretic and traitor. Also typical of a fool. One would think you might start pleading for clemency by this time.”

Kaz snorted. “Now what good would that do? Your master would never grant it, and we both know that.”

“True, but you could try anyway.” Merriq squatted, the better to stare Kaz in the eye. “Things could be made easier for you and your friends if you would change your mind. His Holiness has offered you such as most warriors only dream of achieving. Only a fool or a lunatic would reject such glories.”

“I can only give you the same answer I’d give your master again. I’m no one’s puppet. It would go against my honor … which might be something you’d never understand, Brother Merriq.”

The cleric glared, but did not respond to the slight. “It would also be wise to tell us where the kender is. He will only come to worse if he is not placed safely in custody.”

“Hopefully, he’s far from Nethosak and far from your reach.”

“He is still in the city,” Merriq returned. “We are certain of that. You would do him a great favor by telling us where to find him. There are many ways to die.”

“I think the man must be deaf, Kaz.” Ganth shook his head. “He asks a question, gets an answer, then asks the question again.”

Kaz grunted. To his inquisitor he said, “As if your master cares about a kender’s safety.”

“The high priest cares about all the children of Sargas, even those of the lesser races.”

The high priest wanted Delbin alive … alive to use as a threat against Kaz. More and more, Kaz wondered what sort of game Jopfer was playing. Even the emperor and the Supreme Circle might not know Jopfer’s agenda.

“I can see there is nothing to be gained in trying to talk sense to you,” Merriq remarked. “Very well. Then, by the will of Sargas, I pray you fight well tomorrow and, by doing so, redeem your lost honor in the eyes of your fellows. Fight well and your memory may still be honored.”

Merriq departed without a second glance. The warrior who had let him in gave Kaz and the others an almost sympathetic glance before quickly following.

“We must search down this hallway again. If the kender shows up, he will have to make use of one of these exits,” Merriq said to someone. His voice dwindled as he moved off. However, guards still continued to move through the corridor and Kaz could make out the horns of a sentry on duty across from his cell door. He suspected it was one of the temple soldiers and not one of the State Guard’s men.

“That’s it, then, Lads. It’s the arena for certain now.”

“What can we do?” asked Hecar. “Kaz goes first. You heard that robed serpent. They want him first so he’s out of the way as swiftly as possible. Why don’t they just kill us in here?”

“Now that wouldn’t be sporting, Hecar! Must keep up illusions, our high priest. Besides, I think you, Kaz, are supposed to live. Hecar and I, we are more likely to be the object lessons. Still, I could be wrong. I’m certain that more than a few will remember my son and the last time he was out there. Maybe this is also an attempt to prove that no one can defy the emperor and the others.” Ganth shook his head. “I don’t know what to think.”

“The emperor? No real need to defy him.” Hecar grunted. “Polik’s the high priest’s puppet. That’s obvious.”

“Worse than that,” Kaz responded, finally stirring from his thoughts. “Jopfer’s got the Supreme Circle in the palm of his hand, too, I’d say. Which doesn’t matter for the moment, I suppose. What matters is us getting out.” He forced a smile that he hoped looked cunning. “You two be prepared to act tomorrow. Watch me. As soon as I move, you’ve got to head down a certain tunnel across the field that I’ll point out. It’s the quickest and easiest way out. They keep the animals they use in the circus in that area. There’ll be fewer sentries on duty there. In a situation of great chaos, it won’t be that hard for you to slip free.”

“What about you, Lad?”

“I’m the great chaos,” he said. “And I’ll be right behind you,” he added, lying.

Hecar’s brow was furrowed. “What sort of situation could cause enough chaos to make them ignore us?”

“You’ll be better off not knowing. Just trust me. It’ll work.” He had his doubts, but did not voice them.

“What about Delbin, though, Kaz? He said he had something in mind. What happens if he puts whatever mad idea he has to work just as you’re about to put your own plan into play?”

Kaz did not want to consider that particular problem. Hopefully, Delbin would follow his wishes and leave Nethosak. If not …

“Pray Paladine and Kiri-Jolith can use some good warriors at their side, because if they don’t, old Sargas is going to have the last laugh in the afterlife.”

*

Delbin returned to his hiding place with little more than two hours of darkness left.

“Well, I found them,” he said to himself, speaking quietly but firmly in order to keep his thoughts organized the way he thought Kaz would in his position. “They’re in a place under the circus, but it’s not a very nice-looking place, and it’s got rats in some places, which seems strange, since everything aboveground is so clean. They’re locked up, and I would’ve gotten them out except some minotaurs in funny black-and-red robes who I heard worship Sargas, who is a peculiar god to worship since he’s not very nice, came in and started looking for me. I had a good talk with Kaz and told him I’d be back because while I was there I got a great idea for a really big diversion that’ll keep everyone there busy while they escape.” He smiled in the dark, pleased with his personal rundown of events. Kaz would have been proud of him, Delbin was certain, even if the minotaur had declared he ought to leave the kingdom.

The kender set to work on his master plan. Everything was falling into place.

*

The high priest did not sleep as others slept. Sometimes he thought and plotted; other times he simply paced. Soon he could reveal the glorious truth to his children. Until then, however …

This dark morning, dark because there was at least an hour before sunrise, he had to visit his guest. She had grown unsettled of late, something which in turn unsettled the high priest. In the short time since she had become his guest, a decision not of her making, she had been, for the most part, quiet and frightened. The high priest preferred that. He encouraged those emotions, while at the same time being careful that she did not come to harm. Her good health was vital to everything. She had to be kept secured, but otherwise he made certain she did not hunger much or grow unduly ill.

Deep below the main part of the temple, in the special cells in which declared heretics were once placed, she awaited. The cleric walked unescorted past empty cells, turning corner after corner until at last he found the only one presently occupied.

Something scurried away from the door of the cell, a short, dumpy little figure whose presence disgusted him. “What are you doing there? Get away from that door!”

“Sorry, Great One! Sorry! Galump mean nothing!”

“Get away from here! Go back to your garbage! If I see you here again …” He let the threat trail off as the gully dwarf scurried away. If the little creature had not been trained to perform certain acts of spying for the priesthood, the high priest would have dealt with him there and then.

A slight clink from within the cell informed him that his guest was awake. Had she been talking to the foul little creature? The only other ones she saw were the guards that watched the corridors. But they were strictly forbidden to speak to her. No one was allowed to speak to her but him.

Moving to the door, he peered into darkness. “You are awake, my little one, so do not pretend otherwise.”

From the darkness of the cell there came the sound of chains clanking. A moment later, the prisoner appeared out of the darkness.

In Solamnia, Ergoth, or any of the human lands, she would have seemed perfectly in place. Here in the empire, she was a striking contrast. Humans were not often seen or well-liked here, especially after years of domination by the warlords. Crynus had left a legacy of hatred.

“What do you want of me? Why can’t I go home?”

She appeared young, perhaps fifteen, sixteen summers if he was a judge of human looks, but the cleric knew appearances could be very deceiving, and the girl was perhaps the greatest deceiver of all. Her innocent face, draped by long, silver hair that might have seemed more appropriate to an elf, belied what he and he alone knew to be the truth: there was power within her.

“This is your home, female. This will always be your home. Understand that now, and all other things will become much easier for you to accept.” He indicated the cell. “You have a comfortable chamber. I have seen to that. The chains are required since you have yet to acknowledge that I am your master. My will is your will. When you truly accept that, then they may be removed.”

“I want to go home!”

“What home is that? What life do you recall other than wandering by yourself, surviving by yourself, in the mountains and forests? Running from others who understand less than you yourself do. Surviving on what you were able to scrounge.” Despite himself, the high priest grew angry. “Is that what you think your life was meant to be? Do you realize the danger you face, not having been trained in your abilities? You could be killed, either intentionally or accidentally. Do you know what that would mean?”

Her frightened yet still perplexed expression infuriated him. There was much he wanted to tell her, information he needed her to know in order to better understand. But to tell her this soon was to increase the potential of a deadly threat.

“I don’t understand you at all,” she insisted. “You keep talking as if I’m so very important to you. Of what importance can I be to you? I don’t even know you.”

“You are very intelligent, female, despite a lack of training. You have always known more, learned easier, than those around you. Look into yourself, then look into my eyes and see how closely we are linked. Look closely …”

She raised her hands, palms toward him. “No!”

Her hands glowed white.

The chains shimmered blue.

With a gasp, the young girl slipped to her knees, barely able to keep from falling to the floor. As her hands ceased glowing, the chains did the same.

“That is an object lesson. You must cease attempting to defy me. I do not like having to hurt you, but I will be obeyed. There is too much at stake here. I have worked too long for either you or a recalcitrant minotaur to disrupt things.”

The girl did not answer him. The high priest frowned, deciding this was a waste of his precious time. The female had been in moods like this before. It was a sign of her childishness. Under his tutelage, such moods would soon become a thing of the past.

“Sleep now,” he finally commanded. “Tomorrow we will talk again. Tomorrow we will begin new lessons.”

As he turned and walked away, he heard her begin to cry. The sound encouraged him. She was at last beginning to break. Soon she would be his obedient servant … and her power, matched with his, would make his dream unstoppable.

Chapter 10

THE GREAT CIRCUS

Molus was not as enthusiastic as Kaz would have expected him to be. He soon found out why. Word of the cleric’s command to make Kaz the first of the three prisoners to face death had reached the jailer, and the older minotaur was clearly put out by the new orders.

“No sense of timing and drama when it comes to the arena! We should lead off with your friend, who’s been out there before and whose blood the spectators are ready to see, then schedule your father, who should make for a good warm-up. Then, and only then, should you go in, Kaziganthi! By Sargas! You should really be the last battle of the day! Word’s gotten around, and there’re plenty who recall or have heard of you. Heard some good bets as to how long you’ll last …’course it depends on who or what you face, doesn’t it?”

“And would you happen to know?” asked Kaz. He would prefer to know whether he was going to face several gladiators or possibly a savage animal or two. His attack would be timed accordingly.

“I do know, but it’s going to be a surprise. The emperor’s own orders. Doesn’t want you too prepared, I’d guess. He remembers you well.”

“I remember him, too.”

Molus studied his expression. “I’ll just bet you do.”

“At least am I going to be allowed a weapon?”

As they talked, guards had been busy preparing all three. Kaz was counting on the trio being taken up to the waiting area together. That had always been the habit in times past, and he was pleased to see that in typical minotaur fashion no one had bothered to fiddle with tradition. Had Hecar and Ganth been left behind, Kaz would have been hard pressed to devise an escape plan.

“Aye, you’ll be carrying a short sword.”

Short sword. That probably meant he was fighting another warrior. Kaz was glad to hear that. If so, he wouldn’t have to worry about the unpredictability of animals. Gladiators, on the other hand, were quite predictable.

Bracelets replaced the wall chains. Kaz and the others were then led out of the cell and down the corridor leading to the vast field of the arena. Vaguely familiar with the path from years ago, Kaz estimated the time the others would need to escape once they made it across the field. Four minutes, maybe five, to traverse the long corridor through the menagerie. That, of course, did not include any resistance they might meet, but the menagerie was generally guarded by only a pair of sentries and one or two handlers.

Overconfidence. No one expected anyone to attempt such a bold escape. Minotaurs fought and died; they did not flee. He only hoped that Ganth and Hecar could get away in time.

Cheers erupted from above them. The entire corridor shook with pounding feet. There must be a good combat going on. The better the combat, the greater the crowd reaction. Pounding feet was one way in which the spectators sounded their approval, and gaining the crowd’s favor had turned many a combat.

As they reached the holding area, a barred space from where they could watch the other duels, Kaz noted a familiar figure waiting for the prisoners: Scurn. In one hand he held an object that Kaz did not at first recognize. Only when the two stood almost face-to-face did Scurn reveal what it was he held.

It was the medallion honoring the supreme champion, the same medallion he had taken from Kaz after the latter’s capture.

“I would’ve preferred to take this from you in combat,” the scarred minotaur said.

“You’ve got the medallion now. Just wear it.”

A dark expression covered Scum’s mutilated features. “I would not dishonor it so. I never won it, so I can’t wear it.”

It was odd to think that someone like Scurn could still think in terms of honor. Kaz was about to make a scathing reply when the other minotaur suddenly reached out and offered him the medallion.

“Take it. It’s still yours, won in combat in the circus. The high priest and Polik won’t like it, but it’s still your right to wear it. Even your crimes can’t take that away from you, though your death will.” He snorted. “I should be the one fighting you. This isn’t right, to —”

“Never mind about his combat,” the older minotaur quickly snapped. He pointed at the medallion. “Go ahead and take it,” Molus added. “It’ll make for some added excitement once they see what you’re wearing.”

Kaz wanted to reject the medallion. He saw no purpose in accepting the honor, not when he did not believe in it. All it meant was that he had wasted a portion of his life fighting and injuring others for the sake of the handful that ruled the minotaur race.

“You should take it, you know. It may come in handy.”

Stiffening, Kaz glanced around. He recognized the voice. The only time he had ever heard it was in a dream.

It was the voice of the gray man … but he was nowhere to be seen.

Without really knowing why he did it, Kaz turned and took the medallion. Even with his wrists banded together, he managed to place it around his neck. A warmth spread through him. Scurn nodded, then stepped back. Anticipation was evident in his eyes, anticipation and perhaps a little envy. Someone else would have the honor of killing Kaz.

There was no sign of Honor’s Face. The axe Scurn wore was one of the service axes that the guard issued to its members. Of course, Scurn would never risk an excellent weapon such as Honor’s Face for the mundane tasks of the guard. Likely he planned to use it in the circus or in battle. Unlike the medallion, he had no intention of giving it back to its original owner even for one last battle. Scum’s sense of honor went only so far.

Another roar shook the colosseum, followed by more foot stomping and clapping. Whatever match had been going on had now ended and, from the sounds of it, Kaz suspected that one of the combatants had suffered a fatal defeat.

We might conquer the world a little faster if we didn’t keep disposing of our warriors in the arena, he thought with disgust. That made him think of Raud, which in turn made him think of Polik, who was probably in the audience already.

“Let’s get this going,” Kaz snarled, holding out his hands so that the jailer could remove his bracelets.

“That’s the spirit!” chuckled Molus. He released Kaz. Ganth and Hecar were also freed from their bonds. None of the three were taken to the barred area, which was as Kaz had hoped. Again, minotaur habits worked to Kaz’s advantage. Since his father and Hecar would follow Kaz, Molus and the others saw no sense in wasting time locking them up. With half a dozen guards surrounding them, it seemed unlikely that the pair would be able to try anything while Kaz was fighting in the arena.

Of course, with a distraction such as he planned, the guards would be too stunned to react immediately when their prisoners attempted to escape. Everything counted on the minotaur race’s penchant for routine.

Had Kaz been of another race, say a human or elf, he would not have been as fortunate. Rarely were creatures of other races, with the exception of ogres, brought to the Great Circus. The smaller arenas dealt with the other races and usually allowed no chance of escape. The Great Circus was for the minotaurs almost exclusively. The few outsiders who fought in it were watched closely, since it was known that only members of the chosen of Sargas were truly honorable.

“They’ve cleared the field,” Molus announced. “Move on, Kaziganthi. It’s your time.”

With two guards flanking him, Kaz walked out onto the field. In the stands, a sea of black, brown, and white forms, with a few other colors sprinkled here and there, watched and waited.

At first there was silence. Generally it was so when criminals were brought out, for a minotaur who had dishonored himself was only half a minotaur in the eyes of his fellows. Then, perhaps because of the medallion hanging from his neck or the fact that at least some in the crowd had recognized him despite the many years, a murmuring arose. It grew in intensity and by the time Kaz and the guards reached the bloodstained center of the arena, it had risen almost to a cheer. In fact, there were more than a few who were indeed cheering … for him.

From another entrance, more than a dozen warriors armed with a combination of swords, axes, spears, and nets appeared. They marched toward Kaz, each of them sleek gladiators in their prime. They were not champions of high rank, but definitely seasoned warriors. There were at least five females, but Kaz did not discount them. Helati was a prime example of what a female warrior was capable.

So it was to be combat against overwhelming numbers. Kaz estimated sixteen warriors. That meant eight would do battle while the other eight surrounded the circle where Kaz would fight. If one of the first eight died or was unable to continue the combat, another, designated earlier by lottery, would enter the fray. Warriors would continue to join the struggle until the criminal was out-lasted – and dead. There were variations on this, but for the Great Circus, this was the accepted system. Hecar had been given a lesser risk only because they had wanted him alive as bait.

As the warriors began to surround Kaz and his escort, one of the guards handed him a much abused short sword. Kaz grunted, but did not otherwise protest. His weapon should have been better, but he knew not to expect otherwise. Polik and the high priest wanted to take no chances.

Thinking of the pair, he quickly scanned the crowds. The emperor was usually seated in a box at the center of the longer side of the arena. His box was higher than most other seats. Beside him would sit Jopfer and members of the Supreme Circle.

Sure enough, the box was occupied. Kaz squinted. Polik was there, a little heavier and wearier than years ago, but otherwise hardly changed. He still bore the physique of a champion, but Kaz could not see how he could have won every challenge he had faced in all these years. The emperor was clad in an elegant robe of brown and red and wore a crested helmet that was obviously used only for ceremonial purposes.

It’s true, then, the prisoner thought. The warlords brought Polik in because he could be managed, and the high priest and circle kept him in for the same reason.

Polik was not looking at him, but was arguing with another minotaur, an armored figure that Kaz guessed was a member of the circle. He was tapping his chest again and again. It took Kaz a few moments to realize that Polik was complaining about the medallion. Even from so far away, most would recognize it as a symbol of a high-ranking champion. Those who still recalled Kaz would likely also remember that he could have challenged Polik if he had not abandoned the circus. The emperor did not like to be reminded of that.

The emperor pointed at Kaz, then at the warriors. The minotaur beside him shook his head, but Polik was adamant. His companion signaled a guard. A few quick words were shared, then the guard hurried off.

Horns blared. Kaz glanced to the side and saw a herald walk out. They were about to announce the battle. Not caring what the herald was going to say, he continued looking around. Polik and at least three members of the circle were in the audience, but the only representatives of the priesthood were Merriq and a pair of lesser acolytes. Of Jopfer there was no sign.

His target would be Polik after all.

“Wake up, you fool!” whispered one of the guards. “Or are you planning to just stand there and let them run you through?”

Kaz snapped out of his reverie, realizing that the herald had finished and the warriors were readying themselves. Once they were all in place, eight surrounding Kaz and the other eight forming an outer circle, the guards backed out of the way and returned to where Ganth and Hecar were being held.

Kaz had only a moment. He had to dispose of the weapon, distracting his opponents at the same time, then summon Honor’s Face to him. Only Honor’s Face, with its magic, could do what Kaz desired. Only the axe could fly as straight as he desired, and end Polik’s reign once and for all.

Another horn sounded. The gladiators paused, clearly confused. Kaz was also confused. The new signal commanded the gladiators to retreat, which they undertook in slight disarray.

Yet another horn sounded. This time, no gladiators paraded out. Instead, a gate to the side opened. The minotaur’s eyes widened. He knew what the gate meant. Someone had made a change in plans. Kaz no longer faced warriors.

A roar echoed from the corridor behind the half-open gate. Instead of gladiators, Kaz was to fight an animal.

The second roar was greater than the first. The crowd was excited. The audience, too, knew this was to be no ordinary confrontation.

Then, a great head thrust out of the tunnel, massive nostrils sniffing the air in suspicion. Reptilian eyes slowly adjusted to the light. A maw of dagger-type teeth opened, and a thick red tongue darted out and in.

A meredrake, a creature larger than the largest bear and resembling the dragons of lore, lumbered out. While only a reptile and not related to the great leviathans, it was still a vicious beast. This one was nearly full-grown.

Many in the audience clearly saw the unfairness of the match-up, and even though Kaz was supposed to be a criminal, there were grumbles of protest. Polik pointedly ignored them, watching the prisoner with satisfaction. The reptile stalked toward the center of the field. The meredrake’s tail swished back and forth, the beast growing more anxious as it smelled so many minotaurs.

Then it saw Kaz.

The meredrake hissed. One minotaur was not a threat to it, but rather a meal. Meredrakes were always eager to eat.

Kaz gripped the short sword in one hand. He did not want to make his move right away. He wanted to study the monster for a minute to determine how to fight it. If the meredrake moved true to form, he had some hunches. If it surprised him, then it was very possible that Kaz would die, ripped to shreds by claws and teeth.

It was not how he had hoped to die. He only wished he could take Polik with him.

The beast raised its head and opened its jaws wide. To anyone else, the sight might have been enough to terrorize the hapless victim. Kaz, though, had faced dragons and other creatures far stranger and more deadly than a meredrake.

Hissing, the meredrake abruptly charged to Kaz’s left, moving with a swiftness and dexterity that its lumbering, reptilian form did not suggest. The crowd roared, protest mingling with cheers.

Kaz roared at the charging beast, which stumbled momentarily. The seasoned warrior shifted his grip on his blade so as to be able to throw it, then threw the worn but still serviceable blade at the monster.

The sword flew with the accuracy of a javelin, and the speed with which it moved was so great that its intended target had no time to get out of the way. The blade sank into the meredrake’s shoulder. This time, the monster did more than stumble. It roared in pain as it raised one paw to knock the projectile from its wounded body.

Even as he released the blade, Kaz held his other hand high. Honor’s Face materialized. The crowd’s tone shifted to confusion, but Kaz did not care what they thought. The great reptile had already batted away the sword as if it were a twig, something Kaz had not expected it to be able to do so swiftly, and the minotaur needed something better.

Kaz stumbled back as the monster charged forward. The meredrake got one set of claws on the bottom of the axe head and pushed down. Honor’s Face was ripped from the minotaur’s grip.

The huge monster charged forward again. Kaz threw himself onto the back of the beast, which hissed and tried to shake him off. The minotaur held tight and willed the axe to come to him.

It did … just in time for the warrior to lose his seat. Kaz slid off the reptile’s back to the loud reaction of the crowd. He did not know whether the audience was disappointed that he had failed or hoping that now the meredrake would turn around and tear his chest open.

The meredrake turned. Kaz fell on its tail, seizing the appendage with his free hand. The tail dragged him along when the reptile moved, at first baffling the beast. After a few almost hilarious turns, the meredrake finally realized what was happening and whipped its tail to its open maw.

Kaz released the appendage and rolled in the opposite direction. Rising to one knee, Kaz brought Honor’s Face around and dug the gleaming blade deep into a half-raised paw. Blood splashed over the minotaur’s head. Kaz tried to blink away the blood, which stung his eyes so much he could barely see.

It nearly cost him his life. In agony, the meredrake swung wildly about, throwing Kaz and the axe into the air as easily as a child might toss a pebble. Kaz could do little to control his fall. He struck the ground with enough force to shake Honor’s Face from his grasp.

Only the enraged reptile’s thundering movements warned the minotaur that he was once again in its path. Kaz rolled quickly to the side. His vision had returned, just in time to catch sight of the meredrake’s jaws trying to close on his leg. The warrior snapped his leg back and kicked it forward into the meredrake’s snout.

The action stunned the beast, but not as much as Kaz had hoped. It managed to raise itself high on the three limbs it had that still functioned. It clearly intended to fall on its prey and crush him.

Body aching, Kaz willed Honor’s Face to him as the meredrake fell on him.

Honor’s Face formed in his hands. Kaz did the only thing he could. He tried to shift to the side with the head of the axe edgewise against the ground. That left the other edge in the monster’s direct path.

Several hundred pounds of reptile drove the air from the minotaur’s chest as the meredrake landed. Kaz was certain he would be crushed to death, until the monster shivered and rolled away, a fresh stream of blood dripping over the minotaur. The magical weapon’s astonishingly sharp edge had saved his life.

Yet the meredrake was still not defeated. It breathed in long gasps. Its chest wound was deep, and one limb was nearly useless, but the massive jaws were still a threat to Kaz. Fortunately, Kaz had access to its throat. He rolled onto his stomach, Honor’s Face cradled in his arms. The angle was such that a strong swing was impossible, but the axe could be just as deadly a thrusting weapon. The tip was sharp and long enough to kill.

He rose to his knees immediately after rolling onto his stomach, but as he positioned himself to dart under the massive jaws of the beast, the meredrake shifted. It was clumsy and stiff, yet the combatants were in close proximity. Honor’s Face was the only way Kaz could prevent the meredrake’s jaws from getting at him. Kaz thrust the magical axe up into the creature’s maw as hard as he was able. And there it stuck, in the meredrake’s mouth, with Kaz holding on for dear life.

He gritted his teeth.

Paladine … Kiri-Jolith … guide me now, the warrior prayed. Releasing his hold on the axe, Kaz threw himself forward. Hissing, the reptile swung its head to the side, knocking the weapon to the ground.

Kaz gored the meredrake in the throat and neck so hard that both his horns sank deep.

Hundreds of pounds of monster threatened to fall on the minotaur, but he remained where he was, pushing upward as hard as possible. Cold blood poured down on his head. The meredrake tried to swipe at him with its injured paw. Kaz felt the beast shiver.

With effort, the minotaur pulled free. The meredrake barely noticed. It rocked its head back and forth, its life fluids draining onto the circus grounds, then stumbled a few steps. Kaz scrambled away as best he could, exhaustion preventing him from going too far.

The meredrake shivered, gave a gurgling sound … and collapsed on the field.

The crowd roared. In all his time as a champion of the arenas, Kaz could not recall a cheer as great as the one that now echoed through the circus.

Forcing himself to stand, Kaz retrieved his axe. It was still not too late to kill Polik. Honor’s Face would fly straight and true.

All of a sudden, from the entrance emerged a squad of gladiators. They swarmed toward him, ready to do battle. The cheers of the crowd turned sour. Clearly most did not think that even a criminal deserved such a short reprieve. Kaz had likely vindicated himself in the eyes of many.

Polik did not care for that. The emperor had risen and was demanding that the gladiators charge the prisoner. All he cared about was that Kaz died and died quickly before sentiment for the renegade increased.

The gladiators did not move toward Kaz with much enthusiasm. Any warrior who could single-handedly kill a meredrake was one to be reckoned with, even one as exhausted as Kaz. He was grateful for their hesitation. Each second meant he would be able to give them a better struggle.

“All right,” he growled. “Who’ll be first?” His brave words were intended to make them even more hesitant.

A roar from the other end of the arena made even Kaz lose concentration. Both he and the gladiators turned in the direction of the roar, duty giving way to surprise.

A lion charged out onto the field. It was a full-grown male. Even before the shock of its appearance could subside, it was joined by two, then three females, all roaring fiercely.

The animals’ escape had only begun to register on those on the field when a second meredrake the size of a large wolf lumbered out. It snapped at the lions, who, despite their numbers, decided it was risky business. They spread out, coincidentally creeping closer to the guards and Kaz.

Smoke began pouring out of the entrance to the menagerie.

“Fire in the menagerie!” someone with a high voice called. “The animals have all escaped!”

There was something faintly dubious about that voice, but those able to hear it registered only the alarm. Weapons were forbidden in the audience, due to the minotaur tendency to end all disputes, especially wagers, with combat. Only the State Guard, clerics, members of the Supreme Circle, and the emperor were permitted weapons here. Minotaurs were not fool enough to go up against a lion or a meredrake with their bare hands, not even after watching the great feat of Kaz. The fire was also worrisome. Many of the spectators near the menagerie began to abandon their seats.

Other animals began emerging from the smoky entrance, horses, bears, and more. Kaz could not even identify some of the beasts, but anything that had teeth as long as his fingers or claws as big as his hand was to be avoided. There were bulls and sheep, the latter used mainly for feeding the predators. Some of the animals fell upon other animals, but other predators seemed more inclined toward two-legged meals, perhaps because they had been trained to attack when in the arena.

Kaz was forgotten as the gladiators moved to defend themselves from the more immediate threat. There was no sign of the handlers, but Kaz guessed they were either dealing with other animals that had not made it outside or were already dead.

“Delbin!” he muttered. The kender had promised to create a diversion, and had. It was up to him to see that Delbin’s efforts were not in vain.

He backed away from the animals and the gladiators, Honor’s Face at the ready. One of the other warriors glanced at him, then evidently decided that Kaz was the lesser of two evils.

Two more warriors passed Kaz, holding nets and tritons. Deciding he was momentarily safe, Kaz turned to see what had happened to Ganth and Hecar.

They had taken advantage of the confusion caused by the escaping animals and sought to escape as planned. The pair had made it out in the open. Ganth had grabbed a short sword, but now they were being harried by one of their guards and the stubborn old jailer. For an old minotaur, Molus was quick with a weapon.

Ganth and Hecar were still bound, which made it difficult for the former to wield his blade. Somehow Kaz’s father was managing to fend the pair off.

Roaring, Kaz charged in their direction. Molus turned first and actually smiled when he saw who it was who was coming. He turned away from Ganth and started toward Kaz, but suddenly another figure darted between them. The figure held an axe almost as large as Kaz’s own.

“Take care of your prisoners,” snarled Scurn. “I’ll deal with Kaz.” The look he gave the jailer allowed no room for argument. Molus backed away and went to help the other guard.

“I beat you in the arena, and I beat you when you came for me, Scurn. Don’t try again.”

“You should’ve killed me the last time, Kaz. I asked you to. I couldn’t face the clan after such a humiliating defeat!”

With that, Scurn attacked. His swing was more precise and swift than when he had faced Kaz in the past. Startled by both the vehemence and skill the other minotaur displayed, Kaz backed up.

Smoke almost distracted him. New fires had started up in more of the underground sections of the Great Circus. Kaz wondered exactly what Delbin was trying to do. If he continued like this, it was possible the kender would burn the colosseum to the ground, in the process killing his friends as well as his enemies.

Scurn swung again, his axe nipping the air just in front of Kaz’s muzzle. Kaz brought Honor’s Face up and caught Scum’s axe head. The two weapons remained locked for several seconds, then the disfigured warrior pulled his weapon back and tried to ram Kaz with the axe’s long, pointed head. Kaz managed to fend off the attack, but the head of Scum’s axe sliced the air just an inch or two above Kaz’s horns.

Kaz’s injured arm began to act up, causing his grip to loosen. Struggling against pain, he knocked aside his opponent’s axe and struck Scurn in the jaw with the lower end of the shaft. The other minotaur grunted, stumbling back. Kaz pursued his assault, striking Scurn again.

Disoriented, Scurn brought his axe around again and chopped at Kaz. His swing was off, however, and he was left wide open to his adversary. Kaz wasted no time. Again he struck with the shaft, driving the blunt end into the other’s stomach. Scurn fell to his knees, dropping his axe. Unable to bring himself to kill so helpless a foe, Kaz took the only recourse left to him. He raised a fist and punched the gasping figure before him.

Scurn collapsed.

“Consider yourself fortunate,” Kaz muttered. He then turned to the guard and Molus, who had forced Ganth back. Ganth was obviously tiring. Raising the axe, Kaz gave a battle cry and charged at the guard. The guard turned, and his eyes went wide at the sight before him, but to his credit, he charged back.

Molus was pushed back by a revitalized Ganth. Worse for the jailer, he had to keep an eye on Hecar, who began to swing around to his left.

The guard was not the warrior Scurn was. He tried to defend himself, but Honor’s Face slashed through his guard and, at the same time, severed his sword hand. Kaz thought that would be the end of it, but the guard snatched up his bloody blade with his remaining hand and made a run at Kaz. Grunting, Kaz gave his adversary no quarter. This time he struck to kill.

The axe buried itself deep in the other minotaur’s chest. Kaz did not even wait for the guard to fall as he pulled the weapon free. He moved in on Molus, but the jailer saw him and, abandoning his attack on Ganth, fled.

“Let’s get going, lads,” Kaz’s father cried.

“One thing first!” Kaz took one edge of Honor’s Face and ran it across the older minotaur’s bonds. The severed pieces fell to the ground, joined there a moment later by the remnants of Hecar’s bonds. “Grab a weapon and a net if you can, Hecar! We have to hurry now!” His last words were punctuated by the noise of a gong. Kaz looked around and saw smoke coming from yet another area.

Most of the crowd on the menagerie side of the circus had chosen to flee rather than face the fire and the animals, but many others remained, doing what they could to alleviate the problems. Some of them served only to further the confusion, for which Kaz was grateful.

The trio hurried toward the menagerie entrance. There were several dozen creatures scattered throughout the arena floor, and at least two had climbed into the lower seats, where members of the State Guard were trying to control them. The first meredrake to escape had been joined by a second, smaller one. Wolves darted around the nets of gladiators. At least two minotaurs were down, what was left of their bodies not a sight Kaz cared to dwell on. Several of the predators had been captured, but every now and then, one or two other beasts would charge out into the arena from the opening the prisoners needed to reach.

“We’ll have to keep a careful eye out when we get to the other side,” Ganth called. “Or we might find ourselves running into the jaws of a meredrake!”

A ram burst past Hecar, followed quickly by a pair of wolves that veered after their prey.

A minotaur scream cut through the chaos. It made Kaz look around. Although he did not spot the unfortunate warrior, he did see something else … or perhaps “not see” was the better term. There was no sign of Polik or the representatives of the circle. Even Jopfer’s man, Merriq, was missing. No doubt he had been among the first to retreat.

“Kaz! Watch it, Lad!” Ganth was suddenly in front of him, sword slashing downward.

He backed away in surprise. His father tore past him. It was not an animal that threatened them, but a gladiator who had noticed them moving around and had elected to try to block their escape.

The other warrior tried to spear him from the side. Fortunately, Ganth shoved the spear aside with his blade. The spear dug into the earth, jarring the would-be attacker. He pulled the long weapon out before Ganth could follow through, then retreated when he saw he would have to deal with all three minotaurs at once.

“He’ll be back with some friends very soon, Lads. Mark my words!”

“Then we’d better get out of here,” Hecar rejoined.

Ahead of them, an arrow suddenly sprouted from the side of one of the female lions. The lion stumbled, fell, and managed to rise again. Blood dripped from the wound, but she managed to stay on her feet. Archers began appearing on the walls. A second arrow caught the lion. This time she fell.

“We’d better move faster! They’re getting organized!”

They reached the entrance to the menagerie almost in time to collide headlong with a huge bull. Kaz wondered if the kender was purposely releasing them a few at a time to keep the melee going.

“Inside!” Kaz called, hoping that Delbin had not released anything else along with the bull.

The smell of many years of animal captivity made the trio recoil. Evidently there was a place that could smell worse than the prisoners’ cells. Smoke made it uncomfortable but not impossible to breathe in the underground region. There was no sign of fire yet.

Two minotaurs lay crumpled on the floor of one cage. He scanned the rest of the room. The area was clear of threats. Several animals were shrieking in their cages, but most of the doors were open and the cages bare. The cause of the fire was a pile of baled hay that burned within one of the empty cages.

“There’re still probably horses in the circus stables, Kaz,” called Hecar. “Do we take them or try on foot?”

“On horseback we’ll be more noticeable,” called Ganth. “We’d be better off sneaking around on foot. The time to fight is later on.”

“We can go this way,” Kaz said, indicating a wooden door slightly ajar. He and the other minotaurs started for it.

Kaz wondered where the kender was. The brave little creature had a tendency to forget that he could be captured or killed … “I have to find Delbin.”

“We’ve no time, Kaz,” Hecar protested. “It’s the will of Kiri-Jolith that we’ve gotten this far. We have to keep going. He’ll catch up.”

“We’ve no idea what else the kender had in mind, Lad.” Ganth looked grim. “He might’ve figured that the animals and the fire weren’t enough.”

Kaz stared off into the distance. “You two go on ahead. I have to find him.”

“Lad, from what you’ve said about Delbin, why not wait until he just shows up again? His kind are clever when it comes to escaping.”

“Because I can’t take the chance. He’s helped me too much in the past. I will not abandon a comrade. You two had better get going.”

Before they could stop him, he was already out the doorway.

*

Delbin hid behind the door as three minotaurs raced past to stop his latest fire. He was proud of himself for what he had accomplished.

He was not normally so adept at lighting fires, but he’d been assisted greatly by a strange bottle of oil he had discovered in his pouch. The bottle bore the mark of the circus, but Delbin could not fathom how it had found its way into his possession. Nevertheless, he had made good use of it. The torches positioned every now and then in the walls helped. Between the oil and the torches, Delbin had created some masterful blazes.

That he might be captured was a thought that occasionally occurred to him, but Delbin did not worry too much. He already knew some neat places to hide and others that could serve as escape routes.

One more. I should do one more. Kaz and the others might still need more time.

Seeing no one in sight nearby, he slipped around and headed down the hall. This one corridor seemed to encompass the entire circus and had so far made it simple for him to move from one place to another. His size helped, of course. Someone as large as Kaz would not have been able to hide in such cramped places. Surely his minotaur friend would be proud of him.

He saw his next potential target moments later. The corridor was still deserted, most of the minotaurs having either fled the threat of fire or fighting to subdue the animals outside. Delbin saw a wooden cart. He had no idea of its uses, save that it might be needed to haul things out of the circus. Remembering what most often had to be hauled out of the arena, Delbin made a face. That was a part of minotaur life he did not like. Then the kender started forward.

“Well! Sargas watches over me this day!”

Heavy hands clamped on to the small figure’s shoulders. He was drawn backward, then flipped around to face the source.

It was a tall minotaur clad in a black-and-red robe that Delbin knew was the clothing of the clerics of the minotaur empire. He had seen them and knew something about their organization from Kaz, but this was the first time he had been so close to one.

With the robed one were two warriors who looked similar to the ones who had captured Kaz. They each took hold of an arm and dragged the kender nearer to the cleric.

“I am Merriq, representative of His Holiness, the high priest. You have an appointment with him. Resist and we shall drag you there. You cannot possibly escape.”

“You let me go or you’ll be sorry!”

The minotaurs laughed. Merriq, still smiling, said, “You are a kender, and a young one at that. You are next to nothing, and if it was not that the high priest himself requested your living presence, I would have you tossed into the arena to distract the beasts while our gladiators find and destroy your friends. They have not escaped, you know.”

“You’re lying!” Despite saying that, Delbin was slightly shaken. Had Kaz and the others been captured?

“The minotaur Hecar and the old one are the prisoners of the circus again.” Merriq steepled his hands as if in prayer. “The criminal Kaziganthi died fleeing in dishonor from a meredrake that eventually bit him in two.”

Delbin reacted without thinking, with the same temper that had caused him so much trouble among his own kind. Both Merriq and the guards seemed a little startled by his vehemence. Having no weapon in his hands, Delbin threw the only thing he had, the bottle of oil.

The bottle broke against the cleric’s chest, splattering him with oil and fragments. The minotaur growled and stumbled backward, trying to rub his injured eyes.

Delbin squirmed out of the guards’ grips, but collided with the cleric, who could not see.

Losing his balance, the blinded Merriq fell against one of the lit torches, which fell free. Flame from the torch grazed his robe, and the screaming cleric burst into flames. The oil helped to create an inferno that quickly spread over most of the minotaur’s body.

One of the guards seized Delbin. The other tried to aid Merriq, but it was too late. The cleric collapsed. More guards began to arrive.

A guard behind Delbin struck him on the head with the hilt of a dagger and sent the kender to the floor, his thoughts reeling. Delbin tried to rise, but the world went crazy, refusing to settle down. At last, unable to struggle further, the kender collapsed.

Oddly, he did not black out. Instead, Delbin found himself standing by a mountaintop, with the man in gray beside him. They looked out onto a landscape covered in great part by a city. Nethosak, to be exact.

“The road is harsh. I’m sorry about that,” murmured the gray man. “But the balance must be maintained. I swore by Lunitari, Solinari, and Nuitari that I would see to it. I have yet to be released from that oath. I will do what I can for Kaz. I promise you that, young Delbin.”

“I don’t understand,” the small figure said, looking at the robed man.

“Neither did Huma of the Lance, but he fulfilled his destiny. This is all about destiny, Young One. Yours and that of the entire minotaur race, who deserve better and worse than they’ve received these past centuries, Kaz especially. Destiny demands the balance, though.”

Delbin understood even less now. He started to open his mouth, but then a roar echoed through the city below. It was a terrible roar, as if some great leviathan had just awakened in a foul mood.

The gray man shook his head. When the roar died down, he smiled sadly and added, “It is almost time, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?”

Chapter 11

A KENDER CAPTURED

Kaz caught sight of the soldiers as they were carrying Delbin’s limp form out of the corridor and into the streets. The high priest wanted Delbin alive and unharmed, which meant that at the most the minotaur’s friend was unconscious. Still, he intended the captors to pay for what they had done.

The corridor smelled of fire, smoke, and some other odor that made the minotaur’s nostrils twitch. He started after the guards. He had to stop them before they left the shadow of the arena. Anywhere else, and an attack would be too conspicuous. The other minotaurs, busy with their charge, did not notice as he slipped out the entrance after them. Kaz counted only two. A good number. Two he could take with ease.

He was suddenly seized by strong arms that tore the axe from his grip, secured him, and covered his muzzle before he could speak. The minotaurs with the kender did not even notice the swift and silent scuffle behind them. There was no one now who could save Delbin from becoming the high priest’s prisoner.

A hard female voice whispered in his ear, “Kaziganthi, you are summoned before your patriarch.”

Patriarch?

He had been captured by his own clan? Kaz felt like a fool. Of course they would have been in the audience. Possibly even the patriarch himself.

“Give your word of honor and we shall let you walk. Refuse and we shall be forced to bind you hand and foot and drag you. We haven’t much time, so you’d better make up your mind fast.”

She meant what she said, especially about dragging Kaz. The clan of Orilg did not make empty threats. Kaz quickly nodded.

The minotaurs relaxed their grips, though at least one blade grazed his back. Kaz glanced around him. The others were all young, strong, and lean. He could have taken two, possibly three captors, but the clan had surrounded him with six, which was something of an honor, he supposed.

Able to speak again, Kaz said, “Listen to me! There is a kender with those two! It’s important that we rescue him! The high priest must not get his hands on that —”

“We’ve orders concerning only you, Kaziganthi. The patriarch saw you flee the arena and desires to speak to you.”

“The kender is my —”

“Your word’s been given. Resist and we’ll have to act accordingly, Kaziganthi.”

He had no real choice. Kaz glanced at the receding figures. It was already too late. The State Guard had carried Delbin off into the crowds. It was fortunate that only his clan had so far caught up with Kaz.

I’ll get you out, Delbin, he silently promised. I’ll teach Jopfer to regret his scheming.

Another thought occurred to him. Ganth and the others. As far as he knew, they were still inside. He turned back to the female. “The others —”

“We’ve been ordered only to bring you. Now move on before someone notices who you are. If they recognize you, we can’t help you.”

He almost laughed. He had escaped, only to be captured just outside the circus. Now not only was Delbin lost to him, but so were the others.

“All right, then,” Kaz growled. “Let’s go see old Dastrun. Maybe it is time I had a few words with him.”

For the first time, he managed to disconcert the female. He could tell by her expression. Looking at the others, she commanded, “Keep an eye on him at all times, but make it look casual.” To Kaz she added, “Don’t fight us, Kaziganthi. We are clan, remember.”

“Does Dastrun remember that?”

There was no reply. The female started off, as did the others. It made for a long and sobering march to the clan house.

*

“So this is how you spread the glory of Clan Orilg,” Dastrun commented.

Kaz had always recalled Dastrun as a wiry sort, and in the years since he had last seen the elder minotaur, Dastrun had grown even more wiry, almost emaciated. His fur was nearly white. Yet there was strength in those limbs and voice, despite the signs of old age. He had to admit that the robed figure seated on the chair was very much the image of a clan patriarch. He even might have respected Dastrun despite their differences if only the patriarch had not been chosen for his position by the emperor, possibly at the high priest’s urging.

The patriarch was seated on a high-backed throne placed at the top of a short dais. Seated on each side of the huge chamber to which Kaz had been brought were other elders of the clan. Standing along the walls were guards. Kaz and his captors were the only others in the meeting hall. Dastrun was trying keep Kaz’s presence a secret as long as was possible. Whether that strategy would succeed, the prisoner could not say.

“No, this is how I try to live,” Kaz finally remarked. “This is how I uphold the honor of Orilg.”

Dastrun sighed. “The same old Kaz. You were always one who would not bend when it was best to do so. Your sense of honor, your personal sense of honor, was always more important than the good of the clan.”

Kaz stared at the minotaurs gathered in the chamber. Most of them he recognized as followers of Dastrun. Some, he was pleased to see, were from parts of the clan that would never, ever, accept the elder as a legitimate patriarch. In their eyes, there were some traditions that should not have been flouted.

“All I ask is to be left alone.”

“You were left alone.”

“Only when it was convenient, Dastrun. Only when it was convenient.”

The patriarch waved the matter away. “I came to the arena to see if you would at least die with your honor intact. You could not even do that. When I saw that you intended to flee, I commanded Fliara to keep watch for you. I knew she would understand your thinking.”

“Fliara?” Kaz froze, then slowly turned to study the younger female. “Fliara?”

Her acknowledgment was formal, nothing more. “Brother.”

“Fliara.” She was his youngest sibling and had been little more than a baby when he had last seen her. Fliara had often tagged along behind him, watching with great interest what her eldest brother did. Now she seemed not to care. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“The patriarch had commanded me not to reveal myself unless you recognized me.” If she felt any emotion, it was well concealed by her indifferent expression. “You did not.”

She looked away as she finished speaking.

“Our father was back there.”

Her eyes darted to Dastrun, then to Kaz. With clipped words, Fliara quietly said, “I know.”

“Fliara understands that her duty to the clan outweighs all else. Family is important, as Sargas teaches, but it must not be forgotten that the clan is the greatest of our families. One individual may be lost, but the integrity of the clan must be maintained. Without it, all that has been built since Orilg became patriarch will collapse.”

Kaz found himself wondering if Dastrun knew about the clan-in-the-making Kaziganthi. What would the elder say about that?

“I’ve striven to keep Orilg strong. You’ve not been here much the past decade.” The tone was almost accusatory. “Things have changed, especially in the past couple of years. Attitudes have changed. The way things are done has changed. To survive and prosper, Orilg has had to make some changes, too.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Kaz commented, purposely ignoring the look of disapproval on Dastrun’s features. One simply did not interrupt the patriarch. It just was not done. “Some traditions change as well, things like how the young are trained, what honor means, and how those who rule are chosen.”

“I could have turned you directly over to the State Guard,” the patriarch pointed out, still angry at being interrupted. “It is what my duty to the glorious minotaur empire demands.”

“Should we leave now, then? Since I’m going to be handed over to them when you’re done trying to excuse yourself, we may as well get going.”

Dastrun started to rise. “You impudent —” Then his anger suddenly dissipated, leaving an older, world-weary figure who looked away and sighed deeply in frustration. Kaz actually found himself sympathizing, briefly, with this vulnerable Dastrun behind the mask.

“Tell him what’s been decided, Dastrun,” said a clan elder on one side of the chamber. Kaz peered curiously at the new speaker, vaguely recognizing the squat, wrinkled visage as a former tutor of his, a sword master. He was still formidable, though lacking one arm.

“I will, I will.” Regaining some of his composure, the patriarch eyed Kaz. “There’s been some … discussion, concerning how best to deal with your presence —”

“Send me home.”

“That would not be easy. Kaziganthi, you don’t realize just what you’ve become here. You don’t realize that you’ve become a symbol. You don’t realize just how many stories of your … recklessness … have reached Nethosak. Most of the stories are sheer nonsense, of course …”

Kaz snorted, then added, “Of course.”

“But such tales grow in credence the more they are repeated. You’ve done more to disrupt the course of destiny here than the years under the rule of the Dark Lady’s warlords.”

“I’ve already heard such words from the high priest, Dastrun. Unless you have an original point, you can forego the rest of your speech.”

“Same arrogant little Kaz,” snarled one of the other elders. “Never did know his proper place.”

Kaz gave the elder a look. “I thought that was one of the driving forces behind our people, the fact that we have dared strive to improve ourselves and achieve greater heights. … Of course, that was in the old days.”

The elder muttered something about insolence, but there were many others who nodded agreement with Kaz. It was then he saw Dastrun’s predicament. Kaz’s father had mentioned that Dastrun’s position was not a secure one; he was the emperor’s designate, not the clan favorite. Perhaps things might have been different had he gained his position by the old ways, but now no one would ever completely trust his wisdom. He ruled because Polik said he should rule.

A puppet pulling the strings of a puppet, thought Kaz. He suspected that all the strings, be they attached to the emperor, various patriarchs, the military, even the circle, led back to Jopfer.

“Very well,” the patriarch grumbled. “When you were sent to the circus, there was some question as to the fairness of your sentence, but Orilg is not influential enough to change the commands of either the emperor or the state priesthood. It was hoped you would fight honorably and prove that any crimes you might or might not have committed were of no consequence. You would have been kept on the rolls of honor, forever a symbol of Orilg greatness.”

“How flattering.”

“Of course, you couldn’t bring yourself to do what was best, could you? I was in the crowd when the chaos began. I left immediately, of course, but left word to keep track of you.” The elder minotaur’s tone indicated that he suspected the chaos was part of a plan to engineer Kaz’s escape. “The warriors of the clan did their best to see that you were brought here rather than be recaptured.”

“You seem to have forgotten my father and Hecar, who also are clan members.”

Dastrun looked at the other elders. A narrow-muzzled female that Kaz thought might be an older cousin of his nodded. The patriarch turned back to Kaz. “There are others watching for them. Fliara and her group were ordered to watch for you. It’s you that causes the most concern to the clan.”

Kaz glanced sideways at his sister. She stood stiff and emotionless, a fine example of the sort of warrior that was being reared in the homeland these days. Did she even care about her father? Granted, much of her early upbringing was owed to the teaching prescribed by Warlord Crynus and his ilk, but the years since Kaz’s departure had not improved Fliara.

“It is fairly certain now that we will request an amnesty for your father. He will even be given a chance to crew his own vessel again despite his past carelessness.” A few elders muttered at the choice of words. Dastrun pretended not to notice them. “Hecar may join him as well.”

They would be virtually exiled on the high seas. It would not be the first time the unruly were cast out in such a way. More often than not, they did not return, falling overboard during storms or wasting away, through no choice of their own, on some lonely island.

“And me? The high priest has already offered me a chance to rejoin the cause, to help take us further down the path of ruin.” Kaz’s words ought to have been considered sacrilegious, but instead he received little more than a weary stare from Dastrun and concerned expressions from the others. Even Fliara was looking at him oddly. “My apologies. I meant the emperor, of course. I wouldn’t dare suggest that he followed the priesthood’s commands and not the other way around.”

It took the patriarch a while to collect himself enough to continue. “I’ve been petitioned by some within the clan to act on your behalf. There is a chance to save you, and it’s a path I suggest you accept. It’s believed that the emperor will permit it. There is a ship, an explorer under the banner of Orilg, sailing to the continent east of here.”

“Another continent?” Now and then, there were rumors of another continent, and, despite his reluctance, Kaz’s curiosity was piqued.

Observing Kaz’s reaction, Dastrun pressed on. “Yes, another continent. An opportunity to expand even further. We’ve already made some inroads there, Boy. The few inhabitants discovered there so far have been … of no consequence. However, we’ve explored only a little into the interior. There’s room for adventure and opportunity.”

Sail to the other land and become one of those who pioneered the way for the rest of the people. It was exciting, an offer Kaz would have accepted gladly under other circumstances. But several concerns held him back. One was that he could never leave Helati and the children behind. Another was that he knew, despite whatever Dastrun and the others believed, that Polik and Jopfer would not agree to the offer … or they would send Kaz off, only to have him suffer an ‘accident’ once he was far from home.

Kaz wondered if Dastrun himself made the offer in good faith or was aware of what would likely happen.

“A tempting offer,” Kaz finally commented, still pondering. Whatever happened to him, Kaz refused to let others assuage their guilt by sending him somewhere far away where his fate could not be tied to them and their tainted sense of honor. “But you might as well turn me back over to the circus if that’s the best you can do.”

“Don’t be a fool, Kaziganthi!” warned Dastrun. He rose from his chair. “We offer you a chance not only to maintain your own honor, but to increase your standing! At the very least, the honor of the clan should mean something to —”

“You’re the fool, Dastrun, if you expect us to believe that honor is still of such import that we’re willing to sacrifice one of our own like this!”

Kaz and the others looked to the source of the voice. Somehow, Ganth had found his way from the circus and slipped into the audience chamber. There was no sign of Hecar, but at least Kaz’s father was safe.

“You are not a part of this meeting, Ganth!” snarled the patriarch. “You’ll leave now!”

“Ganthirogani has as much right to speak as any of us!” pointed out an elder. “More than some, even.”

The consensus of the majority of the elders was the same. Dastrun might be patriarch, but even he could not argue against certain precedents. One of the foundations of clan life was that each minotaur was allowed to voice his opinion, and those who achieved the age and status of Kaz’s father were entitled to speak during matters of council. The race considered itself the most democratic of all the peoples of Ansalon.

“Aye, it’s good to see that some haven’t forgotten that.” Ganth marched forward until he stood next to Kaz. He glanced briefly at his daughter, who looked away in what might have been embarrassment, then at his son. In a low voice, he told Kaz, “I can say only that Hecar waits outside. More’ll have to wait until we get you out of this.”

To the others, Ganth addressed these words, “I’ve missed a few years among my kin and clan, I’ll be the first to admit, but there are some things that shouldn’t have changed completely in that time. We’re minotaurs, the greatest race ever to walk Krynn, greater than the ancient ogres from whom we’re descended. Only dragons could be considered superior, and they’ve left this world to us now.”

Kaz watched as his father appealed to the vanity of the race. To him, the words were almost a jest, but to the others, who had never lived outside their small world, they were true and monumental.

“What’s happened now, though?” the older minotaur asked, giving a theatrical performance that Kaz would not have expected his mariner father capable of delivering, but he had the crowd. “We’ve become willing to set aside our personal honor, to set aside the clan and our esteemed ancestors, including great Orilg, who once fought a dozen ogres to save his children. Our ancestors watch us now, Dastrun, and what do they see? That’s the question you should all ask yourselves. Are we being true to our ancestors? Are we being true to the honor of Orilg?”

He had most of them agreeing with him, except for Dastrun, of course. The patriarch snorted; then, seating himself again, he countered, “Pretty words, Ganth, but they say nothing. Are we to presume you speak for our ancestors, most especially great Orilg? More to the point, have you forgotten that we also belong to a larger family? We’re the children of Sargas! Even Orilg would give Sargas his due.” He shook his head and looked at Ganth as if Kaz’s father was a dim-witted child. “The high priest teaches us that sometimes there must be sacrifice for the greater good. That is what we must all remember, even you and your son.”

“I know what the Great Horned One’s like, Dastrun, which is why I’ve chosen Kiri-Jolith to be my lord … or is such a choice now also forbidden?”

“Ah, yes.” Dastrun nodded. “You met them both, didn’t you?” He chuckled. “Quite a yarn that was.”

The old mariner drew himself up to his full height. He still had the presence to impress most around him. Kaz was proud of his father. “Aye, I’ve met them both. Whether you choose to believe that or simply toss it aside as a sea tale, you’d do well to remember one thing: It’s honor we’ve been brought up to believe in more than anything else, even more than our so-called destiny. It’s honor that’s at the core of our kind, even more than among the humans of the Solamnic knighthood. ‘Honor is our blood and our blood is honor.’ Recall that? Orilg liked to quote it. It’s carved on the outside and inside of the circus and every minor arena throughout the land. It’s carved high in the walls of the palace and the headquarters of the Supreme Circle.” Ganth crossed his arms and looked up. “Why, it’s even carved up there.”

Many others looked up, nodding. Even Dastrun could not help glancing in the direction that his rival had indicated.

“Of course,” added Ganth, looking at the other minotaurs, “I know it can even be found in the temple itself, of all places. The home of Sargas, they say.” He stared at the patriarch. “And you know why it’s especially interesting that it’s there, Dastrun? Because it’s supposed to be a direct quote from your Great Horned One himself. He’s supposed to have spoken the words to Istvanius, the first high priest, who we all know was a paragon of virtue and truth. Therefore, the words must be true.”

“Your point?” Dastrun demanded. The patriarch seemed to have shrunken in size by a third.

“That even Sargas points out the importance of honor to our kind. So I ask, has the clan of Orilg forsaken honor? Have we forsaken the most important of the teachings? If Orilg cannot survive without compromising its honor, should the clan even continue to exist? Are we worthy of those who came before us, not just Orilg, but Bestet the One-armed, who fought the elves even after one limb had been sliced clean off by a magical sword? Or Tariki? She sailed her burning vessel into the enemy after commanding the remnants of her crew to abandon it! Two enemy ships caught fire and more scattered before they could finish sinking her. Just two examples of what Orilg has produced.” Ganth looked at his own son. “And whatever you might think of Kaz, this one has led a few momentous victories that our ancestors would have been proud of.”

Dastrun might be patriarch of the clan, but he was isolated in his opinions. Ganth’s words touched the very fiber of every minotaur gathered there. Even Fliara nodded.

“Ganth speaks truth!”

“It’s a matter of our honor! We cannot abandon Kaziganthi!”

“What of the emperor? What of the high priest?”

“What of them? This is for the honor of the clan!”

Words went back and forth as the elders debated. Ganth nodded confidently to his son. Now it seemed that Polik’s influence was as weak as his claim to the throne.

Seeing his support crumble, Dastrun abruptly acted. Standing, he called for order. At first no one heeded him, then Dastrun seized a staff and began to pound on the floor. “Give me order! I command it!”

He still carried enough sway that the others lowered their dissenting voices. Dastrun looked around, seeking sympathetic faces. Kaz doubted he found many. He almost felt sorry for the patriarch.

Drawing himself up, the robed figure spoke. “Points have been made by the esteemed Ganthirogani. His words touched us all, I’m sure.” There was assent at this, but no one interrupted. Dastrun took a deep breath and tried to sound imperious. “Long have I labored over the very same issues that he’s touched on, trying to weigh what is right and what is most honorable.” Now there was renewed muttering. The patriarch quickly went on. “Sargas preaches to us about the utmost importance of honor. It is the cornerstone of our lives. Who are we to argue against the will of the Great Horned One? Was it not he who deemed our ancestors worthy? But wasn’t it also their dedication and their sense of honor that made them worthy in the first place?”

“The old boy can still talk when it’s to save his hide,” Kaz’s father whispered to him.

“I’ve considered further,” Dastrun continued, “and I must agree. We would shame the memories of our ancestors if we did not act to preserve a son of Orilg. This will not be simple. I must therefore ask that all of you take a hand in this. The guard will no doubt come to the clan house before long.” He turned his gaze to the pair standing before him. “The sooner you are ready to leave, the better. It will be difficult but still possible to help you through the southern gates without anyone noticing. A handful of volunteers will take you to the mountains. From there you may journey anywhere you desire, just as long as you do not return.”

“That’s preposterous!” called an older female. “What sort of solution is that to the problems confronting Kaziganthi, Dastrun?”

“Do you have a better one … any of you?”

None of the other elders did. It was one thing to spirit Kaz and his father away and out of sight of the emperor and Jopfer, but it was another to allow them to stay and openly defy Polik, the priesthood, and the Supreme Circle. Once Kaz was away, the clan could claim no knowledge.

Not that it really mattered. Kaz had no intention of leaving without rescuing Delbin, who was imprisoned only because he had been too loyal. “You don’t have to worry about me at all, none of you. Let me go and I absolve the clan of all obligations. I’ve got only one objective now, and if I happen to survive, I’ll be leaving here. If I don’t survive, you’re welcome to condemn me for my dishonorable ways. I could care less at this point.”

Ganth stood closer to his son. “The same goes for me.”

Fliara gasped, actually raising a hand in feeble protest. Ganth turned and gave her a smile. She closed her mouth and again pretended indifference. Ganth’s smile grew broader.

“Exactly what are you saying, Kaz?” asked the female elder. “Are you suggesting we take no action? Simply let you go without knowing what’s to befall you?”

“Oh, I could tell you what I’ve got planned, but you wouldn’t want to hear about it, trust me.”

She was about to differ with him when Dastrun quickly interjected, “No. We wouldn’t. You can spare us such incriminating details. You wish us to do nothing then? No matter what happens, the clan is not required to defend you, or your actions?”

Kaz surveyed the assembled elders. “I never intended to draw Orilg into my activities. I came only to claim a friend, another member of this august clan, who was missing. Now I find I have to go claim another friend, an innocent who doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him. Clan Orilg may wash its hands clean of me. I swear this by Orilg himself and all my ancestors.”

“What do you plan to do?” the female elder asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” the patriarch said curtly. Then Dastrun cleared his throat. “Very well, Kaziganthi. By your own words shall this be decided. The clan will do nothing to hinder you, but neither will it assist your mad – your activities.”

There were voices of protest, but Kaz himself signaled for silence.

The patriarch nodded. “No word shall be given to the guard concerning your whereabouts. That holds true for your father and your friend, too. You’ll be taken to a place where you may hide until dark.” Dastrun gave the pair a magnanimous expression. “Then you are on your own, just as you’ve requested. Should you be captured or killed, we will abide by your decision and make no claim for you.”

“You are very gracious,” Ganth said with more than a little sarcasm.

Ignoring him, Dastrun faced the elders. “Is there anyone here who’ll dispute the agreement made between myself as clan leader and this renegade warrior?”

No one could dispute the decision since Kaz himself had made the proposition. No one, that is, except one young warrior. “Patriarch, I must ask that I be included with these two. I make that request through blood rights.”

Both Kaz and his father looked with astonishment at Fliara.

“Lass, think what you’re saying! This is our doing and ours alone!”

She raised her chin in a manner reminiscent of both her brother and her father. “I will do no less than my own kin. I am as honor-bound as either of you.”

“Talk sense to her, Kaz!”

“Listen to our father, Fliara. If I could, I’d make even him stay, but he’s already involved and there’s no way to extricate him from this. You don’t have to follow us. If we survive … and I say ‘if’ … we will never return to this land again.”

“I have already considered that.” She straightened. “I stand firm on my request.”

“And your request is granted,” Dastrun announced before anyone could volunteer an opinion. “Your spirit is a credit to the clan.”

“The same clan that’ll now ignore her if she falls prisoner to the guard!” Ganth quietly growled. “Do something, Kaz! I’m bereft of any ideas. What’s got into that girl?”

“Evidently she’s one of yours after all, Father.”

Fliara moved to join them, keeping her eyes on the patriarch. Dastrun looked around as if to see if anyone else was going to defect. When he saw that was not the case, he peered down at the trio. “By will of the clan, I commend you and send you on your way. Your path diverges from ours now, but your duty to honor remains strong. Oaths have been sworn and must be upheld.”

“Don’t put him in a terrible bind with the emperor is what he’s saying,” whispered Ganth. He snorted. “And he talks of honor and duty.”

Dastrun raised a hand, pointing at the door. “Go now. May Sargas and the spirit of Orilg guide you. I deem this audience at an end.”

That was it. The assembled elders rose and began to depart. Clan Orilg had always been known for its efficiency and order.

“Come with me,” Fliara said. Ganth hesitated, still glaring at the patriarch, but Kaz shook his head and steered his father toward the entrance.

Kaz, while not happy, was at least relieved. The clan would leave him alone for now. Its intervention would have been more hindrance than help, especially with Dastrun in command.

“Why’d you do it, lass?” Ganth was asking Fliara. “You needn’t have concerned yourself with our folly. It’s not been your way, ever.”

Kaz’s sister looked from father to brother, then shifted her gaze ahead again. “No, it’s not. You didn’t recognize me at all, did you, Kaz?”

The question caught him by surprise. He looked at his younger sister. Up close, he could see some family resemblance, but, it was true, she was virtually a stranger to him.

“No, I didn’t recognize you. It’s been years, though.”

“But you didn’t know me.”

“I just said that.”

Fliara looked at both of them. “That’s my reason.”

She would say no more. Kaz looked to his father for clarification, but Ganth merely shrugged. He understood no better than his son.

They came to the chamber where Hecar waited. Helati’s brother was pleased to see them. He had been expecting the worst. “They wouldn’t let me move from this chamber,” Hecar told them. “There were guards at the door.”

“Dastrun’s thorough, I’ll give him that,” Ganth noted.

“What happened in there, Kaz? Are we to be returned to the circus for the emperor’s amusement?”

“No, Hecar, we’re being allowed to go on our way. In return, we won’t involve the clan in our doings and it’ll pretend it knew nothing of our whereabouts.”

“Very kind. Hmmph. Better than I’d have expected of old Dastrun. Who’s this? Someone to see us out into the street?”

“I’m coming with you, Hecariverani.”

Hecar peered at her. “Hey, I know you.”

“It’s my daughter, Fliara. You saw her a couple of times when Kyri brought her around.”

“That little —” He ceased when he saw her bristle. Fliara was every inch a warrior, sleek and muscled. There was nothing diminutive about her now. “She’s turned into a fine fighter, I can see now, a credit to you and your mate, Ganth.”

Ganth chuckled. “Well and quickly spoken, Hecar. She’s every bit as headstrong as the rest, which is why she’s one of us now. The foolish female just abandoned the clan to help us.”

“Better to follow you than the clan these days,” Hecar returned. “I learned that a long time ago.” He thrust out a hand to Fliara. “You’re welcome to join, only you might change your mind. Your brother and father have a habit of getting into the worst of situations.”

“And whose fault was it this time?” Kaz pointed out.

“What is it with Jopfer?” Ganth asked his daughter, wisely changing the subject. “Why did he choose to go from the service of the circle to the state priesthood … and how was he selected to replace the former high priest? I’ve never heard of someone other than a cleric rising to that position.”

“It was abrupt,” Fliara answered. “The old cleric was still going strong, but then one day he suddenly announced he was searching for a successor.” Her eyes narrowed. Kaz and Hecar were listening intently. “The priesthood had been adamant about supporting the warlords, and their position was weaker after the war because of it. I think the old high priest decided to quit. The circle was different. There were a lot of new members. Jopfer was one of the new generation, one with vitality, and he didn’t have any connection to the Dark Queen’s minions. That was important to gain people’s trust. He grew very popular very quickly.”

“I’m beginning to smell a deal between interested parties,” Ganth grumbled.

Kaz agreed. “Looks like either the circle offered Jopfer as a replacement or the high priest preferred him as a way of keeping the sons of Sargas from falling further from grace in the eyes of the people.” He shook his head. “Nothing sounds quite right. We must be missing something. Even if the clerics had lost their standing, why accept a minion of the circle as their master?”

“Jopfer’s no minion of the circle,” Kaz’s sister offered. “In fact, they seem afraid of him now. He took to the role of high priest as if born to it. He’s not only brought the state priesthood to the forefront again, but eclipsed his predecessor.”

“Things make even less sense, then.”

They were interrupted by the sounds of armed warriors behind them. Some of the group who had accompanied Fliara at the circus waited just beyond the chamber. One of them stepped forward and curtly pointed.

“I think, my children, that we’re being asked to leave this place.”

The warrior in the lead responded, “The patriarch has found a house where you’ll be safe until tonight. He feels you should go there as soon as possible. We’ve been sent to escort you.”

“What then?” asked Hecar.

“I’m going after Delbin. He freed us in the circus. It’s because of me he’s here in the first place, and I owe it to the kender to get him out.”

“Get him out of where? Who’s got him? The guard?”

“No, I’d say the high priest.” When he saw Fliara start, Kaz reassured her, “You owe no obligation to us. I’d even make Father stay behind if I thought I could convince him to do so.”

She gave him a look that was reminiscent of one Kaz himself had been known to give people in certain situations. “And you think I could do any less?”

Ganth sighed. “What sort of children did I raise?”

“The high priest,” Hecar mumbled. “We’ll be assaulting the temple itself …”

“Probably. I can’t think of anywhere else they would keep him. There are supposed to be cells below the main building.”

“The temple …” Helati’s brother grunted. “All right, then. How do you expect to gain entrance to that place? We can’t just walk in, can we?”

Kaz lowered his voice, making certain that the warriors impatiently waiting by the door could not hear him. “No, but there is someone else who can.”

“And who’s this? A cleric?”

Kaz turned away from him without answering, and said to the guards, “We expect our weapons back before we go.”

Honor’s Face and the other weapons were brought forth. The leader said, “We’ll give them back to you at the safe house.”

“That’ll do.” Kaz looked at the others. Hecar was still waiting for an answer. Kaz smiled grimly. “You haven’t figured out who has the key to the temple? I’ll give you a guess. He’s not a cleric.”

“Lad, you’re not talking about —”

Kaz nodded to them. “Yes, Captain Scurn. He is no doubt looking for us even now. I think we should help him find us.”

Chapter 12

A TRAITOR IN THE MIDST

Helati looked the children over one more time before settling down. She could not sleep, not just yet, so she spent the time in quiet contemplation of what she and Kaz had expected to do with their lives over the next few years. They wished for more children and had intended to expand their dwelling accordingly. However, the growth of the settlement was going to force them to rearrange some of their plans. Like it or not, Kaz was going to have clan responsibilities.

Helati was not so put out by that. If anyone deserved such an honor, it was her mate. Had he not fought well in the war, faced mages and monsters, and earned the praise of other races, the last the hardest thing for any minotaur to attain? Clan Kaziganthi had a good ring to it, though it would no doubt be shortened to Kaz, as her mate expected.

Her reverie was disrupted by a slight sound, a movement outside. It might have been only an animal, but Helati doubted that. Like Kaz, she had come to sense the difference between various intruders. This seemed more the two-footed kind.

Easing the dagger from her belt sheath, Helati pinpointed the location. Even in her home she always wore a blade, a notion Kaz had introduced to her, for which she was glad. Her other weapons were nearby, but the sound was close to where the children slept. The dagger would be better.

The sound was repeated. A footfall, all right. She poised herself, ready to strike.

“Mistress Helati?” whispered a female voice.

Many of the minotaurs had started calling her by a number of titles such as “lady,” “matriarch,” and “mistress.” Like Kaz, she preferred simply being called by her name, but the others would not hear of it.

“Come in slowly,” she called, “with both hands visible.”

The other obeyed. A moment later, a female called Keeli entered. Helati recalled her as the mate of Zurgas. The pair had been busy since their recent arrival, already having located a place to build their dwelling. “Forgive me for disturbing you at this time, but I wanted not to be noticed.”

Helati lowered the dagger, but did not put it away. “And why is that, Keeli?”

The other female looked around, making certain they were alone. “I had something to tell you, but I was afraid others might be around, others who might be the wrong ones.”

“Including your mate?”

“Zurgas knows, but since this is my knowledge, he agreed that it was up to me to tell you. He waits back at our campsite.”

Helati did not know whether she was supposed to feel more secure knowing that or not. She was not certain she could trust the newcomer. “Perhaps if you explained what knowledge it is you have. …”

Keeli cleared her throat. Her gaze fixed on Helati’s suspicious eyes. “I am of the clan of Sumarr. It’s not a large clan, but it has links to others. Through those links, I gained a position working as a low-level subordinate for a member of the Supreme Circle. At the time, I was proud of the honor. My work involved seeing to it that his dictates were followed by the State Guard. That was how I met my mate. He occupied a similar position for another member of the circle. We had cause to meet often, though we kept our interest in one another quiet for some time.”

“Understandable.” Members of the circle were terribly rivalrous and, as such, leery of interaction between their subordinates. “What does this have to do with me?”

Keeli looked down. “I am sorry. Let me move on. Months later, Zurgas and I came to the understanding that we could not love one another and still work for our masters. For our own good, we resigned to seek our futures elsewhere, perhaps in sailing. If either of us remained as a servant to a circle member, the other might be suspected of betraying secrets. You understand what I mean?”

“I do. Go on.”

“It was but a short time before I was to leave. I was doing what I could to make certain my master would have no reason to fault my work since I hoped he would still give me a recommendation. I worked late hours that day, trying to organize everything. That was when he came.”

Helati said nothing, relieved that the other female had at last gotten to the point. The younger minotaur had begun to remind her, with her long-windedness, of a certain kender named Delbin.

“He was a representative of the high priest. He seemed annoyed to find me there, but dismissed me a moment later as not being worth his interest. I recalled seeing him once or twice before, but only glances. He wore a robe that marked him as a cleric of some ranking. Since it was not entirely uncommon for the high priest and the circle to communicate, I thought nothing of it, but now that I’ve seen him again, I thought you ought to know.”

It took several seconds for the statement to register. Kaz’s mate chose her words with care. “Let me see if I understand what you’re trying to say. You are talking about a high-ranking cleric who visited the sanctum of your master, one of the Supreme Circle, and then you claim to have seen him again. … Do you mean here?”

“Yes! His appearance has changed, but I remember him. I’ve always been good at recalling faces.”

A cleric among the settlers? High-ranking clerics especially did not simply give up their positions and walk away. She could think of only one reason why a cleric would be among her people: to spy for the priesthood.

“You say he’s changed his appearance?”

“Aye, Mistress Helati. The hair is shorter and his face did not wear such a beaten, gladiator look to it. Both horns were intact, too —”

Helati stopped her there. She could not believe what she was hearing. “One of the horns is damaged?”

“Broken off. I was afraid to say anything at first, for he stood next to you when we arrived.”

Brogan.

“The one who greeted you when you first met me?” she asked Keeli, hoping somehow the other would deny it. “Brogan?”

“That was him. I swear by the sword of Kiri-Jolith.”

Brogan a spy? How long had he been among them? He was one of their most trusted. Helati could not believe what she was hearing, and yet … there had been times when both she and Kaz had wondered if they were being monitored from Nethosak. The powers were suspicious of anything that threatened their supremacy.

She could not condemn him without hearing his side. It could be that Keeli’s memory for faces was not so perfect. It could also be that Keeli herself was the spy. Helati tried not to let paranoia guide her emotions.

“Come with me.” Sheathing the dagger, Helati returned to the children. With great care, she gathered them up, still slumbering, then turned to Keeli and commanded, “Walk before me. I’ll direct you where to go once we’re outside.”

The younger female did not understand, but obeyed. They abandoned Helati’s dwelling, at which point she ordered Keeli to turn right. The dwelling they soon reached belonged to another mated pair raising a child of their own. The mother was a friend of Helati’s, named Ayasha. Ayasha could be trusted. She and Helati had been friends once, long ago in the homeland. It had been one of Helati’s greatest pleasures to greet Ayasha when she and her family had arrived in the settlement.

She left the twins with Ayasha, her explanation a simple one, then briefly returned to her own dwelling. Moments later, sword dangling at her side, she journeyed to the home of Brogan. Keeli followed her halfway there, but Helati decided it was best if she went the rest of the distance alone. If, for some reason, the accusations were not true … or even if they were … she did not want Brogan knowing who had informed on him.

Keeli protested. “You should not be alone with him.”

Helati touched the hilt of her sword. “Don’t worry about me. You return to your mate until I call for you.”

Still protesting, the younger female departed. Helati did not mention that she hoped Brogan was innocent. In any case, it would be easier to talk to him alone.

The light from a small, crude fireplace burned in Brogan’s modest dwelling. He lived alone, far from most of the others. Helati glanced about, studying the lay of the land. Neither she nor Kaz were overly familiar with the one-horned minotaur’s home, for Brogan generally visited them.

Brogan a spy? The distance of his home from the main settlement and his constant interest in what Kaz was doing spoke against him, but could easily be excused for other, more mundane reasons. Helati felt rather foolish about accusing him, but could certainly not ignore Keeli’s words.

She remembered that Brogan had tried to form an armed force to accompany Kaz to Nethosak. Had that also been a ploy of some sort?

Enough paranoia! she scolded herself. Time to be a warrior.

It was tempting to peer through a window, but Helati boldly knocked on the dwelling’s crude wooden door.

“Who’s there? Who is it?”

“It’s me, Brogan. Helati.”

“Helati?” After some noise, the door swung open. The one-horned minotaur blinked, then smiled. “Some news of Kaz, I hope?”

“Possibly.” She had not given any thought to what to say to him. Accuse him outright? “May I come in?”

“Of course! Enter!”

As she walked through the doorway, Helati noticed the mark of Kaz on the dwelling. Her insides twisted. If Brogan was innocent, what she had to say would greatly insult his honor. Yet if he was guilty, the mark of Kaz was of great insult to her and her family, a mockery of the friendship they had extended to Brogan.

There were few furnishings in the minotaur’s home: a table, two stools, and a box in which personal effects no doubt were stored. Brogan apparently slept on a bedroll to one side of the single room. The fireplace was very small, almost as if an afterthought. A few items were scattered about, but overall the place seemed orderly. A battle-axe hung on a wall near the bedroll. The table was situated so that if Brogan sat down, he could reach the handle with little effort.

In fact, Brogan led her to the table and offered her a seat. Helati shook her head. “I won’t be staying long. Just a few minutes at best.”

He frowned. “Is something wrong? Have you heard some bad news?”

“I’m not certain.” She did not know how to proceed. Had Kaz been here, Helati suspected he simply would have pushed ahead. She must do the same.

“I’m worried that Kaz might be in danger, that he might also have been captured and imprisoned along with my brother.”

“Well, as you indicated not long ago, Kaz hasn’t been gone all that long. He might even be on his way back by now.”

“Maybe. What makes me fear that Kaz is a prisoner are some rumors.” She hesitated for effect. “I’ve heard there might be spies among us, Brogan.”

“Spies?” He sounded genuinely concerned. “Here? Who?”

“There may be more than one, but I’ve heard that there’s at least one who might be acting as a servant of the high priest himself.” She watched him for some sign of guilt. So far, he seemed perfectly at ease.

“The high priest, eh?” He rubbed his muzzle and turned toward the fire, staring into it. The battle-axe was only a step away, but Brogan made no move toward it. “I don’t like the sound of it. The high priest, he’s a deadly sort. Not a gladiator. More like a serpent. That’s what he always reminded me of.”

“Then you’ve seen him … often?”

“Now and then.” The male squatted by the fire and, seizing a loose stick, prodded the fire into greater life. “From a distance.”

“Do you have any idea who might be the spy, Brogan?”

The question startled him more than it should have. Helati saw that. Her hand shifted slowly, almost casually, to the hilt of her sword.

“I used to be one,” he replied, still stirring the fire.

The outright admission was so unexpected that Helati froze where she stood, not quite certain how to continue. Her grip tightened on the sword. “You’re the spy, then?”

He looked up at her. “No, I said I used to be one. When I first came here, I was a spy for the high priest. I sent messages through various means back to Nethosak. The past four months, though, I’ve been sending misleading messages.”

“Why would you do that? More to the point, why should I believe you?”

Brogan finished tending the fire and rose. “When I came here, I was a fairly high-ranking cleric. That’s why they trusted me to send them accurate intelligence about this settlement and its growth. His Holiness does not like this place. Everyone and everything here defies his preaching. I was ordered to assess the situation and report on it. I did so for the first several months.”

“What changed your mind?” Helati found herself wanting to believe that Brogan was a friend, not an enemy. But he might simply be an excellent liar.

The one-horned minotaur looked her in the eye. “Kaz. You. The lives I saw around me. There’s more life, more satisfaction here than in all the homeland. Oh, everyone works frantically to fulfill our ‘destiny,’ but we are losing our individuality. We are becoming the servants of the dream, not the masters we were supposed to be.” Brogan shook his head. “Honor has become like a sword without a warrior to wield it. We’re heading in the same direction as the ancient ogres. Even if we do conquer the world, we will eventually fall. Without honor, without vitality and respect for ourselves, we’re lost.”

Helati’s grip on the hilt loosened. Brogan sounded honest, but could she believe him? “Pretty words. I’d like to believe that being here has somehow converted you, but I’ve got no proof, Brogan. Can you tell me anything that’ll make me more willing to accept your words?”

“No. Nothing. My words are all I’ve got. I saw in Kaz the embodiment of what we should be. I decided to follow his example. To be a true minotaur warrior, I could do no less.”

More words, but still no proof. She had to make a decision. “Brogan, what you’ve said sounds good, but I can’t accept words alone. I think you should come with me. I think some of the others need to hear what you’ve said.”

“I understand that, but could I ask you a question?”

“Ask.”

“Who told you about me?”

“I just found out, that’s all.”

“It was the two newcomers, wasn’t it? They’re the only source of recent news. I wondered about them. I thought the female looked familiar —” His eyes brightened. “She worked for the priesthood … no … the circle!” He grinned. “Of course, that amounts to the same thing these days. At least three members of the circle are under the thumb of Jopfer, especially his old mentor! Hah! To think that old war dog thought he was being handed the state priesthood when they offered to make his aide high priest in return for concessions! He thought Jopfer would stay his servant, but it’s turned around on him!”

Helati was able to follow only some of what he said, but it was enough to make her hair stand straight. A servant of the circle was high priest? Jopfer? That name sounded familiar. She was almost certain he was an old friend of her brother.

“Well, we can discuss that later,” Brogan concluded. He looked around. “The fire will burn down without any trouble, and I’ve nothing else to take care of. I suppose we can leave immediately, then. I won’t bother with taking my axe, of course.”

“All right, you walk in front of me.”

He shifted around. “You should unsheathe your sword, just in case. I would.”

Granting his point, Helati pulled her sword free and pointed it at his back. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Village center.” The center was not far from her own dwelling, and it was where most of the minotaurs gathered to talk.

“Good. I’d prefer somewhere more crowded for the time being.”

She did not ask what he meant by that. As they started out the door, however, Helati suddenly recalled something. If Brogan was a cleric, then by rights he had abilities that could make her sword useless. She had seen clerics, not only those of Sargas, who could stop a foe in their tracks with but a glance. It was like magic, and yet not. So far, though, Brogan had made no false moves.

They stepped out into the darkness, the one-horned male scanning the area as he walked. Outside, he seemed a little on edge. That, in turn, made Helati more attentive. Did Brogan have allies? She hadn’t considered that possibility.

Brogan took a few more steps, then paused. Helati readied herself, expecting him to turn and attack suddenly, but the other minotaur simply coughed and then continued ahead.

Helati took a step after him.

Suddenly the cleric turned and roared, “Get down!”

For some reason, Helati obeyed. As she did, a whistling sound caught her attention. She looked up from where she had dropped and saw Brogan, an arrow sticking out of his shoulder. He grunted, dropping to his knees.

A second arrow struck the earth just beyond her head. Then, figures, shadows with raised weapons, began to emerge from the foliage. She counted two, then a third.

“Helati!” hissed Brogan. “If you’ve got a dagger, I could use it, please!”

She would have been glad to oblige him, but the first of the three was almost upon her. Helati barely had time to rise before an axe blade swung past her face. Backing away, she slashed with her own weapon, but her attacker moved aside.

The second attacker raced past her. Brogan was the intended target. Helati reached for the blade on her belt, but found herself too harried to toss it to her companion. The third figure had joined the fray, and both it and the second attacked at once. She was driven back, effectively separated from Brogan.

Darkness had prevented her from immediately identifying her assailants, only that one was male and the other female. It was not until the female missed with her sword and uttered a curse that Helati recognized her.

It was Keeli. The other minotaurs Helati could not identify.

Why were they trying to kill Brogan? Did they know of his defection? It was the only reason that made sense.

“Surrender and we’ll take you to your mate!” offered Keeli in a snide tone.

“I don’t think so. I … just … don’t trust you for some reason, Keeli.”

The other female laughed, then lunged. Helati dodged, but was thrown into the path of the minotaur wielding an axe, which was probably what Keeli had planned. The axe came down, barely missing her foot. She swung her sword and, more out of luck than skill, grazed the axe-wielder’s arm. He quickly pulled back.

“I thought you were supposed to be good,” Keeli said mockingly. “They said that Kaz himself trained you. Maybe he’s not as good as they say. Maybe he won’t last that long in the circus.”

She was trying to goad Helati. The thought that Kaz might be facing death in the circus threatened to wreck her concentration.

What was happening to Brogan, she could not say. Neither he nor the third attacker were within sight.

Now the axe-wielder returned to the fray, but his swing was a little off. The second swing was not as shaky, but he left a bigger opening. Leaping away from Keeli, Helati thrust at the male’s upper leg, near the muscle.

The blade cut deeply. The assassin did not scream, but fell to one knee. His axe he kept gripped in one hand, but he was badly wounded. Helati backed away, focusing on Keeli.

Blade clashed against blade. Keeli was good, but her moves were traditional, the type taught for generation after generation by instructors. Against most opponents, she would have been almost unbeatable, but Kaz, though more proficient with an axe, knew sword tricks that were outside all the usual rules.

Helati let herself be pushed back. She sensed Keeli’s growing confidence that Kaz’s mate was about to fall. Twice the assassin struck, and each time Helati yielded a little more.

When next her opponent attacked, Helati brought her blade under and around. Keeli tried to counter, but Helati instantly withdrew her sword, causing the former to over-reach herself. Kaz’s mate immediately lunged, making utmost use of the opening. She hoped only to wound Keeli, but the younger female twisted wildly in an attempt to sidestep the blade.

Her maneuver had just the opposite effect. Keeli’s sword missed Helati’s hand by a scant half inch. The force with which Keeli swung her blade brought her forward more than she had anticipated. The tip of Helati’s sword sank deep into the other minotaur’s chest.

Gasping, Keeli slumped forward. Helati barely had time to pull her sword free before her adversary fell to the ground. Keeli’s life had already seeped away.

Helati did not waste time dwelling on her triumph. She eyed the wounded male, but he was clearly no threat. Turning her gaze to the side, she searched for Brogan.

She spotted him standing over Zurgas, the latter crumpled to the ground. The cleric was breathing heavily, holding his wounded shoulder. Helati took a closer look at the dead minotaur. The shaft of an arrow rose from Zurgas’s throat. Somehow, Brogan had turned the arrow into a makeshift dagger. It was a reminder of just how skilled he was.

A scuffling sound reminded her of the third assassin. He was trying to drag himself into a position where he could either throw or swing his axe.

“I suggest you drop that before I kill you,” she informed him.

“Kill me, then,” he grunted in a familiar voice.

“No, she won’t kill you. Not yet.” Brogan walked up to the pair, gripping the wound in his shoulder. “Not until I’ve finished with you.”

The assassin cringed. Helati had to keep herself from shaking.

“Keep away from me! I have the high priest’s favor! You’ve betrayed your master!”

“The high priest isn’t here,” Brogan pointed out. “And if you doubt that I still have the power granted by Sargas, then I can think of a dozen fascinating ways in which to resolve those doubts.”

The prisoner lowered the axe. He glanced from Brogan to Helati. “I yield to you! Not to him! I give my bond to you! I swear!”

“And how can she tell if you’re a warrior of your word? You hunt us from the darkness, giving no warning, no challenge. That is not the way of honor, is it?”

All Brogan did was talk, yet each fierce word seemed to pierce the prisoner like the tip of a blade.

“I swear!”

Looking at Helati again, Brogan asked, “Do you accept his bond?”

She did by nodding. Brogan nodded back, then asked, “Will you allow me to question this one in your name?”

“I gave her my bond. I did not give it to you!”

“But I may act for her, if she desires.”

Twisting around, the prisoner pleaded, “Mistress Helati! I’ve lived here for more than six months, acting as agent of the high priest, especially when he became suspicious of this one’s information. I am Yestral.”

Yestral. The name was familiar. “I know you. You helped build the storage house.”

“Aye. My orders were to watch and report all. Then, when Keeli and her mate arrived, she informed me that the high priest wanted Brogan eliminated for his betrayal. Since your mate was known to be riding toward Nethosak, where it was assumed he would be captured or killed, she also commanded your execution. Keeli said she’d bring the pair of you together. Zurgas and I were to follow and await our chance. She would join us if able. I obeyed, but it wasn’t to my liking.”

“How many others?” asked Brogan. “How many other agents does His Holiness have here?”

“None! I swear!” Yestral’s fear of the one-horned minotaur was palpable. “Mistress Helati! I’m your prisoner, not his!”

“All right, but you’ll answer all questions when I ask them. Is that understood?”

“I swear by the horns of Sargas.”

They were interrupted by the arrival of three other minotaurs. Helati tensed, then saw they were ones she was certain she could trust.

“You see?” said the foremost, a dark-furred, bulky male with wide eyes who acted as smith for the settlement. “I told you I heard weapon play.”

The other two nodded. One of them looked at Helati. “Are you all right, Mistress?”

“I am, but Brogan is wounded.”

He waved off assistance. “It’ll heal right enough. Someone should take care of this one, though, Mistress Helati. We also need to dispose of these two carrion.”

“Agreed.” She pointed at one of the newcomers. “You. Get some help to drag these two back to the main part of the settlement. I want this one bound and locked up in the storage house.”

They moved to obey. Brogan joined Helati.

“What of me?”

“I’ll take a chance on you, but you have to tell me what you did that made him fear you so.”

He smiled ruefully. “I’ve got something of a reputation. Much of it is exaggerated, but … some of it isn’t.” His tone darkened. “I don’t make excuses for that. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about my past, but I ask that you leave that for tomorrow. I think I’m going to collapse soon if I don’t tend to this shoulder.”

Helati had almost forgotten about his wound. “Let me help you.”

“I can minister to it myself. You have enough to concern yourself with. Get some sleep, Mistress.” He nodded farewell, then walked toward his dwelling.

“One more question,” she suddenly called.

“What?”

“You seemed to know that something was going to happen. How did you?”

He looked somewhat guilty. “It seemed like the sort of ambush I might’ve planned once.”

She made no attempt to stop him when he turned away. Perhaps there was reason to be suspicious of him, but Helati doubted that Brogan was lying.

What about Kaz? Yestral’s words haunted her. Kaz had ridden into a trap, after all. They knew he would ride to Nethosak and try to rescue her brother. What had happened to him?

I have to go rescue him, Helati thought. I have to go after him before it’s too late … but what about the children?

Brogan had offered to organize an armed force. She knew that if she asked for aid, he and most of the others would offer themselves, but to take so many into what certainly had to be the maw of danger …

I have to go alone. There’s no way around it. Ayasha will have to tend the children. She loves them as if they were her own.

She shivered, thinking about that. It was fortunate that her friend cared for the twins so much. It was all too likely that if Helati did not return from Nethosak, Ayasha might find herself acting as mother to the young pair for the rest of her life.

*

Delbin looked around the chamber. The chains holding him against the wall had so far defied his supreme lock-picking skills, which really impressed him. That left him with only sleep or staring at the wall, but he was too curious to sleep. Why did a minotaur cleric desire his presence? Maybe he had never seen a kender before and was just curious. More likely, the bad minotaurs wanted to use him against Kaz. Delbin hoped someone would come by soon before things got too boring. So far, the only visitor to his chamber had been a guard who had inspected his head for injuries.

His head still throbbed, but not nearly as much as earlier. At least now Delbin could see clearly, not that there was much to see in the room. It was nicer than he would have expected from a prison cell. The place was clean and orderly. There was even a bed to one side, though he certainly had no way to reach it at the moment. A table and two chairs stood not far from the bed, also out of his reach. The room was dim at the moment because the only light source came from a pair of torches in the hall beyond his cell door. But Delbin’s night vision remained exceptional.

With nothing else to do, he occupied his thoughts with the memories of the dream he had experienced just before blacking out. The man in gray again. The kender wondered why he had dreamt of the strange figure yet another time. True, the dream had been interesting, even entertaining at times, but why the gray man? Why had he not dreamt of being rescued by Kaz instead?

It did not matter. What mattered was that the gray man had reassured him, saying there was still hope. Hope for what, Delbin could not say. What the gray man had said after that was a hazy memory, but the kender had no difficulty keeping his spirits up. Already he began wondering if, by using the pick he had secreted in his hand, he might be able to unlock the fascinating mechanism that kept the manacles sealed. …

A murmur from the hall distracted him. It was not one of the guards, but rather what sounded like a child shuffling down the outside corridor.

A moment later, a bedraggled-looking head popped up at the door. Actually, it looked more like the upper half of a face that belonged to a gully dwarf. He had seen a few of them running around, cleaning refuse off the streets, but this was the first one he had seen up close.

“Hello, my name’s Delbin. What’s yours?”

The gully dwarf blinked, then replied, “Galump. Galump is Galump’s name. Delbin’s a kender.”

“Yes, I am. What’re you doing down here? Are you a prisoner, too? Did you escape? They certainly have good chains here, so if you know how to unlock them, I’d sure like to know.”

It took the raggedy figure some time to digest this before finally answering, “Galump’s no prisoner. Galump does what minotaurs say he do.”

Delbin recalled the collars he had seen the gully dwarves wearing. He did not think it was nice that the minotaurs made the poor creatures do such tasks and wear such nasty collars.

The gully dwarf suddenly dropped out of sight. Delbin recalled almost too late the short attention spans of these lowly creatures. “Wait, Galump!”

Galump popped back up into sight. He had to hang on to the door to be able to peer inside. “What Delbin want?”

“Can you help me get out of here?”

This seemed to sadden the gully dwarf. “Galump can’t do that, no, he can’t. If he could, he would help nice human girl, nice girl who mean bull who hits Galump keeps in cell.”

Another prisoner? “If you help me, maybe I can help her. We could all escape together.”

Even though all Delbin could see of Galump was the top half of his head, the gully dwarf’s fearful reaction was evident. “No! Galump could not do! Disobey the high one and he’ll eat us like he eats the others!”

“Eats the others?” People thought it was difficult to keep track of what kender said, but Delbin thought Galump’s kind was the most baffling race. “What do you mean? You don’t mean he actually eats them, because that’s highly unlikely. What you probably mean is that he punishes them badly, but don’t worry, because if we get the girl – a human girl? – out, then we can go to my friend Kaz and he’ll protect us —”

“No!” The gully dwarf dropped out of sight, his disappearance followed a moment later by the sound of light, receding footfalls.

He sure is afraid of the high priest, Delbin thought. He really believes the high priest minotaur will eat him, but minotaurs don’t eat other races, as far as I know, even though they’re descended from ogres and long, long ago, like my friend Kaz told me, ogres sometimes …”

A human girl?

“Now what would a minotaur want with a human girl?” Delbin whispered to the emptiness. “Maybe she’s a slave like poor Galump. Maybe she’s a princess the high priest is holding hostage.” Delbin cared very little for this high priest. He was not a nice minotaur, not if he was making gully dwarves and little human girls into slaves.

“Well, I’ll just have to save her, and Galump … and all the other gully dwarves and prisoners the high priest has and deliver them to Kaz. He’ll know what to do. He will.”

With renewed gusto he went to work on the lock. Normally kender enjoyed the challenge of a good lock, but this time Delbin was impatient. He had to get going. He had to rescue this princess. She was probably a shy, helpless young lass who had never been outside in the real world, not like him. Maybe she would reward Kaz and him for rescuing her by showing them her kingdom.

Orderly footfalls in the corridor caused him to quickly hide the pick. The newcomers drew nearer and nearer until they finally paused before his cell. He made out two guards and one figure clad in the robes of the priesthood.

One of the guards opened the door. Both entered, to be followed by the most sinister minotaur Delbin had ever seen. The kender actually felt a twinge of fear, something rarely experienced by any of his kind.

“I am Jopfer, High Priest of the Temple of Sargas, the Soul of the State. I would like to speak to you about your friend Kaziganthi.” He leaned forward and stared into the kender’s eyes. “And you will answer me as I desire. Do you understand?”

The fear grew stronger … and the simple fact that it did frightened the kender more than the fear itself.

Chapter 13

THE RED DRAGON

Scurn was in a foul mood. Not only had he been humiliated in the circus again, but he was now out of favor with both the high priest and the Supreme Circle. His only hope was to recapture Kaz and his companions before someone else did, not an easy task, since there were search parties all over Nethosak. Of course, some of the parties had spent more time sparring with each other than searching, which was some consolation. The servants of the Supreme Circle had little love for the servants of the state priesthood, and vice versa. Neither cared for the members of the guard. Members of the guard, in turn, thought little of either group.

Scurn drank from his tankard, finding only the dregs of his ale remaining. Yet another thing to curse about. Still, it was probably good fortune that he had finished his drink. He was due back at guard quarters. Scurn had, through his rank, pulled the authority for yet another search party. This time, he swore, he would find Kaz and see to it that his rival was dragged before Jopfer himself.

As Scurn rose, he mulled over his latest humiliation. Truth to tell, he secretly admired Kaz’s combat skills. Kaz had defeated him fairly, but leaving Scurn alive but unconscious was an insult. Kaz should have killed him, as such a combat demanded. By leaving the guard captain alive and relatively unharmed, he had belittled Scum’s skill.

You should have killed me, Kaz, he thought. An honorable death was preferable to a bloodless defeat. Scurn felt diminished in the eyes of his warriors. Only Kaz’s capture or death would appease the disfigured captain.

Scurn exited the tavern, his mind on where to search next. He wanted to check back with his old clan. Orilg was hiding something. Even Dastrun, who was supposed to be a supporter of the emperor, had said nothing of value when questioned. Yet Scurn was certain the clan had harbored the fugitives for a short time. He had a witness who claimed to have observed members of Orilg behaving suspiciously outside the circus at the time of Kaz’s disappearance.

I should go back and shake old Dastrun by the collar until he talks! He knows. He does.

The main quarters of the guard lay just ahead. Because of its importance, the headquarters was not all that far from the emperor and the circus. Scurn picked up his pace, growing more eager to renew the hunt. He recalled now that Ganth had many former comrades among the mariners. There were more than a few who might be willing to give him and his son shelter. He also needed to consider the sector where untried or failed minotaurs made their humble homes. One of these multiple dwellings could easily serve to hide Kaz, Ganth, and Hecar. That sector was overdue for a scouring anyway.

“Captain Scurn?” called a female voice.

He paused and turned. A female warrior several years younger than him ran up, breathing heavily. He did not recognize her, but pinned on her chest was the badge of the guard, a circle within which was depicted a watchful eye superimposed over an axe. “I’m Captain Scurn. What is it you want?”

She gave him a salute, then, gasping, said, “I was sent to find you. The sergeant on duty said you were at the Baleful Basilisk, but I couldn’t find you there. So I decided to check this area.”

“You must’ve just missed me. Now spit it out. What’s got you running?”

“Captain, there is news that the fugitives have been spotted in the wharf district! Your second took the search party out, but I was left behind to inform you! If we hurry, we can meet them by the warship Sea Lancer.”

“The Sea Lancer?” Scurn did not know that particular vessel. “Is Kaz there?”

“So the rumor goes. The captain is an old member of his father’s crew.”

“So I was right!” The captain seized her by the shoulders. “Quickly! How long ago? They aren’t simply going to board the ship, are they?”

“No, Captain. Right now they’re waiting for you. If I don’t show up with you soon, though …”

“Then let’s get going!” Scurn rushed past her in the direction of the docks.

She fell into step beside him, now silent. That suited Scurn, who was busy thinking. Kaz was familiar with the area, which meant the guard had to be doubly careful. Fortunately, Scurn himself was familiar with the docks, having worked there for quite some time.

The female hurried ahead of him, saying, “We should turn down this way. The other path is blocked by construction work.”

“Construction work?” Scurn could not recall any work, and he had been down that street the previous day. “What work?”

“They’ve decided to expand the woodworks again. It started only this afternoon, but they’re going to be working through the night, Captain.”

“Hmmph.” On the whole, the news was not that surprising. The woodworks were vital not only for shipbuilding, but in other areas of construction as well. They had been enlarged once before, but with activity at its highest since the peak of the war, Scurn could see why the circle would demand improvement.

He turned down the path, again pulling ahead of her in his impatience. The street here was much more narrow, almost an alley, but it did lead in the direction of the docks. Scurn paid his dark surroundings little heed. He saw the like often enough in his duties.

The shadowy form of a tall minotaur materialized before him, almost as if by magic. In one hand he wielded a sword that was pointed at Scurn. The newcomer’s intention was clear even if his features were not.

“Stand where you are,” the figure said in a gravelly voice.

“You’re a fool —” Scurn began, but then a second figure wielding an axe appeared, settling into a fighting stance. Even without being able to see their features, Scurn knew who at least one of this pair had to be.

“Kaz —” he began, reaching for his weapon, but choking on his next words … this time because a sword point prodded his back.

“No sounds, no moves,” his own companion said in his ear.

“Very well done, Lass,” said a new voice. “Smooth as a morning breeze, you were.”

“Thank you, Father.”

Father? Scurn wanted to turn around and look at the female, but sensed that her warning was a serious one. It was one thing to die in combat, but another to die uselessly in a dark alley. He would wait. Kaz and the others wanted him for some reason, and he suspected it had to do with that blasted kender that had been captured at the circus.

The scarred warrior relaxed more. The opportunity for triumph still remained. Somehow he would turn this latest humiliation into victory.

*

Kaz eyed Scurn carefully, noting that his adversary was calmer than he would have expected. That bothered him somewhat, but he could not let it overwhelm his thoughts. The plan had to proceed at the prearranged pace if it was to succeed. They had to strike when the temple was at its most subdued.

There were those who would have called his plan insane, and Kaz was one of them. Still, if minotaur tendencies ran true, invading the citadel of Sargas might prove far easier than anyone could imagine. The minotaur clerics thought that no one would ever be so mad as to enter their domain without permission. That was the sort of attitude Kaz had made use of many times in the past against opponents who, while skilled, had grown too careless with their power.

“Greetings, Scurn.”

The disfigured minotaur snorted, but said nothing. He was taking Fliara’s sword very seriously, a wise thing to do. At a nod from Kaz, she removed Scum’s weapons, including the small dagger that most minotaurs wore on their kilts.

“Now then, Scurn, let’s talk. I’m glad to see you’re the creature of habit I remember, but we did have to wait a while longer than I wanted. Still the same taverns and inns. Still the same impetuous behavior.” Scurn glared. Kaz lowered his voice. “You’re an excellent warrior, Scurn. Never doubt that I respect your abilities and even, at times, your sense of honor and dedication. I never chose to make an enemy out of you.”

“You —” the captain started, before Fliara reminded him of the blade in his back.

“Best to get on with it, Lad,” recommended Ganth. “You’ll never change his mind. Dedicated he is, to the point of obsession. He’ll not see anything but the side he’s already chosen, and that’s that.”

Kaz knew that was true. He said, “I’ll offer you the chance to gain your life and freedom, Scurn. I want something from you, and in return I’ll let you go. You’ll be free to hunt me down again and challenge me to proper combat. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? The circus doesn’t count. The situation there was awkward at best. You want me in formal combat, warrior against warrior, just as you did when you tracked me down three years ago.”

Scurn saw that it was true. He might want Kaz captured, tossed into the arena, and killed there, but deep down, the captain’s greatest pleasure would be to defeat Kaz in hand-to-hand combat once and for all. Of course, that did not mean that Scurn would work to see that dream come true. First and foremost, he wanted Kaz … period.

“What do you want from me?” Scurn finally asked. “It must be something important. It can’t really be that kender, can it?”

Fliara did not remind him of her presence again. Scurn could be ignorant, but he was not stupid. However, Kaz also knew that by allowing his rival to think that he, Scurn, controlled some bit of the situation, the scarred minotaur was more likely to go along with their demands. Kaz was familiar with the way minotaurs such as Scurn thought. The captain would be working on the assumption that he would betray his captors at some point. He would, if things went as planned, agree to help them.

“You’re our guide,” Ganth informed the prisoner. “We are all going to see His Holiness.”

“You expect me to take you into the temple?” Scurn started to laugh, then remembered Fliara’s sword. “You might as well surrender to me now. At least you’ll have a chance of dying honorably in the circus.”

“Nobody needs to die, Scurn, not if we do this the way I ask. That includes you.”

“So you say, but I’m more likely to get run through from behind when you don’t need me anymore, aren’t I?”

Kaz stepped closer, matching gazes with the other. “I don’t want that to happen. Do you?”

Scurn was the first to look away. “No, like you, I want to see the axe coming!”

“Your choice, Scurn. Your life and freedom. All you have to do is lead us inside and past the acolytes. What we do after that is up to us.”

The captain straightened. “All right. Not that I’ve got much choice. You’ll be walking to your deaths, though. The high priest is not as kind as I’d be.”

“Aye,” Ganth interjected, “you’re kindness incarnate. Now turn around.”

Scurn obeyed. Ganth reached into a pouch and from it removed badges identical to the ones Fliara and Scurn already wore. Despite himself, the prisoner could not help but grunt in surprise.

“Amazing how these things can be found lying around,” Ganth commented. Members of the guard faced serious reprimand for lost badges, so they generally took care of them.

“Where did you get those?”

“No time for questions now,” Kaz reminded him. Even he did not know where Ganth had found the old badges. The mariner had asked his son not to ask, and Kaz respected that wish.

“Are we leaving now?” asked Hecar.

“Yes, we’re ready to leave.” Kaz faced his companions. “We need to be in and out of there. You all know your tasks. Anyone who doesn’t want to commit suicide with me can leave now.”

“You gave that speech before, Brother,” Fliara piped up. “None of us paid it any mind then, and none of us does now.” She tapped Scurn on the back. “Except maybe this one here.”

“Let’s get going, Son,” Ganth commented. “I’ve got a pair of new grandchildren I’m looking forward to meeting.”

“Let’s move, then.”

The party started toward the temple. Scurn walked in front, with Ganth on one side and Fliara on the other. Kaz followed, with Hecar close behind. Everyone now had their weapons drawn except for Kaz, who had a role to play, and, of course, Scurn.

Nethosak never truly slept, especially these days, but few minotaurs roamed the streets at this hour. A few passed by the group, but other than a furtive glance, most looked quickly away. It was not healthy to bring oneself to the attention of the guard.

They neared the temple much too soon. Torches lit the entrance, and two sentries clad in the colors of the priesthood stood at attention. Kaz glanced at the windows of the edifice and saw that most of them were dark. By now, the high priest would have retired, along with most of his staff. There would be some guards on duty, and a few acolytes.

“You don’t think this’ll work, do you?” Scurn whispered.

“It’ll work, or the last thing you’ll feel is this blade running through your stomach,” Fliara commented matter-of-factly.

“Amusing,” replied Scurn. “But not as amusing as this little plan of yours.”

They marched up with Scurn looking as if he were in full command of the situation. The guards looked poised to block their path, but Scurn showed his badge of rank and informed them, “I’ve got a prisoner that the high priest wants to question.” He indicated Kaz. “A companion of the chief fugitive being hunted tonight. Let us pass.”

The pair looked at one another, then the larger of the two nodded, at which point they stepped aside.

Expression set, Scurn led the group past. The doorway opened from within. Another pair of guards waited, but they were the only ones Kaz could see.

An acolyte met them when the doors were closed behind them. He looked slightly irritated, as if they had just disturbed him from his catnap. It was interesting, Kaz noted, but the higher the rank of a cleric in the temple of Sargas, the less devout they seemed to be. Oh, they performed all the same ceremonies, but their smug attitudes made them almost interchangeable with the staffs of the eight members of the Supreme Circle.

“What is it you want, Captain? His Holiness has retired for the evening.”

“I’ve got a prisoner he’ll want to see first thing in the morning,” Scurn replied without prompting. “A companion of the chief fugitive, Kaz. He knows the kender, too.”

The acolyte nodded approval, looking past Scurn. His mouth twisted in distaste. “Such betrayal to the cause is ever shameful. You are sure he is one of the traitors?”

“He’s traveled with Kaziganthi for years. Knows him better than anyone. As I said, he is also acquainted with the kender.”

“A kender. Can you believe it? A minotaur who travels with a kender. This Kaziganthi has fallen low.”

“Captain,” Hecar interjected. “Maybe we should get this honorless one in a cell before he slips free again.” That there were cells in the temple was common knowledge. In the course of their duties, the clerics of Sargas were forced, so the high priests always insisted, to treat heretics as criminals. No emperor, however popular, had ever had the courage to question the existence of this private dungeon.

“A cell?” blurted the robed minotaur. “He should be thrown into the arena! Take him there.”

Fliara casually tapped her sword against Scum’s side. He quickly spoke up. “I’d rather he were kept here, Brother. And the high priest would surely agree. He is too valuable to waste in the arena – not yet at least.”

The acolyte weighed this seriously. “I am not accustomed to making such decisions. That was the duty of Brother Merriq.”

“Then get him.”

“Brother Merriq,” the other said frostily, “is no more. He perished bravely, capturing … capturing the other prisoner. A fire of some sort, I understand.”

Kaz could barely refrain from smiling. So Delbin had not been captured without a good fight. Kaz had no pity for Merriq. He had been the epitome of what was wrong with the minotaur homeland.

The robed figure was taking much too long to consider the matter. Hecar spoke again. “Captain, can’t we just put the prisoner in the cell ourselves and take responsibility?”

Scurn frowned, but Hecar’s words made the acolyte brighten. “Of course, if you want to take responsibility for the prisoner, you may go ahead. I cannot say how His Holiness will react, but as long as it is your responsibility …”

Even Scurn seemed disgusted with the robed minotaur’s attitude. The acolyte was one of those middle-level subordinates who would do anything as long as it didn’t threaten his own well-being. It was the type who never rose very high in the ranks, but seemed to last forever.

“We’ll take responsibility for any taint he leaves in the holy temple,” the scarred minotaur answered somewhat sarcastically. “Just tell us where the cells are and we’ll take him there. You won’t have to worry about a thing.”

“I’ll have to have someone lead you there.”

The robed figure stepped away quickly before anyone could suggest that he himself lead the party to the cells. Scurn glanced at Kaz, who kept his expression neutral.

A couple of minutes later, the acolyte returned with what was obviously a novice. The novice, a shorter, muscular minotaur, seemed caught between fear and anger, most of it aimed at his superior.

“This one will take you to the cells. Be about your business, then depart this building. Make certain the prisoner is completely secure before you leave, or it’ll be your heads. In the morning, someone will alert His Holiness.”

He turned away again before there could be any objection. The novice watched him depart, then looked at the others with a scowl on his face. “Come this way. Walk quietly, for the high priest rests now.”

“Will we be passing near his chambers?” Scurn asked on his own. Fliara shifted ever so slightly toward him.

“No, his private rooms are beyond the great audience chamber. The cells are below.”

Kaz was relieved to hear that. The farther they were from Jopfer’s rooms, the better.

The novice led them down one corridor after another, gradually descending into the bowels of the temple. All along their journey, the eyes of Sargas watched them. Here was a relief of Sargas saving the first minotaurs. Over there was a tapestry showing him building the border mountains. One image showed Sargas raising ships from the sea. Artisans had worked diligently to create the illusion that Sargas watched the viewer even as he performed his miracles.

They descended deeper. Kaz counted the levels in his head, estimating distance and time. He hoped the cells would not be much farther. One fortunate thing was that they had passed only a few sentries and never more than a pair at one station.

“This level is where the traitor should go,” the novice finally said, just when Kaz was beginning to think they were never going to reach the bottom. “We’ll take him down —”

The entire party paused as four sentries blocked their path. Unlike the previous ones they had passed, these sentries were alert and bristling.

“No one comes down this way,” commanded a dark minotaur who was the apparent leader. “By orders of the high priest.”

“We have a prisoner —” the novice began.

“No one.”

“The high priest’ll want this one in a special place,” Scurn interrupted. Fliara’s weapon had suddenly found itself nudging his back. “He’s a companion of the renegade we’ve been searching for.”

“We’ve got our orders.”

Scurn tried again. “He’s also a friend of the kender you have prisoner. The high priest will be glad to have him nearby. He’ll be able to make use of him. Leverage and that sort of thing.”

For the first time, the sentries seemed uncertain. The leader looked at his companions, then at Kaz. “I don’t know …”

Ganth glanced at his son. Kaz nodded slightly. Choosing a moment when the guards’ attention was elsewhere, he stepped past Ganth and Scurn, in front of the guard leader and one of the other sentries. Raising his hands, he brought forth Honor’s Face.

Startled, the guards looked up at the magical axe as if it were Sargas himself. Kaz quickly lowered the axe shaft with both hands and struck wide, hitting them both. The flat side of the axe head caught the second sentry squarely, knocking him completely over. The leader stumbled back, stunned but able to keep his footing.

Ganth reached out and shoved the novice’s head back against the wall. The novice struck the wall hard and, with a grunt of astonishment, slid to the floor.

“Don’t try anything!” Fliara commanded Scurn, who had started to reach for a weapon dropped by the guard leader.

Ganth seized the guard leader and threw him against the wall, just as he had done to the novice. Hecar and Kaz moved forward. The remaining pair of guards, suddenly outnumbered, backed away. They did not get far before Kaz and Helati’s brother caught up to them.

Kaz made the most of his axe in the narrow passage, swinging it diagonally. This action forced one guard back, while leaving Kaz wide open to an attack from the other. Hecar filled the gap, however, countering the other minotaur’s attempted thrust and bringing his blade up underneath, stabbing the guard in the stomach.

The death of Hecar’s foe drained the fight from the remaining temple guard. He dropped his blade and fell to one knee, hands over his head. “I yield myself.”

Hecar came up and took charge. Their foes had been too stunned to give an alarm. To Ganth, Kaz said, “We need to bind him and put them in another cell. The dead one, too.”

“What about him?” Kaz’s father asked, indicating Scurn.

“We still need him. Just make certain he knows what’ll happen if he opens his mouth at the wrong time.”

“I think Fliara’s taught him about that already.”

They gathered up the guards and located the nearest cell. From the pouches on their belts the party removed rope and cloth. Within a few minutes, the guards were secure. The only traces that remained in the hallway were some bloodstains, which they could do nothing to hide.

“I have the keys,” Hecar said, holding them up and dangling them. “Now we just need to find him. Surprised he hasn’t picked the locks himself and met us already.”

Kaz brought the head of his axe to bear on the one guard still conscious. “I’m going to remove the cloth around your muzzle, and you’re going to answer the question I’m about to ask. You get one chance, or you join your dead friend. Understand?”

The guard nodded.

“Good. Now where’s the kender?”

The guard answered, “Third corridor, second cell, but you’ll regret —”

Replacing the cloth over the prisoner’s protests, Kaz joined the others. “Let’s go.”

With Fliara keeping an eye on a suspiciously docile Scurn, the group hurried in that direction. The halls were darker here, only an occasional torch illuminating the area. As they passed each cell, Kaz peered inside. He had had a notion to free the other prisoners, but not one cell was occupied.

“Jopfer must want a lot of privacy for the kender,” Ganth remarked. “There should be at least a few poor heretics being retrained down here.”

Kaz was the first to reach the third corridor. He peered inside, seeing little more than darkness. These cells were far larger. The torchlight barely illuminated part of a chair and possibly a small table.

He tugged on the door. It opened.

Delbin had escaped … but where was he now?

“Kaz! Look what I just found!” Hecar came toward him with a squirming bundle. It was a gully dwarf. “This is the same one I think helped capture me. He did something to my harness!” The minotaur raised the sorry figure up so he could look it in the face. The legs of the gully dwarf … a male, Kaz thought … kept spinning, though his feet were high off the floor. “Well, now we can talk about the lesson I’m going to teach you —”

“Hecar —”

“No hurt Galump!” the gully dwarf pleaded. “Galump is Delbin’s friend! Good friend!”

“What’s that?” Kaz moved forward, seizing Hecar’s arm. He had his companion lower the creature called Galump to the ground. The creature tried to dash away, but Hecar maintained his grip. “Stop that!” Kaz commanded. In a softer tone, he asked, “You’re a friend of Delbin’s?”

“Yes! Galump is Delbin’s friend! Yes!”

“Do you know where he is? It’s important.”

The gully dwarf hesitated, then murmured, “High one will eat us if I say … He shouldn’t have gone after her.” The gully dwarf leaned forward and hesitantly asked, “You Kaz?”

The minotaur blinked. “I am. How did —”

“Delbin’s friend.” Galump attempted to think. It was manifestly a strain. “Delbin’s friend. Delbin wanted to help Galump. Galump help Delbin.” He broke into a childlike smile. “I show you.”

The gully dwarf twisted out of Hecar’s grip and started down the hallway. After a moment’s hesitation, the minotaurs followed.

Galump hurried deeper into the temple. Kaz was amazed and horrified at how many cells there actually were beneath the temple. Finally, Galump pointed at a cell door midway down a corridor. Kaz hurried past him and peered through the grill into the darkened cell. He could neither see nor hear anything within.

Then a chain rattled slightly. Kaz heard a short gasp that did not sound like the kender. In fact, it sounded like a female, but not really like a minotaur.

“Delbin!” He called, trying to keep his voice quiet enough so that it would not echo. “Delbin! It’s Kaz!”

The chain rattled more. He heard someone rise.

“Delbin!”

“Kaz?” came the kender’s hopeful voice. “Kaz!”

The chain dropped to the floor with a loud clash. Delbin burst out of the darkness from one side of the cell … followed, to Kaz’s astonishment, by a human female in her early or mid-teens. The girl paused only when the chains she wore yanked her back.

Kaz snarled, studying the length of chain. More and more, he desired the high priest’s neck between his hands. What right did Jopfer think he had to do this to a harmless, innocent child? She could not be any real threat to a minotaur. There was no honor in the cleric’s actions, only evil.

He turned away from the door. “Where are those keys?”

Hecar raised the ring of keys, but Delbin was already at the door. Before any of the minotaurs could say anything, there was a click. A moment later, the kender pushed the door open. “The manacles are really hard, Kaz, but the doors are simple. I locked it when I heard someone coming, just in case.”

“Amazing,” grumbled Ganth. “Minotaur locks are some of the best in the world, and this little one flicks them open without a care.”

They followed Delbin inside. The kender took the girl by the hand. She was staring at the minotaurs in open fear. “Don’t worry. We’re all going to rescue you.”

“Who is she, Delbin?” Kaz studied the girl. She looked as if she had some elven blood, but was otherwise unassuming.

“She’s —” The kender frowned. “She says she doesn’t have a name, Kaz.”

“Is that true, girl?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a name.”

“Why didn’t your parents give you one?”

She looked down. “I don’t remember them.”

“She said she’s been on her own as long as she can remember, but she doesn’t seem to remember very far back, maybe a couple of years, I think —”

“Shouldn’t we be leaving soon, Lad?” interrupted Ganth.

“We have to take her with us, Kaz!”

“A human girl?” Hecar shook his head. “She’ll stick out worse than a kender!”

“Nevertheless, we will take her.” He looked at the girl. For some reason, she reminded him of someone. “Don’t worry – girl – you’ll go with us. I wouldn’t leave anyone here to wait for the high priest.”

“I don’t like him. He kept saying I’d be here for centuries.”

“Jopfer’s truly mad,” Hecar retorted. “Becoming high priest has made him crazy.”

“Can you get the manacles open, Delbin?” Kaz did not want to have to use the axe. Striking the chains would make more noise than they could afford. It was a wonder no one had heard them so far.

“I think so.” The kender was already at work. “I think I almost have this one figured out.” To the human he said, “Don’t you worry! We’ll get you out, and then you can come with us back to Kaz’s home, and then we can come up with a name for you —”

“I think I’ve decided on one,” she abruptly announced with much seriousness. “I think I found one I like.”

“That’s all very nice —” but Kaz got no farther.

“I want to be called Tiberia, or even just Ty.” The girl smiled prettily at Kaz. “Delbin mentioned a dragon in a story he told me while he was trying to free me. About a dragon called Tiberion. I like that name.”

“Tiberia it is then,” snorted Ganth. “We can admire the choice later. If you can’t get those manacles open in the next few seconds, Delbin, then we’d better —”

Scurn swung his elbow back, catching a momentarily distracted Fliara in the stomach. She bent over, the air pushed out of her, allowing the scarred minotaur to seize her by the arm and shove her. Fliara collided with Hecar.

The action caught the others off guard. Scurn turned and raced through the open doorway.

“Somebody stop him!” Ganth called, already chasing the scarred minotaur.

“Delbin!” Kaz called over his shoulder as he started after them. “Get that bracelet open and get her out of here without us if you have to! We’ll meet where we stayed before this whole mess began, but don’t wait long! Get her out of Nethosak!”

“But, Kaz! I haven’t told you the biggest thing! You should hear what she’s able to do!”

“Later, Delbin! Free her!”

The kender was already back at work on the chain as Kaz and the others rushed out after Scurn. Kaz trusted the kender’s skills, at least where sneaking around was concerned. If anyone could get Tiberia out unnoticed, Delbin could.

Scurn and Ganth were out of sight as he turned the corridor, not a good sign. If Scurn made it up to the next level, he would be able to warn some of the temple guards.

Then he heard the sounds of a struggle. Kaz twisted around the corner and discovered Scurn and Ganth fighting hand-to-hand, the older minotaur’s sword on the floor between them. It was a credit to the undiminished skills of Kaz’s father that he had caught the escaping captain before Scurn could climb the steps.

Scurn saw Kaz coming. A dark glint appeared in the disfigured warrior’s eyes. Scurn opened his mouth and shouted loudly, making as much noise as he could. The cry echoed throughout the hall and, no doubt, the floor above.

Ganth finally freed a hand and punched his adversary in the jaw. Scurn stumbled back, falling over the steps. The older warrior reached down to retrieve his sword.

“What’s going on down here?” called a voice. Less than a breath later, three temple guards appeared on the steps, weapons drawn.

“He’s a traitor!” Ganth quickly replied. “He tried to kill the high priest’s prisoner!”

The guards looked at Scurn with surprise, then started down.

“You fools!” Scurn snarled in turn. “That’s the fugitive, Kaz, back there! He forced me at sword point to bring them here! I was the one who just shouted!”

The foremost guard looked the trio over. “I think you’d all better come with us. We’ll let one of the clerics hear this mess. Now turn your weapons over.”

Scurn revealed that he had no weapon. Ganth glanced at his son, then turned the blade so that the hilt pointed at the guards. One of the other warriors reached for it.

The blade slipped from the mariner’s hand. As the guard reached to retrieve it, Ganth seized his wrist and pulled him forward hard, knocking the shocked minotaur into Scurn. Both fell roughly to the floor.

As if by magic, Fliara and Hecar appeared behind Kaz. The three wasted no time before charging the remaining sentries. Ganth backed away, seizing his lost sword before rejoining his son and daughter.

Hecar struck the guard who had fallen, knocking him senseless. This gave Scurn the opportunity to grab the unconscious warrior’s blade and bring it up against Helati’s brother. The attack was weak, but it prevented Hecar from joining Kaz and the others.

For the first time, Kaz saw his youngest sibling in action. Fliara was swift, her smaller stature working for her in ways he would not have expected. Twice she got under the guard of an attacker, bleeding him. Fliara was versatile, using both orthodox and unorthodox moves to confuse her adversary.

Kaz’s own opponent was no match and was quickly backed up, leaving Fliara’s male alone. He tried to slash at her, but she shifted under him, running her blade into his chest. As he collapsed, Fliara joined her brother in pinioning the sole remaining guard.

All of a sudden, more guards appeared at the top of the steps. This time, there were at least seven. Kaz and his sister found themselves abruptly losing the ground they had gained. Soon they were pushed back near Hecar and Scurn, who were still battling.

“We’re trapped down here!” Fliara informed Kaz needlessly. “There’s nowhere but the cells behind us!”

Three more guards joined the squad. Although not all of the temple sentries could do battle, the small band was being continually pushed back down the steps. Ganth ran one through, but two more appeared. Kaz and his group retreated. Hecar was forced to abandon his duel with Scurn, lest he be isolated.

“The one with the axe!” the scarred warrior shouted. “The high priest will want him alive if possible, but kill the others!”

As Kaz backed even farther, he bumped into a small form. At first he thought it was Galump, but then he saw it was Delbin.

“Kaz! There’s no other way out! I looked all around, but I couldn’t find a path anywhere —”

Kaz deflected a sword thrust. “Where’s Ty?”

“She’s here, Kaz! Listen, she thinks she can get us out of here!”

“Don’t talk nonsense! Get back!”

“But listen, Kaz! She can do magic! She can!”

He had no time for the kender’s babble. “Well, then let her do it! Get us out of here! Take us anywhere!” Kaz succeeded in knocking away one minotaur’s sword, but that minotaur immediately retreated, and one of his comrades renewed the press. Kaz cried, “Ty, if you can do it, get us out of here!”

“I don’t know, Kaz! Delbin took off the chains, which the high priest said held back my power, but I’ve never tried it with so many people. Usually it’s just myself!”

He had no idea what the young human was talking about. She talked like a kender. Perhaps there was some truth to the story. Perhaps Ty was a mage. If she was, then she was their only chance to escape. It certainly would not hurt for her to try.

“You have to do it, Ty!” Delbin insisted. “Just concentrate hard on getting us someplace else! You should be able to do it! I’ll bet you’ve got a lot of power!”

A pair of guards prevented him from saying more. Kaz fought off their attack and prayed to Paladine that Delbin wasn’t crazy this time.

“There’s more of them coming!” Ganth cried. “We’ll have to break —”

The corridor vanished … to be replaced by a huge, familiar room dimly lit by a few well-placed torches.

“— away and …” the old mariner’s voice faded as he and the others realized the change in surroundings.

“What happened just now?” Fliara demanded. “Where are we?”

Kaz quickly surveyed the group. They were all there, his father, sister, Hecar, Delbin, and the human girl. Ty was pale and shivering, but seemed all right, especially considering the fact that she had just done what Kaz had assumed was impossible, … transported them all from one location to another.

“That was fun, Ty! How did you get all of us here? I didn’t think you could do that!”

“Where are we?” repeated Fliara. “This looks like it’s still part of the temple!”

“It is,” Kaz responded. “It’s the audience chamber of the high priest, a place we should definitely not be.” He started toward the doors. “Come on!”

They had gone only a few steps when every unlit torch in the chamber burst into bright flames.

“Interesting,” came the voice of Jopfer. “I found you just in time, didn’t I, Young One? Your great powers begin to manifest themselves.”

The band turned to see the high priest standing at the top of the dais, arms folded. A satisfied expression covered the tall figure’s features.

“At last, this will come to an end.”

“Jopfer!” shouted Hecar. “What’s got into you? What’s happened to you?” Helati’s brother started forward, angry at his old friend. “You were never one with much love for the temple. You hated all they stood for, but now you’ve become the worst of them!”

“The truth would surprise you,” the cleric returned, his tone one of mockery. It was almost as if he enjoyed some jest the others knew nothing about.

“Upon reflection, it would do to take a glance at the face of honor,” someone said in Kaz’s ear.

He looked around before realizing that the voice had sounded like the infernal figure in gray again. It was bad enough that they stood before Jopfer, but did the gray man have to haunt him just now? Still, Kaz turned slightly away from the others and held the mirrorlike finish of his battle-axe so he could see … or not see … the form of the high priest. The others he knew he could trust.

Kaz stared into the axe face, certain that he would see nothing but an empty dais.

What he saw, however briefly it appeared, nearly made him drop the axe. Honor’s Face had revealed the truth about Jopfer, but Kaz had difficulty believing it.

Kaz wasted no more time. He had briefly contemplated using the high priest as a hostage, but now, with practiced aim and no warning whatsoever, he threw Honor’s Face at the cleric.

The high priest glanced at the whirling weapon, then caught it by the handle when it was mere inches from his chest.

“Dwarven make,” he hissed, as if the mere thought of the race disgusted him. His nostrils flared. “And elven taint. A foul but fascinating combination. I shall study it in more detail later.”

To Kaz’s horror, Honor’s Face vanished. He tried to will it back, but the axe would not return.

“Your will is nothing compared to mine,” the figure on the dais hissed. “All your wills combined are nothing to me. I am power itself. I am greater than all the race combined!”

“You’re mad, Jopfer!” Hecar called. He took a step nearer to the platform. “And you might’ve been lucky with that axe, but you’re still only one minotaur!”

“Aye, let’s see how your tricks work against all of us,” Ganth added.

The other three minotaurs started forward. Kaz gazed at them in dismay. They truly did not know the extent of the horror.

“Get back, all of you!” Kaz cried. “He’s not what he appears!”

That made them pause. Even the high priest seemed momentarily startled.

“Mage or cleric, Lad,” Ganth said, resuming his advance. “It’s all the same to me.”

“But he’s neither! He’s not even a minotaur!”

The last word was punctuated by mocking laughter that echoed so loudly in the chamber that every member of Kaz’s band had to cover his or her ears. The robed figure continued to laugh for several seconds, sounding more bestial by the moment.

“Clever little warrior!” he cried, his toothy smile unnerving Kaz, who knew the truth. “Clever little minotaur! I will have to wring the secret of your cleverness from you just before I end your short, useless existence! You’ve guessed! You know me as I truly am, do you not?”

“I know you …”

“What’re you talking about, Kaz?” asked Hecar. “What’re you saying about Jopfer?”

“He’s neither Jopfer nor even a minotaur! The high priest is a dragon!”

They looked at the cleric as if expecting him to refute the incredible claim, for dragons had disappeared at the end of the war. Not a single dragon, good or evil, had been seen since, as far as most knew.

Jopfer said nothing. He merely nodded, acknowledging Kaz’s warning … then began to swell in size. His snout twisted; his teeth grew longer and sharper. The fur covering him became scales as red as fire. The robe fell away, revealing expanding wings and a long whip of a tail that had not been there a breath before.

His hands became claws with long talons, and his arms twisted. He was already ten times his original size.

It all happened in the blink of an eye. Where the minotaur had stood there now squatted a red dragon of immense proportions. Kaz noted how the huge chamber allowed the creature free movement and wondered if perhaps – and the thought was a chilling one – if perhaps the place had been built with him in mind.

“I am Infernus!” roared the dragon, looking down at them as if they were insects. “I have worked centuries to make you all what you are! I have guided you in guise after guise!” He raised his head high. “I am your true god … and you have been very, very naughty children indeed!”

They backed away suddenly as a fear washed over them. It was no normal fear, not even what one might expect to feel when confronted by such a leviathan. Kaz recognized it as dragonfear, a magic of the creatures he had not felt since the war.

The dragon, Infernus, lowered his head. “And as naughty children, it’s time you were punished.”

Chapter 14

THE EMPEROR

“You shouldn’t even be here!” insisted Kaz, fighting the dragonfear. “The dragons have all left Krynn! Since the end of the war!”

“The gods commanded that we depart, yes,” agreed the red leviathan. “They compelled us! We served them well … on both sides … and for our reward we were to be cast out of this world! Yet I resisted! I fought against the pull! One by one, my brethren flew off into the air, unable to command their own wills, but still I managed to resist!”

The red dragon clambered down from the dais, eyes darting from one minotaur to the next. Each time his gaze returned to Ty. Kaz noted that and began to wonder.

“My anger was my strength. I had served my lady well, working over the centuries to achieve her goal, and now I was supposed to abandon my work for her, all that I had strived for! It had become more mine than hers, and I was simply to leave it behind because of her failure! I, Infernus!”

Where were the clerics and the guards? Kaz had expected others to barge in by this point. Did they not hear the bellowing? He could not believe the minotaurs who worked in the temple knew the secret of their high priest. Perhaps a few high-ranking ones did, but even that was doubtful.

Again Kaz tried to will his axe to his hands. This time, he felt a slight tug, as if Honor’s Face sought to return but was prevented. Yet it gave him a little hope. The dragon’s will was not invincible. Kaz might be able to get the axe back if he could distract the dragon enough.

Providing he got the chance.

Infernus seemed glad to have an audience, albeit a captive one, for which to boast of his exploits. They were probably the first outsiders to know the truth … no doubt because the dragon intended to kill them all.

“You are my children, more than you are the offspring of either Sargas or his mistress, dark Takhisis! I have made you into the terrors that you are, guided you over generations for her, obeyed foolish edicts, and given you over to other masters so that you would be honed by the harshness of your lives. All so that you would become stronger, more defiant soldiers! Now, I can lead you to fulfill your glory, and mine! I will rule, and your kind will act as my talons, reaching out farther and farther until we have all of Krynn under control! You shall bow to no one, no god or goddess, but me!”

Infernus looked up to the ceiling. If Kaz had understood the dragon correctly, then the history of the minotaur race was a mockery – centuries of endless manipulation by forces without and within – the dragon the greatest manipulator of all. Every high priest for countless generations may have been this dragon in minotaur form.

The shiver that ran down his spine was not influenced by the dragonfear, but rather the realization of what had happened to all those minotaurs, many of them no doubt good, honest clerics. What had Jopfer thought when the offer was presented? Had he thought that here was a way for someone to correct the ills of the priesthood? Had he believed that he could work with his former masters and make the temple of Sargas an ally of the circle?

When had he finally discovered the truth? Just before Infernus stole his form and destroyed him?

The baleful gaze of the huge red creature suddenly focused on Kaz. “A shame you had to be so defiant, Kaziganthi de-Orilg. You and I share a kindred spirit, but that is why you could not obey me. You were useful for a time, though, spreading the glory of minotaur skills beyond the homeland. For a time I let those tales spread among your own kind, knowing such feats as were rumored could only encourage others to strive harder.” He dipped his massive head in what Kaz supposed was a bow. “I am glad I decided to let you live after you departed the circus. It would have been a pity to rid myself of both you and your brother at the same time. Until you began to settle down and draw others from the homeland, you were more aid than hindrance to my plans. Had you accepted my offer, you would have redeemed yourself and become my greatest general. I hoped you would. Truly I had hoped so. You are what I have been striving to create, Kaziganthi. You are the minotaur warrior that knows no defeat, knows no challenge that cannot be overcome!” Infernus cocked his head. “You still have one last chance.”

“You must be mad!” Kaz began, enraged. “After what you’ve done to me and mine you still have the arrogance to offer —”

“You!” The voice was Ganth’s, as Kaz had never heard his father. The mariner, sword raised, stared wide-eyed at the leviathan. Despite his dragonfear, the older minotaur began edging forward. “You had Raud killed! And you had Gladiator sent out on that doomed mission, didn’t you? I remember the high priest sanctioning it! By the Just One’s beard, I remember the temple practically insisting we be sent out into those dark waters immediately … without a cleric aboard, which was standard practice back then! You knew we’d run into those ships, those marauders, and that storm as well, didn’t you? You expected us all to perish, didn’t you?”

Eyeing Ganth, the dragon coldly replied, “It was my duty to cull the weak, the unstable, and the unpredictable from the ranks. The race had to be tempered constantly if it was to be of use to my mistress.” Infernus scowled, but not at them. “And what was done?” the dragon raged. “They were wasted, used as fodder by those who could not appreciate my efforts! I strained to create for her a perfect race through which she and her consort could take Ansalon. Then her insipid little mortal minions wasted so much effort! All the centuries of work, the strengthening through adversity and winnowing …”

“You killed Kyri, you slimy serpent …” Ganth growled. “You killed my crew. You killed hundreds … thousands … You killed my son. …”

Kaz moved too late to stop his father. The older minotaur bounded forward, rage overwhelming reason. He raised his sword high, calling out an old minotaur war cry.

Raising one limb, Infernus reached forward and batted Ganth away.

“Father!” Kaz and Fliara both cried. Ganth literally flew over their heads, his weapon clattering to the floor. The companions, save for Ty, forgot the dragon as Ganth crashed into the floor several yards away, his body sprawled.

Even before Kaz reached him, he knew that his father was dead.

He looked down at the lifeless body. From the marks on him, it was possible Ganth had died before he landed. A single blow from a dragon could easily kill most mortals.

In that moment, the accursed voice of the gray man murmured in his head, “I’m sorry, Kaz. I had no control.”

“Get out of my head!” he muttered, turning on the dragon. Infernus was personally responsible for the deaths of his parents and his brother. He was, as Ganth had pointed out, responsible for the deaths of thousands, all in the name of some foul plan to create a perfect race of warriors to serve a sinister goddess. Kaz faced the murderous beast, again seeking to will Honor’s Face to him. Briefly, he almost thought he would succeed, but the dragon’s will was still too strong, even though Kaz was fueled by intense grief and anger.

As he abandoned his effort, he became aware of a lone figure standing before the fearsome behemoth.

Ty.

“I won’t let you hurt them anymore!” the girl called.

“Ty! Get away from him!” Kaz yelled.

“You are young. I will forgive your foolishness,” Infernus told the human. “But do not test my goodwill!”

“You killed Kaz’s father!” shouted Ty, ignoring the dragon’s words.

A fireball large enough to consume a minotaur burst from the human female’s hands. It flew at Infernus, striking him in the chest. The dragon grunted, batting away the flames.

“Consider yourself fortunate that the balance must be maintained, young one. Now behave yourself.”

A transparent shell of bright red fell over the girl. It sank down, first enveloping, then passing through its victim. The last traces disappeared into the floor, but the aftereffects were evident. Ty slumped to the floor, overcome with dizziness.

“This has gone on far too long,” declared Hecar. “We have to take him or die trying. What other choice have we? Are you with me?”

“The girl must be freed,” came the voice of the gray man again. “There must be balance in all things for you to succeed. Balance leads to balance.”

“I said get out of my head!” Kaz growled. “Take your advice and stuff it back into whatever dream you come from!”

Fliara touched his arm. “Kaz! What ails you? Who’re you talking to?”

He had no time to answer, for Infernus refocused his attention. “You were not supposed to die in the circus, Kaziganthi, but your father would have, as an object lesson to you. That is rectified. Now, however, I see that I might as well have let you perish. You will never bow. Never. It would be efficient to simply eliminate you and your small band once and for all, but there would be little satisfaction in removing you in such a … draconian … fashion. Your deaths must be elaborate to excite the masses, something even more extravagant than the ritual executions I’d earlier planned. I shall have to think about it.”

They started forward, but it was already too late. Emerald shells similar to the red one that had enveloped Ty covered each of them. Kaz felt his body stiffen, his mind grow distant. The shell passed through him and, by the time it sank into the floor, he could not move at all, save to breathe. Out of the corner of his eye, Kaz could see Hecar’s hand, as pale and still as his own.

“Why are you doing this?” came Ty’s voice. “Let them go and I’ll do everything you say! I won’t resist anymore!”

Infernus seemed impressed. “You need to be as helpless as the rest. I thought I took your true origin into account. You are stronger than you appear, Young One! Good! That means you will live a long, long life for me! Many, many centuries!”

“What do you mean?”

“You still do not understand?” The great red chuckled. “Ah, the naivete of youth! Do you not understand why you are so important to me? Do you not realize what happened?” Infernus leaned his head back. “All the dragons were called away. I knew I would be compelled to follow, but I resisted. You see, my young one and my statuesque friends, there is a balance that must be maintained at all times. For me to remain on Krynn past the calling, there must have been one of my opposite number also on the world! One of the dragons of foul Paladine, you see. Yet, for this one not to obey meant that there must be unusual circumstances. I searched Krynn, sought out the magic forces. Where was there another of my kind, and how had he or she also escaped the call?”

He leaned forward again, smiling. A new wave of dragonfear washed over the helpless group, though none could do anything about it. Infernus chuckled again.

“My agents discovered the fragments of a shell. A single egg had been left behind and had hatched.” As he spoke, Infernus began to shrink back to his minotaur form. It was a slow process, a small degree with each breath.

Utilizing his magic, the dragon explained, he had taken the fragments of the shell and used them to seek the hiding place of the hatchling. As long as the other dragon existed, Infernus could remain on Krynn. However, if something happened to either one, the other would likely be forced out of the world.

“Then I found the young one. Or rather, my spell found a creature that appeared to be the hatchling.” He grinned. “It found you … Ty. What an amusing name.”

“I’m no dragon. If I was, you’d be sorry!”

Infernus found this amusing. Infernus seemed to find everything amusing. “I thought the same, but I observed you. I sensed. I thought. Then I saw that it was true. You are a dragon, Young One. You must be one of the accursed silvers, who shape themselves with more ease than most of us. A newborn especially, with no one to mind it, can shift without intending to. It can take on a form based on the inner knowledge our kind possesses, or from things it happens to see. A young dragon might take the form of humans, who might have been the first intelligent beings it remembered seeing.”

“I am human!”

“It can only have been about eight years since the call, yet you are taller than you should be, older in appearance, too, when you wear that form. That fooled me for a time, but then, young dragons grow fast at first. Deny it all you like, but do you not feel your blood calling? Do you not dream of flying through the sky, soaring at undreamt of heights? We all dream of that from birth on. It is a part of our heritage, dark or light, hatchling.”

“No …” but Ty’s voice evinced uncertainty.

“Yes. You cannot deny it.”

Kaz struggled to move, but the dragon’s spell held him fast. A multitude of thoughts swirled within him. Ty was a dragon? As insane as that sounded, it made some sense. The girl’s fantastic if erratic ability with magic was impossible for one so young and untrained … if she was human.

Infernus spoke of balance, just as the voice of the gray man had. What was the connection there? He was certain the figure in gray had some past significance. Something Huma of the Lance had once spoken about, but the memory was still hazy.

His thoughts scattered as Infernus, much smaller now, suddenly shifted form. The wings shriveled, drawing within his back. His savage maw reshaped into the more familiar muzzle of a minotaur.

The dragon’s tail was the last item to vanish. Before them all stood the false Jopfer, his robes floating and wrapping around him.

“You and I will have a lot of time to talk about these things, Ty. You shall realize your destiny under my tutelage. As for these four …” The high priest returned to the desk, pulling a cord.

A moment or two passed, then the doors opened and two acolytes hurried inside. They froze at the sight of the figures standing before them.

“Summon the guards,” commanded Infernus in his role of Jopfer. One of the acolytes did. When the guards arrived, the high priest ordered, “Remove these to cells on different levels from the one set aside for the girl. Be especially thorough when binding the kender. I want them all here for their ritual combats. Their deaths will mark the commencing of the day of destiny for the glorious minotaur race … and myself.”

They were suddenly able to move again, though temple guards surrounded them. One of the sentries prodded Ganth’s body. Kaz snarled and tried to push him away, but the other soldiers held him back.

“Remove that unsightly object and return it to the clan of Orilg. Inform their patriarch that the emperor and I will want to see him in a few days to explain his involvement in these activities. He will receive a summoning when I desire his presence.”

“Yes, Holiness.”

To Kaz’s horror, his father’s body was unceremoniously dragged away Slowly it dawned on Kaz that none of the other minotaurs had evidently heard anything that had gone on in the chamber, including the high priest’s revelations.

“You fools!” he dared shout. “You don’t even know what happened here! You don’t even know the truth about your high priest!”

They were all looking at him. He was about to say more when his eyes met those of Infernus. There was a knowing look in them, a gleam that invited Kaz to say whatever he wanted. The robed figure would not stop him from speaking the truth.

Kaz shut his mouth. The high priest had good reason for not caring whether Kaz informed the others about his true identity. If he had not seen the dragon for himself, he would not have believed his story either. Everyone knew the dragons were gone, and what minotaur would believe that every high priest for centuries past had been the self-same dragon in disguise? That was the beauty of the red dragon’s plot. The truth was too outrageous.

The edges of the robed figure’s mouth crept upward. “Take all of them away except the human.”

The guards had just begun leading them away from the chamber when several more arrived, their leader none other than a severely shocked Scurn. He looked at Kaz and the other captives, then at the high priest.

“Holiness —” he started.

“Captain Scurn. I find these intruders in the temple and I find you also here. Is there a connection?”

Before the scarred minotaur could defend himself, one of the guards said, “Holiness, we saw him lead this group into the temple, claiming this warrior was a prisoner you would desire to question and the others a unit of the State Guard.”

“Holiness, I can explain! I led them here, then alerted the guards to their trick!”

Infernus smiled, rubbing his jaw. “Then you are deserving of a special reward, something of your heart’s desire, I think.”

Scurn gave Kaz a triumphant smile, then dipped his head in gratitude to the robed figure.

“I’m going to grant you a personal combat against four of the present grand champions from the surrounding arenas. It will be one of the highlights of the circus in the coming days. I’m sorry that it cannot be Kaziganthi de-Orilg himself, but this should more than satisfy you, wouldn’t you say? If you kill them, you will be returned to the guard with full honors and a ranking high enough to earn you a post of commanding officer. If you die, then …” Infernus shrugged. The scarred minotaur was a veteran of the circus, but he was no match for four grand champions.

Scum’s strained voice expressed his realization that he had just been more or less sentenced to death. “But … but, Holiness …”

“Guards, escort Captain Scurn along with the others. See to it that he has the proper accommodations. It will give him time to consider his choice of actions when confronted by enemies of the state.”

“Holiness, I am a captain of the State Guard —”

“Which follows the dictates of the emperor, the circle, and, of course, the temple.” Infernus waved a languid hand. “You are all dismissed. Prepare yourselves for the circus. There will be no interruption of the combats this time.”

With a protesting Scurn in tow, the guards prodded Kaz and his companions out of the audience chamber. Kaz caught one last glimpse of Infernus descending the dais and walking toward a hapless Ty. Then the doors closed.

Kaz tried once more to summon Honor’s Face, thinking that they might as well make a last stand here as in the circus, but his thoughts were too confused. He had failed them, Ganth most of all.

And Ty, a dragon? It did not sound so surprising, not after all Kaz had been through during the war. Huma’s silver dragon had also been a beautiful human maiden. Kaz had also seen one or two other dragons take human forms.

Hecar walked up next to him. “Kaz, I grieve with you. I swear that each blow I strike in the arena will be in your father’s honor. They’ll see a battle like they’ve never seen.”

“Be quiet!” snapped a guard.

They completed the journey in silence, even Scurn, who was still obviously befuddled by his downfall. Kaz almost felt sorry for him.

The guards separated the prisoners, putting each into a different cell. They were careful to search the kender beforehand, removing several items, including a tinder box belonging to one of the guards.

Kaz and Scurn were the last two to be incarcerated.

“Inside,” one of the guards commanded Kaz. When he obeyed too slowly, both guards prodded him. Once inside the cell, which was lit only by a torch that one of the temple warriors held, Kaz was quickly chained to the far wall.

The lead guard looked over the chains to be sure they would hold, then said to the prisoner, with a grin, “You won’t be going anywhere this time. I’ll promise you that.”

He received no response from Kaz, which made him scowl. A moment later, the guards exited, taking Scurn with them.

Darkness enveloped Kaz, the only illumination coming from a small, barred window in the door. His eyes adjusted slowly. What’s the point? he asked himself discouragingly. Infernus had everything under control. The minotaur race was his tool, to direct as he pleased. No one would believe that the high priest was anything but one of their own. Few would likely cross the high priest, even if they knew his origins.

What a jest it was, the history of the noble minotaur race. All they had achieved, all the adversity they had suffered, was for the sake of a dark goddess and her servants. Warriors had lived and died for generation after generation in the mistaken belief that they fought for the future of their own kind.

Warriors like Ganth.

Kaz closed his eyes and tried not to think. He forced himself to ignore the streaks of moisture gliding down his face and waited for the oblivion of exhaustion to overcome him.

What he got instead, after some hours of fairly fruitless waiting, was a visit from the gray man.

*

Polik did not like being dragged from his bed before sunrise. Polik, in fact, did not like being dragged from his bed several hours after sunrise, but Jopfer had requested his presence and the emperor feared the high priest sufficiently to obey.

The acolytes spirited him to the temple with their usual efficiency. It did not do for others to see the emperor rushing to an audience; that was bad for the image Polik had worked hard to perfect. That was why he had lasted in the role for as long as he had. Both the warlords and the high priest had found him well-suited. Polik believed he would go down in the annals of minotaur history as the emperor who had led his people to their destiny, and all he had to do in return was follow the words of those like Jopfer.

“This way,” indicated one of his guides as they entered a hidden doorway of the temple. “His Holiness is impatient.”

One thing that did annoy him was that few of the high priest’s people bothered to address him as emperor. He would bring it up with Jopfer, delicately reminding the high priest that appearances were important at all times.

What did that emaciated fiend want at this time of night? Had they finally located the damnable Kaz? The shame of that travesty in the circus still angered the emperor. How had Kaz been allowed to wear that medallion? Where had it come from? As far as he knew, his rival of old had thrown the thing to the ground after the death of his brother … Raum or something like that. It unnerved him to think that Kaz had kept it all these years. Had he always planned to come back to challenge Polik?

Kaz was not that big a fool, but …

Before he realized it, he was in one of the smaller rooms behind the great audience chamber of the high priest. These were Jopfer’s private rooms, the place where the pair generally met.

The high priest himself was seated in a chair behind a wooden desk that was a perfect copy of the stone seat atop the dais. Jopfer seemed lost in thought. The acolyte in the lead respectfully cleared his throat.

“You are here,” Jopfer said complacently. “I expected you sooner. We have an important matter to discuss.”

“I came as soon as I could.” The emperor made no move to sit. He never sat down, no matter how much he ached, unless the high priest indicated it was all right to do so.

Jopfer gave no such indication. He dismissed the acolytes, then, when they were gone, he said, “Kaziganthi de-Orilg and his associates are in the custody of the temple.”

Polik brightened up. “You have them all?”

“All. The old one, Ganthirogani of the same clan, died during the capture. His body will be returned to the clan, which will have some explanations to make.”

The minotaur did not envy Dastrun, but was glad it was the Orilg patriarch and not him who faced the high priest’s displeasure. “Good news, indeed. My thanks for alerting me to this.”

“You should not have been so careless in the circus, Polik, altering my orders. If not for the fact that someone had already confused the commands and placed Kaziganthi in a certain deadly situation, I would be especially angry. He was to have fought a single ogre, a certain triumph for him. Then, with his confidence swollen, he would have seen his father killed by the gladiators. It would have shattered his spirit, I think, made him malleable.” Jopfer idly scratched his chin. “Merriq has paid for not being able to properly transmit commands.”

So, despite Polik’s transgression at the circus, the high priest was willing to forgive and forget. Polik was not quite certain he understood, but he was willing to accept his good fortune. “Then if that is all —”

“There is more.”

“More?”

“Certain plans have come to the fore. A missing component of my – of our – success is now within my hands. I think it is ready to use. I do not see why we need delay any longer. The fleet is ready, and our warriors chafe at the bit, desiring blood and glory. It is time we gave them free rein.”

Polik almost sat down in astonishment. “The campaign is to begin? The Supreme Circle —”

“Will sanction everything, some of them because they are as bloodthirsty as their warriors and the others because they would look like cowards to the rest.” Jopfer’s eyes seemed to blaze with anticipation. “For the announcement, we must plan a special day in the circus, a showing of our might to the general population. The event will highlight the deaths of the rebellious minotaurs, your ultimate combat victory, ensuring your place at the head of our people, and the announcement of the impending campaign.”

The campaign. Polik could scarcely believe what he had heard. The campaign was to begin at last. “Where do we attack?”

Leaning back, the high priest replied, “I’ve chosen the humans to the west of us. It will be a two-pronged attack, with the fleet sailing north and coming around to their shores up there. They will transport an army with them, of course. Meanwhile, the rest of our forces will come through the mountains and crush their eastern border.”

“Such a two-pronged attack could work against us as well as for us,” Polik dared to point out. “They’re only humans, I grant you, but there is always the unexpected.”

“The plan will succeed. I will give you details concerning it on the morrow. Rest easy, Emperor. We have tremendous power behind us, a force as great as any army. On the day of the attack, you will know the details. I can say nothing more for now, but it will be a sign to our people that their patience has been rewarded. It will be a sign that this is the beginning of our conquest of Krynn!”

“At last …” Polik rubbed his huge hands together in anticipation, then recalled something said earlier. “Did you say my ‘combat victory’? In the circus?”

“You are overdue for a victory, Emperor. This incident with the heretics has further emphasized the need to renew the people’s faith in you. A successful duel prior to the announcement will nudge them in the correct direction.”

“Against Kaz?”

“The thought had occurred to me,” replied the high priest. “He has become uncontrollable, no longer a trustworthy addition to our commanders. He will have to die, but I fear that for us to ensure success in such a duel as you suggest, we would have to drug him beyond what is feasible. This combat must look true to all. No, his fate will be different. For you, I can find a more suitable opponent. There are two or three candidates among the grand champions, one especially who considers himself a far better choice for emperor than you, Polik. As a matter of fact, he was encouraged to make a formal declaration … or rather, he will be. See to it that he gets his reply in time for the event.”

“Of course, Holiness.” Another victory under his belt. No one would be able to deny his destiny, save for Jopfer, of course. However, Polik saw no reason why he could not find a way to remove the one obstacle to his complete authority, sooner or later. It would not be too troublesome to eliminate Jopfer.

“You may return to your bed.” The high priest turned away, his thoughts already elsewhere. The acolytes came up behind Polik.

The day of destiny was to begin. The emperor could scarcely believe his luck. He had begun to wonder if the day would ever come. Jopfer was correct; it would be good to prove his right to rule just before the announcement. An imperial combat was definitely called for.

As the acolytes led the emperor out of the temple, his thoughts turned again to how simple it would be to remove the one minotaur he feared … once the campaign was well underway, of course. There were those among the circle who would welcome Jopfer’s demise. From among them he would be able to find a capable assassin. Then, it would simply be a matter of timing. For all his power, there were limits to the high priest’s control. It would not be hard to kill him.

After all, under the cloak of authority, Jopfer was just a minotaur like the rest of them.

Chapter 15

THE GRAY MAN

Ayasha did not like the reason Helati gave her for needing her to watch the children, but she understood. Helati did not want to spend time arguing. It was terrible enough pulling herself away from the infants. She felt like a negligent mother, but hoped that, if something happened to her, they would grow up understanding why. She had to try to bring their father back.

This was her quest. The other minotaurs could fend for themselves.

No one was in sight as, before dawn, she stepped out to saddle her mount. In a few minutes, she would be on her way, with no one but Ayasha and her mate knowing her secret. She had given Ayasha permission to let others know once she was far away.

“You can’t be serious about riding there alone, can you?”

Helati whirled about to find Brogan, his shoulder bandaged, standing a few yards behind her. He had moved so silently that neither she nor her mount had taken any notice of him. “What’re you doing here, Brogan? And why isn’t your wound healed? You are a cleric.”

“My faith in Sargas has been … weak … of late. This is the best I could do. That’s not important, though.” He shrugged, changing the subject. “It’s strange. I had a dream a short bit ago, about a human. I’ve rarely seen humans, save in war, and certainly not one all dressed in gray … from top to bottom. It was a short, strange dream. He told me he could not stay long, but he wanted me to wake up and find you. The children needed you more since Kaz was gone. That was what he said. Then, I woke up.”

His words were disconcerting, especially about this human in gray. “Just your own fears, Brogan. There’s nothing to the dream.”

“But you’re leaving,” he pointed out. “And dream or not, I think you need to stay here.”

“You were the one who wanted to gather an armed force and storm Nethosak … or was that a ploy at the time to get most of us back in the grip of the emperor?”

His expression made her instantly regret the rash comment. “It was meant honestly. I’ve thought things over, Helati. Kaz was correct about a large force being more hindrance than help. That is even more true now. If we rode in to save Kaz, we’d be riding right into the high priest’s hands. The high priest is the one to watch, not old Polik.”

“I can’t just sit and wait. Kaz may need help.”

“He may be dead already,” Brogan returned bluntly. “I’m sorry to say that, but it could be true. Riding to Nethosak would then accomplish nothing except that you would share the same fate. Would Kaz want you to abandon the children?”

“That’s not fair! You know I’m not simply abandoning them!”

The one-horned minotaur dipped his head apologetically. “I said that badly, but you know what I mean. The children should be your primary concern now.”

“And what about Kaz?”

“He may return with your brother and the kender, all of them none the worse for their experiences. He may be a prisoner of the high priest. He may be dead. The point is, you must stay here and wait.”

“Who can I ask to go in my place? This concerns my mate and my brother. Should I be any less than Tremoc? He journeyed over Ansalon time and time again, tracking down the murderer of his own mate.”

“Tremoc was Tremoc, and although his legend has much merit, it shouldn’t be the basis for this decision. Besides, you don’t have to go to Nethosak yourself. There is another way to find out what’s going on, Mistress Helati.”

“What do you mean?” She eyed the other minotaur. “What other method could there possibly be?”

Brogan looked away. He seemed ashamed. “I have … a swifter way to contact Nethosak, swifter even than if we had messenger birds to use. Something I brought with me as an emergency measure.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

“A small medallion. I purchased it from a black-robed mage during the war, when I often needed to go places where I could not use my own powers without being noticed by a cleric of Paladine. It can contact anyone in Nethosak, but only for a short time. It turned out I never used it. I brought it with me, though. It should still work.”

“Can I use it?”

“It’s attuned to me, but … perhaps. I’d rather not explain a lot about it. … It’s not something I’m proud of now.” He spread his hands. “You must believe me, Helati! I would not lie to you about this. I never thought to use it since I planned to abandon my former allegiances, but now the opportunity and the need demand it.”

Helati thought over his words carefully, then nodded. “All right, but let us both try it together.”

Brogan agreed. They returned to his dwelling, where he moved aside a small chest.

“I was looking at it when you came. You see, I was already contemplating contacting someone I know back there.” The one-horned minotaur pulled out a small silver medallion with a blue crystal in the middle. There were markings on it, but Helati could not make them out. Brogan held the item cupped in one hand.

“How does it work? I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“It’s simple. I merely have to put my thumb on the crystal and my index finger directly opposite it on the other side of the medallion. Then I think of the location or person and close my eyes.” He gave Helati a grim smile. “It cost me quite a lot, but I felt a need for it at the time.”

Indeed, there was much about his murky past that needed to be explained, but that was not important to her now. Helati moved nearer so that she could read the detail on the artifact. Her mind was racing. “Who did you plan to speak with earlier?”

“I think there might be a few friends of mine who would still give me aid. I will try for them now.”

“No, let me try. I have a better idea.”

He looked at her, uncertain. Then, shrugging, Brogan handed her the artifact. “As I said, originally it was attuned to me.”

“I have to try.” Thumb and index finger in place, Helati concentrated. She tried for Kaz, but for some reason, the great clan house of Orilg invaded her thoughts instead.

“— to me —” began a voice.

She was so startled, she broke contact.

“What is it?”

“You have no need to fear that it won’t work for me, Brogan.” Without waiting for his reply, Helati tried again.

“— agreed to by him! There will be no further word on the subject!”

Dastrun. She would know his voice anywhere. The spell was working.

All at once, the voices were accompanied by an image. It was the chamber where Dastrun and the other elders held court, and they seemed to be arguing about something amongst themselves.

“He knew the danger!” insisted Dastrun. “He made a pact! We abided by that, not even telling the guard where he had gone! That is the end of it!”

“They are scheduled to die in the arena during some contrived ceremony,” pointed out an elder female. “They are to die for no good reason, Dastrun!”

“It has been decreed —”

“Decrees! We’re talking about honor and justice, Patriarch!” called another voice.

“The high priest has declared them heretics and traitors,” argued another, “especially Kaz!”

Kaz. They were talking about Kaz. She had thought so. Then the patriarch spoke again. “He made his agreement. We will abide by it. The clan can gain nothing by dragging itself down with Kaz and the others. They will die in the circus, and that will be the end of it. Kaz is dead from this moment on. I have made my —”

“No!” Everyone in the chamber looked up, seeking the source of the voice. Only after the echo had died away did Helati realize that she had spoken.

“What in the name of Sargas?” muttered Dastrun.

Recovering, she spoke again. “No, Dastrun, that won’t do.”

“Who is that? Where are you?”

“I’m Helati. Kaz’s partner and mate.”

Many of the elders whispered to one another. The patriarch looked disconcerted. “Where are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding, Patriarch. I’ve been given a device that I used to find out what is happening to Kaz. Well, I’ve found out what I wanted to know, and I do not like it.”

“Now, Helati —”

She braced herself. Orilg was going to listen to her, Dastrun or no Dastrun. She had some things to say about loyalty and honor. She was going to make them listen – and act.

Kaz had better not die, Helati thought. If Kaz died, she would make the clan pay dearly for its failure. There was a side to Helati she had never let her mate see … but Dastrun and the other elders were about to be reminded of why she had been nicknamed “The Terror” as a young warrior.

Thinking of two infants waiting for their father to return, she started talking.

*

The tap-tap-tap of the staff against the stone floor was the first thing that alerted Kaz to the presence of another in the cell. He opened his eyes slowly, wondering why he had not heard the door being unlocked or even being swung open. When his gaze focused on a pair of gray boots half-obscured by a robe of the same color, he tried to jerk himself to his feet. Unfortunately for Kaz, the chains did not allow him to move so freely. The only thing he succeeded in doing was nearly losing his balance and crashing back against the wall.

The human in gray watched him in silence. He looked exactly as he had appeared in the dream, save that he was a little taller than Kaz recalled. The robed figure was, in fact, nearly as tall as the minotaur. It also occurred to Kaz that he could see the gray man clearly even though the torchlight from the hallway was still the only illumination available.

“Another dream?” Kaz asked.

“It is hard to tell sometimes, isn’t it?” The gray man smiled in sympathy. “Sometimes I find myself wondering whether I am awake or sleeping when I do this. This time, though, I would venture to say that it is the former. Yes, the former, not a dream.”

“If you’ve something to say, you’d better say it before the guards come to drag you away.”

The gray man glanced over his shoulders. “Oh, they can’t hear me, Kaz.”

“Why am I not surprised? All right, then, what do you want this time?”

A sigh escaped the robed human. He leaned on his staff. There was sorrow, great sorrow in his eyes. “I grieve for your loss, Kaz. I tried to predict what would happen, but I could only guess in the end. If I could truly see the future, it would be a terrible danger to Krynn, for I’d be tempted to alter one thing after another despite the agreement I made. That would only make matters worse, not better.”

Kaz snorted. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, mage. You are a mage, aren’t you? Or are you a cleric of Gilean?”

The questions seemed to amuse the gray figure. “You might say I’m the foremost mage in the world and perhaps, in my own way, an unofficial cleric of the God of Neutrality. I am certain my appearance makes you think the latter, though the color gray is more the mark of my agreement with the gods Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari. It is the way they assure that I will not forget my place, or my vow.” He shook his head bemusedly. “And they say the gods have no sense of humor. They have one. We just do not think their jests very funny.”

“You still haven’t told me who you are or why you’re here.” Kaz was growing tired of the gray figure’s vague and confusing comments. “Why’ve you been haunting us? What’s all this talk of balance?”

The staff went tap-tap-tap again. “So many questions, and so little I can answer. Your friend Huma was not half as questioning.”

The minotaur’s eyes narrowed. “That’s where I know you from. I remember now! Huma said he met you before discovering the dragonlances!”

“There was a world out of balance then. The dragonlances were needed to restore balance, and the knight Huma became the catalyst. He was the most worthy one we could find within the time still left to us, and he proved to be better than anyone could have hoped. There are similarities between the two of you, you know. That was why I decided to keep an eye on you. I knew that even with the war over, there was still a danger, an imbalance. It is a gift, or perhaps a curse, given to me. I can know what the threat is, but am limited as to what I can do.”

“You knew the truth about our high priest?”

“I discovered it. You have no idea what the presence of the two dragons means to Krynn, Kaz. The dragons, good and evil, were supposed to depart as part of the peace created among the gods. It was a pact of the highest magnitude. Yet, because one egg, the egg of a silver dragon, was lost, the entire pact could unravel. The egg meant a dragon stayed behind. In an attempt to effect some sort of balance, the world allowed for another dragon, one of evil nature, also to remain on Krynn. Unfortunately, it was the red called Infernus, one of the deadliest of the Dark Queen’s servants. You, already tied to this history, became our one hope.”

“What do you mean, ‘already tied to this history’?” Kaz shifted uneasily. For some reason, he felt the gray man spoke the truth.

The staff tapped against the floor again. “There was a mage who held a wounded dragon prisoner. He used threats to her eggs to force her to do his will …”

Kaz’s head sank. “I remember. The dragons should’ve been gone. It was just after the war. She and her mate had not left because they wanted to get their eggs back, the ones Brenn the Black Robe had stolen.” He raised his head again and glared at the robed figure. “But Brenn fell victim to his own magic and, although the dragon perished, I brought her eggs to a place where her mate took them from me. They should be safe now, wherever they are!”

“The male silver was also wounded. You recall that. Because of his wounds, Kaz, one slipped from him. It slipped when it began to hatch, although he could not have known that. He circled, but could not find it and assumed it had broken. That was not the case, however. Dragon young are hardier than other newborns. Dragon eggs are very sturdy, and the fall only cracked the egg and stunned the hatchling. When it finally woke and freed itself, it did not know where or what it was.”

“Ty …?” Fate was laughing at Kaz again. That was the name of the young female’s father – the male silver.

The gray man nodded. “The first intelligent creatures she saw, only days later, were humans, families moving on to new homes. Wanting to join, she reshaped herself without thinking. Although she was never with anyone long, the shape became so much safer to use that she soon forgot her birth form.”

“All right!” snarled Kaz, growing weary of all of this. “So I’m tied to her past. That’s all. You didn’t have to involve me in all of this! I’m not responsible for what happened later.”

“No, you are not. You were chosen, by me. The Dark Queen will use this situation. Everything for which you fought side-by-side with Huma of the Lance will be lost. We will return to endless war, with the outcome this time questionable.” The gray man sighed again. “Ansalon has not recovered sufficiently from the last war to suffer such another. I chose you because I believed you would understand that. I chose you because I believed you were the best hope there was of returning Ansalon … and your own people … to its proper path.”

“My father is dead … and I never wanted to be a hero.”

Tap-tap-tap. “Kaziganthi de-Orilg, if I could, I would take your place, but I swore a vow to all three gods of magic, who, having removed themselves from the affairs of the others, have a vested interest of their own in maintaining the balance of the world … regardless of what their mages do. My power does not wane no matter which moon is dominant, but in return I must use care and I must always strive to help Ansalon, all of Krynn, remain in balance. I must guide others, and am never allowed to be the one who acts. Always it must be another.”

Kaz was not certain that he agreed with, or even understood, everything the gray man said, but, in truth, he agreed that Ansalon could not endure a return to war. “Have you come to offer me a chance, then? Are you going to set me free and give me the means of facing Infernus?”

“Do you wish it?”

“Given a choice … yes.”

“I have spoken to the young dragon. She will abide for now, but only because she is lost in her own mind. If you desire to help, to restore the balance, Kaz, there is one thing you must do, whether you perish or not. You must awaken the dragon within her.”

Kaz grunted. “I thought Infernus was trying to do that already.”

The gray man shook his head. “No, he seeks only to release the form and power of the young one to do his bidding. He seeks to twist the silver into his servant. If you hope for victory, you must awaken the true dragon. You must stir Tiberia to be what a silver dragon is meant to be. Only then can you possibly defeat the creature Infernus.”

“I won’t be able to do anything as long as I’m like this,” Kaz retorted, indicating his chains with a rattle. “Are you planning on releasing me?”

His ethereal companion looked away in what might have been outright embarrassment. “You will know when the time comes.” The staff tapped against the floor again. “The guard is stirring.”

The minotaur glanced at the door, hearing, in the distance, the movements of the sentry. He turned his gaze back to the gray man, but the human was no longer there.

“Typical mage,” he snarled under his breath. “More damned trouble than help!” Still, his mood had lifted, his determination returned. He had battled ogres, mages, and even living statues, defeating all of them. He might fall to Infernus, but he was not going to go complacently to his death.

It would have eased his mind if he had been able to retrieve Honor’s Face, but surely any strong minotaur axe could cut through the scaly hide of a dragon, couldn’t it? There was one way to find out.

Something blotted out the light. The shadowed head of the guard covered most of the barred window as he glanced inside at the prisoner.

“Something the matter?” Kaz asked.

The sentry peered inside, then snorted. After one more quick glance, he shook his head and departed without a word.

Alone again, Kaz considered the gray man. From what little he now recalled of Huma’s encounters with the figure, the gray man never said more than he needed to say. He did not promise that Kaz would succeed; nor did he promise that the minotaur would live, even if he somehow did garner victory. Huma had died even though he defeated the Dark Queen; the same might happen to Kaz. It was not a comforting thought, but it did not dissuade him. If he had one last opportunity even to slow down the dragon’s machinations, then he would gladly take it.

He wished the others were not involved. They might all perish. Even if the gray man mourned them also, he would immediately start searching for someone else to restore the balance. In some ways, his methods seemed almost as heartless as those of the dragon. Yet it was the gods who forced the mage to act as he did, the gods who interfered whenever they felt like it.

That was not quite the truth, and Kaz knew it. Paladine was not like that, and Kaz supposed that even the hands of the most powerful gods were tied at times.

“Paladine,” he whispered. “Kiri-Jolith … and you, too, Habbakuk.” The three gods made up the pantheon honored by the three orders belonging to the Knights of Solamnia. Kaz respected these three the most for their sense of justice and honor. Especially now, it made more sense to honor the Solamnic gods rather than Sargas, who seemed to demand so much and give pitifully little. “Do you think you could make an exception and interfere just one time? For me?”

He received no answer, of course.

*

Infernus looked out over his city, his kingdom. His eyes allowed him to see everything in exceptional detail despite the darkness. He could make out the tall walls surrounding the northern reaches of Nethosak. Nethosak had become a marvel that any race could admire, and the damage done by the war was but a memory. He had molded the minotaurs well in that respect; they worked like bees in a hive, constantly building and rebuilding for the good of the race.

There were exceptions, however. The greatest of these would perish, though, and his taint would fade before the year was out. The new campaign, the red dragon’s campaign, would demand the minotaurs’ full attention.

The minotaurs were his by right. Infernus knew that. It was he who had worked so long to make them what they were now. When he had come, at his mistress’s bidding, Nethosak had been a young city only a fraction of its present size. The temple of Sargas had been less of a power then, as had been the governing body of the race. Already a competitive people by nature, Infernus simply played on that aspect of the minotaur personality and busied himself creating what would become the Great Circus and the games.

With his ability to shift form, he had easily infiltrated their kind. A green dragon, often used for plans involving subtle cunning, might also have succeeded in influencing the minotaurs, but greens, Infernus thought with a snort of derision, were poor military beasts. They were good for little plots behind the scenes, but they failed to comprehend the intricacies involved in creating an armed force or fighting a strategic, large-scale battle.

He had thought first of assuming the role of emperor, but the temple and the role of high priest offered a more secluded, secret hierarchy. It provided him with the privacy he needed, plus its influence could be even greater than that of the other arms of the government, if played correctly.

So much work, Infernus thought with pride, returning to his chambers. Under the guise of the high priest Presir, whom he had, of course, been forced to eliminate, Infernus had caused the first temple to be built. Its grand scale had appealed to the populace, and he had known that, when completed, it would continue to impress future generations as well. The audience chamber and his own personal rooms he designed so that he would be able, at times, to return to his true shape. Infernus had directed the artisans to carve the dragon relief that now stood over the massive doorway to the audience chamber.

He had actually enjoyed revealing himself to the small, pathetic group that had attempted to rescue the hatchling. Only the minotaur supposedly chosen to be the next high priest ever saw his true form, and that just before the dragon dispatched the unfortunate and took on his corporeal shape. In some ways, it was a pity these heretics had to die. It would have been a pleasant respite for Infernus to, on occasion, speak to someone who knew the truth.

Of course, there was the hatchling. Given time, she would understand better than anyone else.

“You would be more comfortable if you would just give in to your destiny, Young One,” Infernus informed the tiny figure standing in the middle of the chamber. “I could ease the restraints a little bit, then.”

“I won’t help you!” Ty was surrounded by a field of crimson that pulsated with each breath the young woman took. The strain of standing through the night was obvious in her tense expression, but she had not sat down since Infernus had moved her here from the great audience chamber.

“Your will is a credit to your heritage. A human, even a minotaur, would not be so strong. They are all weak, the little races. It is we, the dragons, who should have rightly come to rule Krynn.” The high priest indicated the city outside. “We are everything they are not. Look at what little they have done during their existence. They spend so much time quarreling with one another that they fail to achieve much else. They need the guidance of an older, wiser race to show them how the world was meant to be. They need us, Young One. That is why you should be willing to help me. It is for their own good.”

“You’re lying! Kaz and Delbin would never want me to help you!”

There was a fleet waiting to depart in a matter of a few days and a vast army poised to march around and through the mountains to the west. They were awaiting his command. He did not have the time to spend trying to convince this confused young silver dragon of what was the right thing to do. Infernus decided that once the minotaur Kaz was dead, he would resort to harsher methods of persuasion. She would change her mind when the minotaur’s body was brought to her. The hatchling’s defiance, too, was a credit to her race, but enough was enough. Infernus had a world to conquer.

“You are weak, Young One, not so much in power but in mind. I see I shall have to do what I can to educate you, to teach you. You will come to appreciate my efforts, believe me.” Infernus steepled his hands. Centuries of role-playing had ingrained certain human habits in the dragon’s mind and body. He talked to Ty as he would one of his faithful acolytes. “This is for the good of all. You will agree in the end, even if your friend Kaz understands too late. It is better that his life ends before the great campaign begins. He would not cooperate, and his continued presence would only confuse otherwise loyal soldiers.”

Yes, Infernus thought. The death of … Tiberia’s … champion and the threat to her tiny kender friend would be enough to break the young one’s will. It was a pity he could not take the girl to the circus to watch the minotaur’s death, but it was too soon to risk bringing the youngster out in the open. Still, the same spell that had allowed Infernus to first discover his counterpart could be used again. The female could watch the events unfolding in the circus from here, in the temple, alone and helpless.

His captive continued to stand, as if by this mere act of defiance she could hurt Infernus. Infernus shook his head. “You weaken only yourself with this act, Young One. The minotaur will still die, and you will eventually collapse. Why not conserve your strength? Perhaps, if you get some rest, you will see things as they truly are meant to be.”

To his surprise and mild pleasure, Ty did just that. She sat down resignedly and, with a sigh, rubbed her eyes.

Then she did something that confused even the red dragon. Ty looked up and stared, her expression a questioning one. It was almost as if she were asking if she had made the correct decision by at last sitting down. But Ty was not staring at him. She was staring over the high priest’s shoulder.

Infernus turned quickly, wondering if the minotaur Kaz had somehow magically escaped again, but there was no sign of any other figure. Uneasy for some reason he could not fathom, the dragon crossed the chamber and peered around, seeking any shadowy area that might hide a watcher as small as the kender. Still there was nothing to see.

He turned back to Ty, but the young one had already closed her eyes, exhaustion having swiftly taken over. Finally Infernus dismissed the matter and departed the chamber. He still had a war to finish planning … once he made the final preparations for the minotaur’s death spectacle.

Chapter 16

CLAN LOYALTY

The announcement that Emperor Polik was to answer a challenge in the circus was not the most important reason for the vast crowd that squeezed into the huge arena that day. Polik had been winning his challenges for so long that most assumed he would win again. There were, of course, many who would have preferred to see him lose, especially a few select members of the Supreme Circle who cared neither for him nor for the influence of the high priest. Be that as it may, most of the crowd, both those able to gain entrance and those forced to wait outside and simply listen, had come for different reasons.

The short but unforgettable appearance by Kaz, a supreme champion still recalled by many – whose fame had reached a new zenith since his escape – had galvanized many minotaurs. There was something of a mystique about the infamous champion who had shunned his race at the height of his success. When it was announced that he had been recaptured and would appear in the circus again, anticipation had begun to build. Many in the audience actually sympathized with Kaz, realizing that it took bravery to step away after reaching such a plateau.

Aside from Kaz, there was another reason why the minotaurs flocked to the circus in even greater numbers than usual. That reason was the rumored announcement. No one knew just what that announcement was supposed to concern, but it was to take place immediately after the emperor’s expected victory, and the majority opinion was that the day of destiny had finally arrived. Everyone knew that the fleet was ready to set sail. The armies had been training near the mountains and were, by this point, ready for battle. The work still continued on ships and weaponry, but the might of the minotaurs was ready to be let loose. So the general populace was ready to believe.

Some wondered if the race had sufficiently recovered from its years of war and bondage, but they kept their thoughts to themselves. The emperor, with the high priest’s blessing, insisted that the minotaur race was ready. The Supreme Circle, while a little less enthusiastic, affirmed its confidence in the people.

At the moment, the elite legions were marching in full dress uniform around the floor of the circus. Armor gleamed in the sun as hundreds of minotaurs marched in perfect unison. Each unit carried high its standard, emblems depicting creatures of strength. There were those of the Bear Legion, the Lion, the Hawk, and, favored of the temple, the Dragon. The order of appearance was based on the battle records of each of these units, with Dragon inevitably first, but all were considered stalwarts of the cause. Horns blared as each unit passed the boxes where the rulership of the twin kingdoms sat. Cheers went up from the different sections when individual commanders paraded past. It was a glorious day for ceremony.

Polik contemplated all this as he prepared for the imperial combat. Everything was going as Jopfer had said it would. Oh, to be sure, there were those in the audience who resented his reign and protested the efforts he and the high priest had put into the new campaign, but their only choice was to join the war or be dishonored in the eyes of their fellows. The high priest had been exceptionally successful in his determination to undermine all resistance. Minotaurs were encouraged by the temple to inform on naysayers. The number of spies employed by the temple and the circle – not to mention his own private corps – had quadrupled in the past few months.

One of his aides entered the chamber. “Emperor, a cleric seeks permission for a private audience with you.”

It was about time, the graying minotaur thought. The combat was only minutes away. He had begun to wonder. “Send him in.” To his servants, he said, “You are all dismissed. Do not return until you are summoned.”

They knew the routine almost as well as he did. Polik did not care what they thought. Their livelihoods depended on his whims.

A robed figure, who might or might not have been the same cleric who had come the last time Polik had fought, entered the room moments later. They all looked the same to Polik – tall, narrow fellows with little humor. The cleric gave the emperor a cursory bow, then remained silent until the aide had departed.

“Well? Is it done?”

“Your challenger has received the blessing of the temple, as is proscribed by law. He has drunk the ritual goblet of wine and even now awaits the summons to the field.”

That was it, then. The cleric had given the fool the carefully drugged wine. The temple was adept at creating mixtures that did their work and later left no trace. In fact, someone drinking the same wine only half an hour later would feel no effects. His challenger would not even be affected until about the time he stood on the ten-foot-high, ten-yard-wide wooden platform and it began to rotate under the power of a dozen or so minotaur warriors. It was then that disorientation would strike him.

That was all the advantage Polik needed. Sometimes he felt he could have defeated a challenger undrugged. The clerics, however, had the process down to perfection and did not like any tampering. Jopfer was very much like his two predecessors, so much so that Polik, who also had collaborated with these two, sometimes felt as if he were dealing with the same cleric who had first crowned him emperor.

“And Kaz?” he finally asked. “What about Kaz?”

“At this time, he and his companions are being rounded up for their journey to the circus.”

“They should’ve been dealt with before my combat. My combat should be the culmination of events.”

The cleric’s expression did not change. “His Holiness has decided they should be used as examples after the grand crusade is announced. Their deaths will be used to remind other heretics what it means to defy the destiny of our race.”

Polik scratched his jaw. “Suppose so. Would’ve done it different, myself.” He shrugged. “That’s it, then. Time for the duel.”

“Sargas be with you, Emperor Polik.”

“Yes, yes …” The emperor turned away, seeking his helmet. As ruler of the empire, he was allowed to wear the ceremonial helmet in the hand-to-hand combat. “You’re dismissed.”

The robed figure gave Polik a brief look of contempt, but the emperor’s back was to him. With a final, even more cursory bow, he departed. Almost immediately, the servants and the aide returned.

“Are we ready to begin, Emperor?”

“Just help me find my helmet. I know it was here a moment ago.”

Sighing silently, the aide forced back the thoughts that sprang to mind – thoughts that, were they known, could have got him tossed into the arena alongside the rebel Kaz – and started to search for his master’s missing helm.

*

Infernus sat in the booth set aside for him and his aides, four lesser clerics flanking him. He was clad in the most elegant robes of the high priest, gold trim and diamond sparkles making him glitter in the sunlight. It was all the dragon could do to suppress his eagerness and satisfaction, but he had to maintain the mask of quiet confidence, especially now.

Back in the temple, the hatchling, Tiberia, would be watching all of this. Infernus had decided it would be good for the young one’s education to see just how well her captor’s plans were progressing. The spell would give Ty a view of what went on in the arena based on the red dragon’s own perspective. The young one would see everything, including the death of her would-be champion, through Infernus’s eyes. It was a clever spell.

The day of destiny is upon us, Infernus thought, allowing himself a satisfied smile that brought shivers to the one cleric who happened to glance his way. My day …

*

They’re coming, Kaz thought, fidgeting. They’re coming, and the cursed gray human still hasn’t given me any kind of sign! The day before had passed without any clue as to what Kaz was supposed to do to free himself and the others. He had expected some clue from the mage before this moment; after all, the human had more or less promised. From what little he could recall of Huma’s experiences with the gray man, nothing indicated that the figure was a liar or a trickster. Still, he was beginning to wonder.

Ty, Hecar, Delbin, Fliara … their lives all depended on Kaz. He could not let them down, even if it turned out that the gray mage had let Kaz down. When the guards came for him, he would find some way to win.

Paladine watch over me … and Helati and the children, just in case.

“It’s time.”

The voice startled him, especially when Kaz realized whose voice it was.

“It’s about time you got here, mage.”

“It is all a matter of balance, Kaz,” responded the gray figure standing near the minotaur. “I can act only when it is time. Too much interference, and things might be tilted even further out of balance. We would not want that, trust me.”

Kaz shifted. “Someday, I hope to have a conversation with you that makes some sense. Meanwhile …” He shook the chains that held him. “Are you going to free me now?”

“This is the time for everything to come together, Kaz. This is when the potential to rebalance the scales is at its zenith.”

With the last word, the minotaur’s chains – empty, but still locked – suddenly clattered against the wall. Kaz looked at his free hands, then at the manacles. There were some advantages to being a mage.

“What happens now?” he asked as he tested his arms and legs.

“The path is open to you.” The door swung open just enough to allow Kaz out. “The rest is up to you.”

“What about the others? I can’t just leave them.”

“I will watch over them as best I can. The kender knows what I plan and will do his part. If it encourages you further, I will tell you that a certain stubborn catalyst has made her mind known in Nethosak despite my intentions. As is sometimes the way, this catalyst’s presence has given me a new and unexpected path to use, a path that your friends must take rather than aid you.” When Kaz still hesitated, the gray man added, “Trust me. This will not work if they are with you, Kaz. You know that.”

He did, but it was difficult to admit it, even to himself. Alone, Kaz could slip through the halls to where Ty was being kept. With the others, he ran the greater risk of discovery.

Thinking of Ty, he started, “The female. Where —?”

“Look in the lair of the dragon,” the mage returned. For the first time, a hint of impatience appeared on the gray human’s face. “The guards have been delayed, Kaz, but not for long.”

The minotaur started for the door, pausing just before stepping through. He turned one last time to the gray figure. “I don’t suppose you have a weapon?”

In response, the mage suddenly tossed his staff toward Kaz. The warrior reached out and caught it in midair. Despite its thinness, it felt like a strong, sturdy piece of wood. It would have to do. “My thanks … Hecar and the others … you’ll …”

“It is the least I can do for you, Kaz.”

“Thank you.”

As he hurried out the door, he thought he heard the gray man add, “Huma would have been proud of you, minotaur.”

*

As the minotaur disappeared down the hall, the gray man walked calmly over to the empty chains and stood in front of them, his back to the wall. The manacles materialized about his wrists and ankles, securing him. The mage nodded, then smiled. In his place there suddenly stood a minotaur, a minotaur who looked exactly like Kaz.

He waited for the guards to come.

*

With the events of the arena captivating nearly all of Nethosak, even the temple was nearly bare of occupants. Kaz did not encounter a sentry until almost the ground level. The sentry, not expecting an assault from below, had grown lax. When Kaz discovered him, he was leaning against the wall, staring up at the ceiling.

A blow with the staff to the stomach, followed by a solid punch in the jaw, was enough to deal quickly with the guard. Kaz dragged him into an empty cell and laid him to the side so he would not be visible. As he finished, however, the minotaur heard the sounds of an armed escort.

Keeping clear of the open door, Kaz waited until the sounds continued past him. It was the escort for him and his comrades. He prayed to Paladine that the gray man would indeed watch over his friends. He also hoped the mage had done something to prevent them from noticing his disappearance. Kaz needed some time to reach his goal.

In the lair of the dragon. That could be only the high priest’s personal chambers. Ty must still be there. It made sense, since, if the female had been escorted back to her own cell, she would have had to pass Kaz’s. That had not happened.

There were no apparent guards when he entered the ground level. That was not too surprising. The vast majority would be attending the circus, the better to emphasize the glory of the sons of Sargas. Kaz had some inkling of how Infernus’s mind worked. The dragon was one for showmanship and flash. He reveled in power and wanted others to recognize the supremacy of that power. Now that tendency was working for Kaz.

He had made it halfway from the stairs to the high priest’s chambers when he nearly ran headlong into Infernus’s chief acolyte. The other minotaur was so stunned, he did not react until Kaz was already upon him. The staff caught the acolyte under the chin. Kaz dodged a reckless swing, then lowered the staff on his adversary’s head.

The blow should have only stunned the robed figure, but to Kaz’s surprise, his opponent slumped to the floor. Kaz glanced at the staff, recalling that it belonged to a mage, then shrugged. A meditation chamber provided him with an adequate place to hide the body. Kaz hesitated once he had the cleric in there, pondering the voluminous robes and the high hood.

A few moments later, clad in the same robe and with the hood pulled up over his head, he continued on his way. There was no method by which he could hide the staff, so he kept it out and used it as a walking stick, pretending some leg injury.

Two clerics, obviously on their way to the circus, gave him perfunctory acknowledgments, then hurried on. A temple guard straightened as he walked past.

His good fortune faded as he reached the doors to the audience chamber. Two guards stood on duty, guards who stared intensely at him as he walked up to the doors.

“I’m on official business for the high priest. Let me pass.”

They did not move. The one on the right announced, “We’ve orders not to admit anyone. That comes from His Holiness himself.”

“My orders are new. His Holiness left important papers behind that I’m to retrieve. Do you want to face his displeasure after I tell him you wouldn’t let me pass?”

The words were enough to cause the two sentries discomfort, but still they stood their ground. The same guard spoke again. “The orders were very clear. No one is to enter, save the high priest himself.”

“Commendable,” replied Kaz with a nod. He stepped closer to the two. Both sentries shifted stance ever so slightly, showing their weapons, in this case a pair of sturdy battle-axes. “But I think I have a way of resolving this problem.”

He brought the staff up sideways and charged both guards. One raised his axe and managed to deflect his end of the staff, but the other was slower. The staff caught him in the throat, and he went down, coughing and struggling to breathe.

The other sentry fought back, pushing against Kaz’s staff. Kaz slipped to the side and used his momentum to strike the gasping minotaur with the hard end of his weapon. Again, the blow, which should have only stunned the guard, sent him slumping to the floor.

The remaining guard was still off balance. He stumbled forward, and Kaz caught him on the back of the neck, just below the head. The second guard joined the first on the floor.

The battle had not gone unnoticed, however. From across the temple, several guards and clerics came running. Kaz cursed, pulling a door open. He slipped through even as the first of the guards threw a lance at him. The weapon bounced harmlessly off the door.

The doors were designed to be barred from the inside, something Kaz found very useful. Kaz had the entrance barred in seconds. That would certainly hold off the guards for a time. Now he had to find Ty.

The audience chamber was dark, but it was not difficult to locate the rooms in back. Kaz found the doors, but could not open them. They were either locked or possibly ensorcelled. He glanced at the doors, then at the staff the mage had given him. It was not Honor’s Face, but he was certain it was imbued with magic.

Raising the staff, he aimed for the center of the door. Behind him he could hear the barred doors to the audience chamber rattle as the guards threw their weight against them, so he rammed the staff against the door.

It shattered, sending splinters flying everywhere. Kaz had to fall back immediately lest he be injured by the debris.

No magic had kept the door sealed, only a simple lock.

Clearing the remnants with the aid of the staff, Kaz entered.

Tiberia sat in the midst of a chamber that seemed almost as huge as the one from which he had just departed. A pulsating shell of crimson light covered the small figure. Prior to the minotaur’s appearance, Ty had evidently been staring at a greenish globe that floated at the young prisoner’s eye level. Even from where he stood, Kaz could see faint images skimming along the globe’s surface. It was just like the red dragon to make his captive watch the deaths of Kaz and the others.

Ty rose to her feet at the sight of the minotaur. Her eyes were tired. A smile broke across her features. “Kaz!”

“I’ve come to free you, Ty.”

“I know. The gray man said to wait for you.”

“Nice of him to do that.” He wondered if the mage had said anything else, such as how to break the spell that surrounded Ty.

The staff had worked before. Perhaps it would work again.

“Ty, curl yourself up into as small a ball as you can.”

The female did as Kaz requested.

“Ready yourself!”

Kaz brought one tip of the staff down on the crimson field.

The force unleashed by the dragon’s spell when the staff hit burned the magic artifact to ash and threw the minotaur across the chamber.

*

The guards chosen to escort Hecar and the others gathered the party together. Scurn was among the prisoners. The guards placed Hecar next to an oddly contemplative Kaz, who obeyed their captors’ orders without protest. He did not have an opportunity to do more than glance at Helati’s mate, but when he did, Kaz smiled back at him. It was almost as if Kaz knew some jest, which he had not shared with the others.

What can he be thinking about? Hecar wondered. Does he have a plan of escape?

They reached the main level just as several guards and clerics went rushing toward the doorway leading to the high priest’s audience chamber. The guard leader called a halt and started toward one of the clerics, but Kaz suddenly broke his silence.

“If you delay, we won’t make the circus in time. They can handle the matter.”

If Hecar and the other prisoners thought it odd for Kaz to speak these words, the guards and their commander seemed to find them completely sensible. The leader nodded, and the small band continued on, departing the temple moments later.

“Kaz!” whispered Hecar. “If you’ve got a plan, you’d —”

“Be silent!” snapped a temple soldier. He swatted Hecar on the shoulder with the flat of his blade. Hecar was tempted to forego the circus and end his life in a valiant but futile struggle with the guard.

“Rest easy, Hecar.” Kaz gave him that same peculiar smile again.

“But, Kaz —”

Delbin abruptly giggled. Hecar glanced at him, wondering what even a kender could find so humorous at this moment. Delbin glanced at Hecar, then barely forced back another giggle after looking at Kaz.

“Just a little longer, Delbin. It’s almost time for the surprise.”

None of the guards seemed to take notice of what Kaz was saying, which further perplexed Hecar. It was as if they knew Kaz was there, but paid no mind to anything he said or did.

There were ten guards besides the leader, which was something of a compliment to the four minotaurs and one kender they guarded. Given weapons and free hands, Hecar was fairly certain he and the others could have fought their way to freedom … at some cost, of course. Still, that was not likely to happen.

The streets were nearly deserted, most of the city’s population having gathered in or near the Great Circus. Now and then a minotaur passed within sight of them, but, compared with the normal traffic in the busy city, Nethosak was a ghost land.

Then the attack came. Hecar likely would have chosen the same location, for it was narrower than most of the path, and the street was deserted, with many hiding places for armed warriors.

The band and their captors were suddenly surrounded by roughly a dozen or so minotaurs bearing swords and axes. Some of the newcomers were vaguely familiar to Hecar, but he had no time to consider that, for the guards formed a defensive position, some of them concentrating their weapons on the captives.

“Stand aside,” commanded the guard leader. “These warriors are destined to redeem themselves in the Great Circus.”

“You mean they’re supposed to die there,” said one of the strangers, a tall, dark-furred minotaur with a streak of white between his horns that ran all the way to the back of his head. Hecar was certain he knew him, but from where, he could not recall. “For daring to defy the high priest’s desires and nothing more. I had another brother who died for reasons something like that. There’s no honor in such a death.”

“This is treason. You defy the will of your lords.”

The leader of the newcomers smiled. It was a smile that Hecar had seen on only one other minotaur. Kaz. “We’ve got a history of defiance in our clan.”

Beside him, Hecar heard Kaz quietly say, “All right, Delbin. It’s time.”

The temple guards did not seem to hear or notice the kender suddenly touch his manacles, which slipped off a moment later without a sound. Only belatedly did Hecar note the tiny lockpick in Delbin’s hands, a lockpick that the kender put to use with astonishing speed on Hecar’s own manacles. In the space of seconds, he had the chains off Fliara as well.

It was not until Delbin reached Scurn that one of the guards blinked and noticed what was happening. He turned to stop the kender’s efforts, shouting, “The prisoners —!”

His outburst was all that was needed to send the two groups into battle. Three guards turned on the prisoners. Hecar, using his chains like a flail, swung at a soldier. His blow struck the minotaur’s sword hand, causing him to drop his weapon. Delbin was instantly there, seizing the sword and handing it to Fliara, who was closest.

The minotaur with the streak in his hair laughed as he fought back both the escort leader and another temple guard. He wielded a sword large even by minotaur standards, a sword that whipped in and out and around with such speed and daring that it confounded the pair who fought him. Neither could get past his blade. The escort leader fell seconds later to a thrust.

Two more guards fell, one of them wounded in the leg, but one of their rescuers also died. Hecar swung the chains at any guard who came within range. One soldier managed to press Fliara back, but Hecar pulled his chains around the attacker’s neck and did not loosen his grip until the guard ceased to move.

Someone bumped into Hecar from behind. He turned, expecting another attacker, and found Scurn, one hand still manacled, struggling with a guard who had evidently tried to run Hecar through the back. The guard was strong, but Scurn was stronger. The scarred minotaur pushed his opponent to his knees, then raised his knee into the guard’s chin. Scum’s adversary collapsed.

Circumstance makes for strange shield-brothers, Hecar thought as he turned to fight some more. Never thought I’d owe that one my life.

“Give yourselves up!” demanded the leader of the rescuers. “You can’t win this battle!”

The remaining soldiers lowered their weapons. Four of their number were dead, including the escort commander, with at least three others injured. Of the rescuers, only one had fallen and another had a wounded arm. All in all, a good battle, at least from Hecar’s point of view.

“Toron!” Fliara ran over to the minotaur with the streak in his fur, hugging him. For no reason he could fathom, Hecar felt a twinge of jealousy. He was certainly not attracted to Kaz’s sister. Certainly not.

“This is hardly the situation I’d expected you to get into, little sister!” roared the one called Toron. “You were always the strict, rule-abiding one in the family!”

“Toron?” The name was more than familiar, but as with Fliara, many years had passed since Hecar had seen this same minotaur. Toron, like Fliara, had been much younger. Hecar turned to where Kaz had last been standing. “Kaz! Your brother is —”

Kaz, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Hecar quickly scanned the street, fearing that somewhere he would find the fallen body of Helati’s mate. However, it almost immediately became apparent that Kaz was not among the dead and wounded.

Delbin tugged on his hand. Hecar looked down at the kender, who was trying to hold back a giggle. “He fooled you really good, but then he looked exactly like Kaz, which is what he told me he had to do in order to give Kaz the time to get where he had to, and, besides, it would have been harder for Kaz to do certain things if we were still prisoners in the temple —”

“What the blazes are you talking about, Delbin? Are you saying that wasn’t Kaz with us?”

“No, it was the gray man from my dreams, and he said Kaz had the best chance to rescue Ty if we were out and safe, and, besides, Helati’s been talking to your clan, which is why —”

“Which is why we decided to show the temple it can’t push around Orilg, especially my own family.” Toron walked up and patted Hecar on the shoulder. “And that includes you, Hecar! I missed the rest of what this little creature said! Where’s Kaz?”

Hecar shook his head. “Delbin says he was never here, that some mage was here, disguised as him. That much I think I understand. Kaz went to rescue a … human female” – it would not do to tell Toron the truth just yet – “who is a prisoner of the high priest. The female’s important for some reason.”

“Then we should go back and help him! The others can handle these prisoners!”

“No!” piped up Delbin. “The mage said we should go to the circus!”

Hecar paused. On the one hand, he wanted to go back and help Kaz, but on the other hand, their interference might make it more difficult for Kaz to slip out with Ty.

“I wish Helati were here,” he muttered. Her advice had always been sound.

“She’s done enough as it is,” replied Toron, “considering all she helped plan!”

“Helati’s here? How is that possible? Where is she?”

“Not here, at least not in the flesh, but —”

Fliara joined them, cutting off her brother’s explanation. Her expression was one of great concern. “Where’s Kaz?”

“Not here,” her brother replied, “that’s all I understand. He might be back at the temple, if what Hecar here said is true.”

“Then we’ve got trouble.”

“Why’s that?” asked Hecar.

She looked around, verifying something. “Scum’s missing, too.”

*

As the ceremony announcing the imperial duel began, Infernus felt a tug of warning in his mind. The tug was something he had added to the hatchling’s prison spell; it warned him if, say, the young one’s power grew sufficient to disrupt or destroy the crimson cage. It also, as a matter of function, warned the dragon if some outside force attempted the same thing.

Infernus did not think the hatchling was sufficiently schooled yet to free herself. That left only outside influence and that, to the disguised leviathan, meant, impossible as it seemed, only one audacious creature.

“Kaz …” he whispered.

One of his subordinates, hearing the high priest mutter, immediately turned to see if his master desired something.

The chair of the high priest was empty.

Chapter 17

THE SILVER HATCHLING

The fall, if not the shock, should have killed Kaz. He knew that very well. He should have struck the wall or the floor with the force necessary to crack his hard head open or snap his neck. It would have been appropriate. It would have been almost exactly like the death of his father.

Yet, while Kaz’s head throbbed as if every drum in the homeland were being beaten, he was far from dead. His muscles ached, but that was fine compared with broken bones and a battered body.

“Kaz! Don’t die! Don’t!”

“I’m —” The minotaur tried to rise too swiftly and encountered throbbing pain. “I’m alive, Ty, but I think I might regret that good fortune for the next several minutes.”

“I thought you were going to die! I tried my best to keep you from falling so hard!”

Kaz’s head began to clear. Finally he could see well enough to observe that Ty was still a prisoner, but the spell that held her had grown pale now, almost pink, and did not pulsate every time its captive breathed. The girl’s words started to make some sense … he thought. “Are you saying … are you saying you kept me from breaking my neck?”

“I couldn’t let that happen! Not after … not after …” Ty fought back tears. “Not after I couldn’t save Ganth!”

“It’s all right, Ty.” Kaz slowly rose. The throbbing lessened, but his arm, the same one that had been injured in the woods, now hurt intolerably. “You can’t be blamed for not saving him. Blame Infernus, if anyone.”

“I hate him! I wish I could do something!”

Kaz rubbed his chin, more to take his mind off his pain than because he was thinking. “You might be able to, Ty. You remember the gray man from your dreams? He spoke to me. He told me you have a power within you. All you have to do is remember what it means to be a dragon, a silver dragon.”

Ty closed her eyes, visibly concentrating. Precious seconds passed, but there was no sign of success. After a few more seconds, the young woman opened her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Kaz. I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying ever since he put me in here. I tried harder when the man in gray said you’d be coming for me, but I still can’t do it! I only remember being human!”

From what Kaz recalled of dragons, they were born with an intelligence that was already exceptional, by minotaur standards. They understood innately how to use their wings and their most basic skills, physical and magical. Magic was so natural to them that they picked up the most simple tricks only days after hatching. They were adaptable when young, growing set in their ways only after reaching adulthood.

“It’s in you, Ty. It’s the only way you’ll be able to defy Infernus. He wants you to be a dragon in form, but not in mind. He wants you to be a frightened child, obedient to him. He also needs you alive, so remember that you have some hold over him.”

Ty tried again. For a moment it seemed as if she might succeed, then she fell back, gasping. The female shook her head again, saying nothing.

“Maybe if I can get you out of there first.” Kaz searched around for the staff, then, noting a trail of ash, recalled what had happened to it. He wondered if anything had happened to the gray mage at the same time. Magic-users’ staffs were supposed to be important to them, often containing spells that the mages spent years creating. Sometimes the staffs were even tied to the lives of their owners. Had he injured the gray man?

That could not concern him now. If he had no wizard’s staff, then he needed to find something else magical, something to make headway.

Something magical?

The globe that depicted the events of the circus still floated in the same place it had prior to Kaz’s rescue attempt. Its magic came from the same source: Infernus. It was risky, mostly to the minotaur, since Ty’s power protected her better, but he could see no other possible tool.

“Ty, I’m going to try something. Do you think you can protect both of us from some magic?” He indicated the globe.

The young captive understood immediately what Kaz intended. “I’ll do my best. I think I can, Kaz.”

“Good. Now let’s hope I can touch this.”

“Infernus touched it a lot.”

“That’s encouraging, at least.” Kaz gingerly reached for the globe, hoping the red dragon’s ability to grasp it without harm was not due simply to his having created it.

His hands tingled as they closed on the magical sphere. Touching it was like touching something soft and malleable, yet solid. It was slightly warm. Encouraged, he held it tighter, raising it to chest level.

Kaz raised the globe over his head. “Get ready, Ty.”

He threw the magical artifact at Ty’s prison, at the same time backing away as quickly as he could.

Nothing happened, for just before it would have touched the magical cage, the globe suddenly vanished.

“You are a very tenacious pest, minotaur.”

Infernus stood near the window. His eyes were a fiery red. The artifact floated above one hand. Without his gaze leaving Kaz, the red dragon dismissed his device.

“Others have said that about me before,” Kaz returned, wishing he had Honor’s Face in his grip. At least with the magical axe he would have stood a good chance of leaving Infernus with a permanent souvenir of this encounter. “Most of those are dead.”

The false minotaur laughed. “Do you seriously think those words unnerve me, Kaziganthi de-Orilg? Do you imagine me shivering in fear at your implied threat? You are no more a threat to me than a bee’s sting or a drop of rain. I am Infernus! I am the embodiment of power! I am a dragon!”

“Careful, your loyal followers out there might hear you.”

“These rooms are proofed against sounds, minotaur. I have, on occasion, dealt with those who have failed me or attempted to cross my will. The hunters who failed to capture you. A cleric who protested my methods, calling them dishonorable. A fool of a general who thought he could bully a newly ordained high priest into being his servant.” The robed figure indicated his domain. “They all challenged me in here in one way or another and paid for their folly … as you shall now.”

Infernus pointed at the minotaur.

A wave of molten rock poured over Kaz before he could even move. At first the heat was searing. The rock flowed over him from all sides. Kaz fully expected to die there and then.

He did not. The rock cooled as it touched him, turning so brittle that all he had to do was move to shatter it and free himself.

“Impossible!” roared the red dragon. “Impossible … or your doing!”

His last words were directed at Ty, who stood defiantly even though still a prisoner. The damage the staff had done to her crimson cell had given her some respite. Ty had been able to regain some of her strength.

“I won’t let you hurt him!”

“You will not? You who are less of a threat than he is? Little One, if you bore a will as strong as the minotaur’s, I might consider your words of some import, but you are nothing. You are an infant not yet familiar with much more than breathing and eating. You know a few basics of magic and think you can stand against me! I am centuries old, far older than most and far more dangerous than any. Do not interfere again, Little One. I need you alive, but not necessarily whole. Simply alive.”

Ty glared.

A wind buffeted the disguised dragon, but did little more. Infernus smiled and waved a hand. The wind died away. The dragon glared back at the defiant young female.

The cage began to crackle with renewed energy. Ty’s legs buckled, but to her credit, she did not scream.

Angered by the high priest’s assault on Ty and knowing it would be his best chance to strike, Kaz leapt for Infernus. Unfortunately, Infernus was far swifter than any minotaur could ever have been. He reacted even as Kaz was in the air, turning his burning eyes on the flying figure. Kaz found himself floating in midair, helpless. The high priest stalked toward him, his expression less and less like that of a minotaur and more and more like what would appear on the reptilian visage of a dragon.

“Enough! It is time we ended this! Emperor Polik is no doubt just beginning his duel, the one that will reaffirm his right to lead the race in the grand campaign. He will win, of course, though the duel is planned to take several minutes simply for the sake of drama. My presence will be required then for the announcement.” His mouth stretched in a way that was impossible, showing far too many teeth. “Consider yourself fortunate. That means I shall make your death a quick one. Not a painless one, but a quick one.”

Kaz barely bit back a cry as his arms, legs, and head stretched in different directions. His muscles strained, and it felt as if his bones were about to be torn apart. He fought against the strain, but his efforts were for naught. Slowly but surely, he was going to be dismembered, one piece at a time.

“Let him go!” he heard Ty call. “Let him go!”

Infernus only laughed.

“I said let him go!”

A cry coursed through the chamber, but it had not come from Kaz. The minotaur fell without warning to the hard floor, only a last-minute turn preventing him from breaking his arm. As it was, his left leg felt numb.

“You … hurt … me … you … little …” Infernus sprawled against a column, his chest heaving rapidly and his eyes wide in both anger and surprise. There was no physical evidence of what Ty had done to the red dragon, but the robed figure’s reaction was enough to indicate that it had been a mighty blow, indeed.

Rising from the floor, Kaz quietly stalked toward Infernus. Every muscle in the minotaur’s body cried out in pain.

“I can see … that your education is going … to require some rethinking.”

The minotaur was close enough. “Infernus?”

The red dragon turned, still not quite recovered.

Kaz punched him.

He had the satisfaction of watching Infernus fall back, the blow so sudden that the high priest did not possess the wherewithal to brace himself. The robed figure tumbled to the floor, rolling several feet.

If I only had Honor’s Face, Kaz wished. I could probably end this now.

It was not until he had completed the thought that he realized the axe was somehow in his hand. The dragon’s will had been shattered to the point where his hold over the magical weapon had vanished. Once more Honor’s Face obeyed its master’s command.

Kaz grinned, starting toward the sprawled figure. Infernus was just rising to his hands and knees as Kaz reached him. The minotaur stopped, raised the axe, and said, “This is for my father and every other minotaur, dragon!”

A blood-red serpent knocked him off his feet. Kaz fell back, still somehow managing to maintain his grip on his weapon, and saw that his first observation had been inaccurate. It was not a serpent that had attacked him, but rather a long, scaly tail.

A dragon’s tail.

Infernus was shifting, throwing off the form of a minotaur. The robe tore to shreds, unable to contain the swelling form. Folded wings burst through the back of the garment, then opened and stretched. The last vestiges of the high priest’s clothing scattered as the red dragon expanded. He was nearly full-grown before Kaz could even rise.

The draconian visage twisted toward him. “Insufferable creature! Audacious gnat! You dare strike me! You dare to think you can destroy me!”

“You like to hear yourself talk, don’t you?” Kaz challenged, trying to throw the dragon off. “You do a lot of talking, Infernus.”

His words further enraged the leviathan, which was what Kaz had hoped for. The more enraged the dragon got, the less thinking Infernus would do. Red dragons, the minotaur recalled from the war, had terrible tempers that often led to their downfall in combat.

“I will crush you!” Infernus raised a massive paw and brought it down.

Kaz jumped aside. It was a clean miss. He adjusted his grip on Honor’s Face and waited. If Infernus did that again, Kaz would be ready.

“Your race was nothing until I came along, minotaur!” the immense dragon cried. “Beasts no better than the cows you resemble! I made you into the master race! You yourself are the product of my careful culling of the weak! You should be grateful to me! Without my touch, this race would have died out long ago!” Infernus hissed. “Now all I demand is my due.”

“Your due is waiting for you in my hands,” Kaz replied calmly, hefting the axe.

Infernus raised a paw and brought it down again. The strike was nearer, but again Kaz managed to leap out of the way. As he moved, he counterattacked, swinging Honor’s Face up in a vicious arc. The gleaming head buried itself deep in the dragon’s paw.

With a roar of rage, Infernus pulled the injured appendage away, tossing Kaz and the axe aside in the process. Blood splattered both the floor and the minotaur as the red dragon shook his paw. The minotaur scrambled to his feet, retrieving his weapon. Without hesitation he advanced toward the crimson leviathan’s other forepaw, axe up and ready to strike.

His monstrous adversary saw him too late. Infernus had time only to register the small figure’s new position before Kaz brought the deadly axe down again.

If the first cry had been deafening, the second threatened to make Kaz’s head burst. It seemed impossible that those outside could not hear the dragon’s roars despite whatever spell or handiwork was designed to block the sound.

“Gnat! I will eat you instead of killing you outright! First a hand, then a foot, using my magic to keep you alive and conscious until I snap your head off your limbless torso! I will wreak such pain on you as you have never imagined!”

“You’re talking again,” Kaz pointed out. “All you ever seem to do is talk.”

“Ha!” The eyes of Infernus gleamed. His mouth opened. A great burst of flame shot toward the minotaur. It was too wide to avoid. Kaz rolled to the floor, praying the flame would go over his head.

Instead, the length of flame turned upward at an impossible angle just before it reached Kaz. Tapestries caught fire, and the ceiling began to smolder.

The dragon turned back to his captive. “You again! You are becoming more trouble than you are worth! I can see that before I can remove the minotaur from my sight, I must first deal with you!”

To the minotaur’s horror, Ty and the magical cage started to fade away.

“Kaz!”

“Ty! Fight it, Ty! You’re a dragon, same as him! Your powers are every bit as strong! You’ve seen that! Don’t let him send you away, Lass!”

“Ka —” The last faint image of Ty dissipated.

“Now, then!” roared Infernus, swinging his head around so he could again concentrate on the minotaur. “Now, then. This has taken long enough, gnat. Emperor Polik should have begun the duel by now. I am needed by my people. It is time you died.”

“You think so?” Kaz held Honor’s Face before him. It had served him well in the past, but he doubted it was strong enough to turn away the dragon’s magical might.

Infernus chuckled. “Oh, yes, gnat. I do.”

The dragon raised his head. There was no hope that the axe, even with its powers, could stop dragon flame from such a huge and savage creature.

All of a sudden, the floor began to rumble. The red dragon rocked back and forth, stunned by the unexpected quake. He roared his anger, but Infernus could do nothing, his balance already lost. His wings flapped, but in the chamber he did not have the room to rise aloft. In the end he merely tipped over, fortunately not in the direction of Kaz.

The minotaur rolled away from the center of the quake. Kaz had no idea what could be causing the natural occurrence, but thanked Paladine, Kiri-Jolith, Habbakuk, and any other god that might have had a hand in it.

From within the rising, cracking floor came a roar of challenge. Stone fragments flew in every direction as the swelling floor rose higher. Infernus struggled to roll over so he could right himself, but the vibrations shook him loose each time he almost gained a talonhold.

Then the cause of the quake burst through the floor, rising swiftly and pulling itself free. Its silver head gleamed, and wings as smooth as ice stretched for the first time ever. Despite the physical similarities between the two reptilian visages, there was something noble in the face of the second dragon, a sense of honor. That alone was the great contrast between the two behemoths.

The silver dragon looked around, finally locating Kaz, who could only stare in awe.

“Kaaazzz! I couldn’t let him hurt you!”

“Ty … Tiberia.”

“So the hatchling has found herself!” mocked Infernus, righting his massive form. “Not the most opportune time, but I will make do. This means I may start your education even sooner.”

“No!” Tiberia whirled about to face her counterpart. “No! You don’t care about anyone but yourself! You hurt others and expect everyone to obey you!” The silver dragon raised her head so she could almost look Infernus in the eyes. “I don’t have to! I don’t have to, and I’m going to make sure no one else will ever have to, either!”

As powerful as the young dragon was, Kaz doubted that Tiberia alone was a match for Infernus. She might have the raw power, but she lacked the red’s guile and experience. Infernus would deal with her swiftly unless someone could direct the hatchling, someone with more experience in combat involving dragons.

Why always me? Kaz silently grumbled. Why always me?

Infernus leaned back as he spoke, possibly due to his injured forepaws. “You challenge me, do you, Little One? You think you have the might? My kills, especially of your kind, number high. I’ve not had a good struggle in many years. I won’t kill you, of course, since I have need of you, but you will not fly for decades and you will always move with a limp, perhaps because one of your limbs will have been bitten off.”

His words were having an effect on the silver dragon, who had never fought before. Kaz saw uncertainty grow in Tiberia’s eyes, and the glittering wings began to twitch nervously.

Infernus was not paying any mind to the minotaur, the red considering the other dragon a more serious threat. Kaz waited until the larger creature’s head swayed away from him, then ran as fast as he could.

“Give up now, Little One,” Infernus was saying. “There is a place for you, too, if only you will see the way. There is —”

It was at that moment that Kaz leapt onto Tiberia’s back. The silver dragon jerked, but, fortunately, did not whip around to remove the sudden weight. What she did do, however, was back away abruptly from Infernus, the spell of fear broken by the minotaur’s action.

“Tiberia … Ty … back away farther, but let me get to your neck so I can sit there!”

The dragon obeyed, albeit a bit awkwardly.

“A dragon rider are we?” Infernus unleashed a throaty chuckle. “And where is your dragonlance, minotaur?”

“The axe and my friend will do just as well, Infernus!” Kaz’s words were meant more to instill some degree of confidence in his companion than to frighten the red dragon.

As he expected, Infernus did not take his threat seriously. “I will remember your sense of humor after you are gone, gnat!”

A whirlwind filled the chamber, tossing loose rubble directly at Kaz and Tiberia. The dragon managed to bash away the first few large pieces, but several easily flew past her guard. Kaz pulled himself behind Tiberia’s head and neck as much as he could, but stone after stone pelted him, marking his arms and legs with small nicks and cuts. Tiberia roared as stones struck her with considerable force.

“Surrender him, hatchling, and I will cease!”

“I won’t!” cried the silver dragon in a small voice. “I won’t!”

Kaz struggled upward. He needed to be high enough for Tiberia, and only Tiberia, to hear him. “A fireball! If you can make a fireball, aim at his —”

Tiberia unleashed a fireball, a good-sized one, at Infernus’s chest. The flames licked at the red dragon for several seconds, but the monstrous creature seemed barely affected by it.

“Fire? You send fire against me? I am a red dragon! Fire is my element more than yours!”

A ring of flame burst to life around the pair, causing the silver dragon to back up. The ring was so tight that Tiberia could move only a few steps. Infernus laughed.

Again he spoke so that only the silver could hear. “Listen to everything I say first, Tiberia! I want you to make another fireball! I —”

“It won’t hurt him!”

“Don’t worry about hurting him that way! Listen! I want a fireball in his eyes! The biggest and strongest fireball you can create! Do it now!”

Kaz held his breath, hoping Tiberia would do as he said. They needed to reverse the course of battle.

He felt the silver leviathan shudder. A sphere of flame larger than the red dragon’s head flew unerringly into Infernus’s visage. The smile of mockery twisted into astonishment.

“Now, Tiberia! While he can’t see! Jump and attack! It’s our best hope!”

The massive silver form leapt forward, crossing over the flames without hesitation. The young dragon trusted Kaz that much. Smaller than Infernus, Tiberia was still an enormous projectile. Infernus, still fighting to restore his vision, was unprepared for the force of a half-grown dragon falling upon him. The injured paws scratched at Tiberia, but there was no stopping the silver’s descent. The two leviathans crashed together, Kaz desperately hanging on and hoping Tiberia would not be forced onto her back.

“Again, in his eyes!” the minotaur cried.

To her credit, Tiberia managed a third, though smaller, fireball even while tangled up with the red dragon. Infernus roared as he sought again to protect his eyes.

“Hold him fast!” Kaz leaned to one side and, using his better arm, swung his battle-axe in the direction of the red dragon’s neck. Infernus twisted, however, and instead of the neck, the axe bit into his shoulder.

The red roared, throwing Kaz and Tiberia to one side. The silver’s great form crashed through the wall dividing the room from the audience chamber. Tiberia’s momentum was such that she ended up almost on top of the raised dais Infernus used when acting as high priest.

Kaz was astonished to find himself still holding on to his companion. Tiberia’s body had knocked a clean hole. The warrior felt as if he had just survived the hailstorm of all hailstorms unprotected.

“I will chew you slowly, minotaur!” Infernus barged through the hole without pause, causing still more masonry to fly and creating huge cracks that ran up to the ceiling. “I will shred your wings, hatchling!”

Kaz wondered just how much more damage this part of the temple could take before the ceiling caved in. While both Tiberia and Infernus were likely to survive such an incident with little more than a few bruises, Kaz was not so well armored.

The silver dragon stared at her foe. Another fireball formed before Infernus, but this time the red dragon reacted quickly enough to disperse it.

“No more of that trick, hatchling,” snarled the crimson terror. “No more tricks at all.”

Infernus charged. Tiberia tried to back up, but fell over the desk and the dais. The collision between the dragon and the dais was enough to shake Kaz loose. He fell over the front end of the dais and rolled down the steps just as the two dragons met.

The minotaur took one look at the two gigantic forms descending in his direction and scurried away toward the barred doorway as fast as he could. He had no plans to abandon Tiberia, but he would be little good to his friend if he were crushed.

Under the combined mass of the two dragons, the desk and dais were quickly reduced to rubble. Kaz gave thanks that the red dragon had seen fit to have the audience chamber built so vast; as it was, he was only a few yards away when the dragons’ heads finally struck the floor.

The pair fought with tooth and claw now, Infernus trying to tear out Tiberia’s throat with his talons, and the younger dragon simply trying to shield herself. There was no good target for Kaz, not yet, but he did have an idea.

“Tiberia! The injuries! Bite them!” Honor’s Face always struck deeper than a normal axe and always dealt more damage. Even now, it was clear the red dragon was experiencing spasms of pain.

Tiberia tried to snap at the injured appendages, but her position would not allow her to get close enough. In desperation, she sank talons into one of the red dragon’s injuries. Infernus hissed and backed away, the paw now covered in blood.

Using the respite to save herself, Tiberia pulled her silver form toward Kaz and the doorway. Kaz turned and tried to open the doors, but realized almost immediately that there was no way he could do so in time.

Infernus raised a paw and roared, “No! You will remain in here! I command it!”

It took Kaz a moment to understand why Infernus suddenly seemed so anxious. If Tiberia crashed through the doorway, the presence of dragons would be revealed. Infernus clearly did not desire that information known to anyone, not even the clerics.

The crimson behemoth started a spell, but there was not enough time for him to complete it. Kaz threw himself to the side. The doorway and the surrounding walls gave way easily under the weight of the retreating giant. Kaz wondered if the clerics and guards still waited outside. If so, he almost pitied them.

The moment a gap appeared, the minotaur rose and darted through it. Tiberia was halfway out into the temple’s front hall with Infernus following close behind. Whether it was his rage or the thought that the silver dragon had already revealed the truth about what was happening behind the doors, the high priest moved as if he did not care who saw him.

The scene in the hallway was one of chaos. A number of bodies were scattered here and there, victims of the collapsing doors and walls. Infernus had spoken true when he had said that his chambers were proofed against sound. Kaz found he had no sympathy for the servants of the high priest. There were still several alive, but they were doing little at the moment, save gawking at what had burst out of their master’s chambers. Some of the more intelligent quickly turned and fled. There were some challenges even too great for minotaurs.

Kaz was caught up in conflicting choices. He wanted to get Tiberia out of here. The silver dragon could not maneuver well, and at close quarters the advantage would continue to belong to her larger, more experienced foe. Yet, fighting Infernus in the sky was not something Kaz wanted Tiberia to face, either.

As he tried to get nearer to the silver, who had by this time made it out into the somewhat cramped hallway, Infernus burst through what was left of the wall. Pieces of marble rained down on those nearby. One cleric died screaming as he was crushed. Kaz dodged the first two pieces that slammed into the floor near him, then tripped over rubble just as he was almost out of range. Twisting helplessly, he fell onto his back. His sudden upward view revealed yet another enormous fragment bearing down on him.

Before he could react, strong hands gripped his shoulders and pulled him up. Honor’s Face skittered away. Kaz finally pulled free of his rescuer’s grip and glanced over to where he had been lying. The fragment had embedded itself deep into the floor. He would have been crushed. Grateful to his rescuer, Kaz looked next to him and discovered a wide-eyed Scurn.

“You vanished during the rescue, Kaz!” shouted the scarred minotaur, finally looking down at him. “I knew you’d come here! I knew you’d try to rescue the damned human whelp, and I want to help, for what the cleric did to me!”

“Scurn! Never mind that! Just get out of here! Only a fool would stay here!” Which means me, Kaz silently added.

“What’s happened here? Where’s the female? Why’re there dragons, Kaz?”

He saw no use in lying to Scurn. “The girl’s the silver one, and your precious high priest is the red! They’re both dragons, Scurn! They’ve always been dragons!”

“Dragons? The high priest is a dragon? What nonsense is this?” Nonetheless, the other minotaur eyed the red differently.

“He’s always been a dragon, you fool! Every high priest has been him for centuries! He killed them and then made himself look like them! Just listen to him!”

Perhaps Scurn might have disbelieved what, even to Kaz, sounded like nothing more than a fantastic tale, but at that moment Infernus caught sight of them.

“Gnat … and the unfortunate captain as well! How appropriate this is! You will get to die together after all!”

The voice was not exactly Jopfer’s, but, from Scum’s horrified expression, he clearly recognized the high priest.

A silver form again blocked the red one’s path. “I said leave them alone!” demanded Tiberia. “Kaz is my friend! You can’t hurt him!”

“As stubborn as a red you are, hatchling, but more repetitious, it seems.” Infernus eyed the younger dragon again. “I see I must still beat that stubbornness out of you. You and your little friend have cost me dearly as it is!”

The two dragons faced off once more, their huge bodies wreaking havoc with the building each time they even moved a few paces. A portion of the ceiling caved in behind Infernus. Most of the remaining clerics and guards had retreated from sight.

“That’s … that is the high priest?” whispered Scurn.

“That’s a dragon, too, Scurn, one that thinks it should control our lives, our destinies! It thinks it has the right to be our master!”

“Our master?” The other minotaur’s expression grew grim. Kaz had touched the one point of agreement among all minotaurs. No one but a minotaur had the right to rule the race. Anyone else, anything else, was an enemy of the people. “He wants to be our master?”

The dragons snapped at one another. “That’s right, Scurn. Our master, body, mind, and soul.”

“Never … our master … Sargas take me for a fool!”

“Then we have to help the silver dragon! She’s our only hope! We have to do what we can!”

Scurn nodded absently, his eyes still fixed on the red form. Kaz wondered if he was thinking of all he had done in an attempt to ingratiate himself to the high priest. “You’re right, Kaz. You’re right.”

To the other minotaur’s surprise, Scurn abandoned him, fleeing through the temple entrance and losing himself in the streets beyond. The action was so sudden, it left Kaz stunned. He had not expected much aid from Scurn – what could the other minotaur do against a dragon? – but he had not thought Scurn capable of such outright cowardice, regardless of his flaws or their past enmity.

Scum’s flight did not go unnoticed by Infernus. “So much for your ally, minotaur! A sensible coward, that one!”

“But I’m still here, Infernus.”

“As if that makes a difference, gnat!”

With his tail the red dragon battered the wall to his side, sending fragments flying toward both Tiberia and Kaz. Tiberia swatted away what she could and actually used one wing to deflect others from the minotaur.

“Be ready for me, Tiberia!” the minotaur called. Fortunately, the silver understood what he wanted, for Tiberia lowered her back end, making it simpler for Kaz to leap aboard again. Kaz hooked both feet into areas where the scales gave way a little, effectively creating stirrups.

Infernus moved forward only a breath after Kaz had gained his mount. Talon struggled against talon. Then, while the two behemoths battled, Kaz extended his good arm and opened his hand. Once more, Honor’s Face returned to him.

The red dragon had attempted no further spells, perhaps preserving his strength for physical combat. It might even have been the result of Infernus having lived so long among the minotaurs. While they did not completely eschew sorcery, they preferred physical strength over the power of magic. A dragon who had worn the guise of a minotaur for centuries may have picked up some of the same tendencies.

Of course, even without magic, Infernus stood a good chance of defeating them.

Tiberia and the red snapped at one another, Infernus ever gaining advantage. Kaz struck whenever he could. Only one of his attacks had any effect on Infernus, a gouge in one paw. Anger fueled the red’s attack, though, and almost immediately the ground gained was lost again.

The minotaur felt truly ineffective. With a dragonlance, he might have had a chance to spear Infernus and end this with his life still intact, but, despite the power of his axe, he lacked the reach to do more than harry his foe. If he hoped to be at all effective, he had to be able to reach Infernus’s neck or strike his torso with the hope of piercing deep. Only then could he hope to do grave injury to the beast.

Kaz glanced at his favored weapon, wishing, for once, that it was one of the legendary lances of the war. With the lance, they could win.

Honor’s Face shivered in his grip and stretched. The mirror blade sank into the shaft, which grew longer and longer yet felt as if it weighed no more. A swelling near the minotaur’s hand became a protective guard. Another outgrowth stretched to the neck and shoulders of Tiberia, gently wrapping around her throat.

In the blink of an eye, before the gaping minotaur’s astonished gaze, Honor’s Face had become the very thing he needed for victory. Kaz now held a dragonlance, secured for battle.

He had always wondered about the origin of his axe and now he realized that it had always been linked to the lances. The dwarf craftsman who had given it to Sardal Crystalthorn might have been one of the same group who had presented Huma with the first dragonlances.

Kaz shifted the lance. Whatever the reason, he had what they needed. “Tiberia! Back away!”

His companion did. Infernus did not at first realize why Kaz had given the command until his fiery eyes caught sight of the long, majestic weapon trained on him.

“We have a knight among us,” he mocked.

“No knight,” Kaz returned, fixing the point on the dragon’s chest, “but a knight’s dragonlance. Forward, Tiberia!”

It was a sign of the young one’s faith that she obeyed this latest command without hesitation. Tiberia charged forward. Infernus roared contemptuously, attempting to swat the lance aside, but somehow it shifted, moving away from its original target almost of its own accord. The point dug into the red dragon’s wing, tearing through the tough membrane with as much ease as a burning knife in soft snow.

Infernus roared in pain, glancing at the huge tear. The lance bit again while his attention was diverted. Kaz barely had to make sure of his aim. The dragonlance moved like a creature with a mission of its own … which perhaps it was. There had always seemed to be something lifelike about the weapons. Kaz recalled how they rarely seemed to miss their targets, even if inflicting only minor damage.

Twice more the dragonlance nicked an increasingly baffled Infernus. None of the wounds was serious alone, but the total of the dragon’s injuries could not help but begin to take a toll, even on such a massive beast as the red.

Infernus backed up, destroying more wall and causing yet another segment of the ceiling to collapse. His eyes fixed on the dire weapon wielded by the minotaur. Kaz could almost sense the magic being deployed.

The dragonlance suddenly glowed. A crimson aura surrounded it, slowly turning it as black as pitch. Kaz felt the dragonlance stiffen, grow cold.

No! Not now! the minotaur desperately thought. We have him! Incredibly, the dragonlance seemed to react. The blackness faded and the weapon grew pleasantly warm. The aura vanished.

“Not possible!” hissed Infernus. “Not possible!”

Perhaps if the red dragon had been at full strength and concentration, he would have succeeded, but now his magic was not strong enough. The lance struck twice again in rapid succession, piercing the same wing again and, on the second attack, nicking the side of the dragon’s neck just above the shoulders.

Infernus pressed himself against what remained of the wall, his breath a little ragged. There was a hint of surprise in the fiery orbs, a hint of surprise and the first glimpses of fear. Nonetheless, he was not beaten. “I have worked hard and planned long! You will not deny me my destiny! You will not deny me my minotaurs!”

Kaz’s retort went unspoken, for the floor was suddenly aswarm with other minotaurs. They raced about, some carrying lances, others swords, and one group in particular carrying what looked like long, thick ropes ending in grappling hooks. They quickly cordoned off the dragons, those with grappling hooks beginning to spin them around and around.

Leading the group was Scurn. Each man with him, Kaz realized, was a member of the State Guard, whose headquarters was not far away. Even with news of the coming announcement, the guard did not leave the city unprotected.

Neither dragon paid the minotaurs much notice until the first of the grappling hooks went flying. One caught Infernus on a leg, another on his stomach. A third snagged the dragon on the long, sinewy throat. The lancers moved in, their long weapons balanced against the ground so that if a paw or tail tried to land on them, it would first encounter a very sturdy, pointed lance. They avoided Tiberia entirely, though many eyed her with some wariness.

“What jest is this?” bellowed Infernus, affronted by the audacity of the small creatures. “Cease this!”

He got one of the grappling hooks off, but in that time three others snagged him, two on one of his forelegs and another on his torso.

The scene threw Kaz back a decade. He recalled the same techniques used by the minotaurs and others under rare circumstances when the enemy’s dragon allies were caught on the ground. Grappling hooks to catch on to the scaled hide of the dragon, so great a number that even a leviathan would not be able to pull free.

Scurn had evidently remembered the technique.

“Kaz!” called Tiberia. “What do I do?”

It was tempting to retreat and hope that the enterprising Scurn and the guard could pull Infernus down, but Kaz suspected this was one dragon that would not be caught for very long. He doubted that Scurn thought otherwise. The guard captain was doing what he could to give Kaz and Tiberia some advantage.

“Back a step!” he called. “Watch your footing! We charge for the chest. Let the lance do the final work!”

The silver dragon obeyed, carefully avoiding the minotaurs near her feet. Kaz lowered and aimed the dragonlance. One swift thrust and Infernus would be but a bad memory.

As Tiberia steadied herself, Infernus ceased his attempts to pry away the hooks and stared at the younger dragon and his rider. His fiery orbs narrowed, and a knowing look crossed his visage.

All of a sudden, Infernus leapt skyward, his head striking the ceiling hard. The dragon’s skull was thick, and the ceiling broke, raining destruction and death down upon the guard. Most of the ropes from the hooks fell loose as the red dragon burst free of the temple, but one minotaur was carried aloft to a point just above the ceiling before he lost his grip and plummeted to his death.

Only when the battered corpse struck the floor did Kaz recognize that it had been Scurn, tenacious to the end. Kaz doubted he would ever fully understand the other minotaur, a warrior who had been rival, foe, and, finally, ally. Honor’s Face had once revealed Scurn to have had little honor of his own, but Kaz wondered if, had he taken a second look minutes ago, the reflection would have been strong.

Scurn was only one of many who had died because of Infernus, however, and now the dragon was in the air and flying, revealed to all. There was only one choice left to the minotaur and the silver dragon. They had to follow.

“Stand back!” he commanded the remaining members of the guard. They obeyed without further encouragement. Kaz waited, then leaned close to Tiberia. In a quieter voice he said, “We have to go after him, if you think you can fly.”

“I think I can, Kaz. I know I can,” Tiberia answered, sounding much older than when the battle had started. A dragon’s instincts, perhaps. Kaz held on tight as the silver flexed her wings for the first time … and leapt through the hole in the ceiling.

Somewhere above them, they both knew, Infernus waited.

Chapter 18

AERIAL COMBAT

At Toron’s and, surprisingly enough, Delbin’s insistence, Hecar and the others headed for the circus instead of returning to the temple. Surrounded by the other minotaurs of the Orilg clan, they looked like simply one more group of interested warriors late for the grand announcement.

“I still don’t like it!” Fliara muttered to Hecar. “I don’t care what Toron says we should do … and I certainly do not care what that little monster insists, either! We should go back! There’s Scurn to consider, if nothing else. That one has hated my brother for years.”

“Toron’s words aside,” Hecar returned, “Delbin was as serious about us not going back as I’ve ever seen him serious about anything. I know a kender’s word generally doesn’t count for much, but I know this one enough to understand that his insistence means a great deal. I was also next to Kaz … or what seemed to be Kaz, if I understand Delbin … before the rescue. He was acting strangely. I don’t know. I can’t say why. But I think we should go to the circus.”

“And what can we solve there? We’re just a few among many!”

“Is that what you think?” asked Toron, suddenly nearby. Taller than even Kaz, he moved stealthily for a minotaur. He grinned. “Wait until you hear what Helati had planned …” His grin grew wider. “Too bad we might not need it, what with Kaz not coming here after all and the rest of you free. Your sister’s quite a speaker, from what I understand, Hecar. She gave Dastrun a good scolding.”

“But I thought she wasn’t here at all. What do you mean?”

“I’ll explain later —” was as far as Toron got when the entire party heard the crash.

The sound reminded Hecar of the war, when siege weapons could level half a city in the name of Takhisis. As part of the advance force, he had watched many a rock crash down on buildings and walls, killing defenders and civilians alike. Hecar had never liked siege warfare; it made no distinctions between worthy opponents and innocent children.

“By the horns of Kiri-Jolith, what is that?” roared Toron, suddenly gazing skyward. “It can’t be a —”

But it was. Hecar and the others knew what word Kaz’s brother could not bring himself to utter. They knew the word, but could no more speak it than the dark-furred warrior, so stunned were they by the sight.

A dragon. A red dragon soaring high into the sky, burying itself in the clouds above.

They stood there, trying to make sense of it, but just as the first shock finally passed, they heard a smaller but no less significant crash.

This time a smaller, sleeker dragon, gleaming silver, raced skyward. There was something on its back, something that Hecar was fairly certain was a rider.

“Silver and red,” he whispered. He could never forget the battles he had watched in the sky during the war. “Deadly foes. They’ll fight to the death. The rider …” It seemed a voice spoke in his head. He nodded to himself, not caring whether the others heard or not. “Yes, it is Kaz. It would have to be.”

Belatedly he realized that both dragons flew in the general direction of the circus.

*

Clouds had gathered over some parts of Nethosak, and Kaz knew that among them hid Infernus. Not for a moment did he think the red dragon was hiding in fear. Rather, Infernus was simply using the heavens to his best advantage, counting on Tiberia’s inexperience. This was the first time the silver had flown and, although flight was natural to dragons, Tiberia’s unsteady journey so far was an indication of just how much practice she needed.

“What do I do, Kaz?” the silver dragon gasped, pushing hard to gain more altitude. She was clearly frightened, but trusted Kaz to guide her along. “I don’t see him!”

“He’s in the clouds just above that tower.” Infernus might be a master of aerial combat, but the minotaur had picked up a few things during his time as a dragon rider. A creature as large as a red dragon could not hide forever. “Go up! Do it now!”

Arcing awkwardly, the silver dragon rose. Kaz gripped Tiberia and the lance tightly, hoping they would break through the clouds without being attacked. Infernus would not flee. He had to defeat the pair if he hoped to salvage his plan. Fortunately for Tiberia, the red suffered the disadvantage of needing the silver alive. That did not mean Infernus had any intention of sparing Kaz. The minotaur was certain that his death was a priority.

They broke through the clouds … and found nothing.

Kaz craned his neck, searching. “Move ahead, but slowly.”

“Should I go higher?”

“No, we —” It suddenly occurred to him what Infernus had probably done. “Yes, higher! Higher! Now!”

Startled, the young dragon was slow to react.

Infernus burst from the clouds just below them, colliding into Tiberia’s underside. As soon as they touched, the red dragon twisted so that he could sink his claws into his younger counterpart’s sides.

Only by sheer luck did Kaz hold on. He cursed himself for being a fool. Infernus had flown back down and come up under them. It was a simple tactic he should have predicted. Evidently he had been away from war much too long.

“I will shake you loose, gnat!” roared Infernus, twisting both dragons around and around. His greater wingspan gave him more control. Tiberia sought to counter his weight, but could not. “I will watch you plummet to your death as Captain Scurn did so nicely!”

It was impossible to get the dragonlance into position. A long tentacle nearly swatted him from his already precarious angle. The minotaur looked around and saw that what had nearly hit him was not a tentacle but rather one of the ropes left over from the guards’ attempt to drag Infernus down. At least two of them whipped about as if alive.

Again the rope flew by. Kaz glanced at it, then he pulled himself tighter against Tiberia and shouted, “The rope! Grab the rope with your mouth and pull back!”

Tiberia did not understand at first. Then, as Infernus increased their spinning, the silver dragon snapped at the tether. She missed, but it hovered within range. Tiberia timed her next attempt better, catching hold of a long length of the rope. Immediately she followed the rest of Kaz’s instructions.

The grappling hook was lodged deep in the lower scales of the red’s neck. As Tiberia pulled, the hook tore deeper. The sudden pull by the other dragon caused Infernus to lose his momentum and, in part, his grip. He shifted his position to regain his advantage.

Kaz stared at the wings, now closer. He made an estimate of Tiberia’s jaws and neck. “The wing! Let the rope loose and bite!”

Below them, the red dragon had obviously decided on the same tactic, but Tiberia was small, and her wings, flapping somewhat erratically, made for a more difficult target than the red dragon’s much larger ones. Infernus could not stretch his wings back far enough. The silver stretched as far as she could, opened her maw wide, and bit.

Her foe shuddered and, for a moment, the three simply dropped. Tiberia’s jaw remained clamped on the wing.

With a snarl, Infernus brought his lower paws up and, using the incredible strength of his legs, pushed the two leviathans apart. By doing so, he further damaged his wing, for Tiberia did not let go willingly. The red dragon fluttered awkwardly around, trying to compensate for the terrible injury.

Less injured, the silver dragon regained control almost immediately. Kaz shifted. They had to strike now before Infernus was able to adjust. He lowered the dragonlance, aimed, and called out, “Fly at him, Tiberia! Fly at him with every ounce of speed you can muster!”

Her companion nodded, spread her wings to their fullest, and pushed herself toward her foe.

They were too near one another for the silver to pick up much speed, but likewise were they too near for the red to maneuver away in any direction without his younger counterpart compensating.

Kaz gritted his teeth for the collision.

The dragonlance pierced its target in the left side of the chest. Infernus roared in agony and, out of sheer reflex, seized hold of Tiberia. Unable to concentrate fully on flying, the red dragon began to drop … taking his adversaries with him.

Around and around they spun as they dropped through the clouds. Tiberia flapped her wings as hard as she could, trying to slow if not stop their descent. Kaz realized there was no way the silver dragon could support the three of them, and that Infernus had no intention of releasing his grip. The minotaur tried to pry the dragonlance from the red’s chest in the hopes that Infernus might then let them loose, but the lance would not pull free. It was as determined to remain impaled in its target as its target was determined to hold on to Tiberia.

We’re going to die! Kaz thought as the first tower tops came into sight below them. We’re going to die. Damn you, gray man, we’re going to die. I hope you and your balance are happy.

“I … won’t … let you … get … hurt … Kaz!” bellowed the silver dragon. “I won’t!”

In desperation, Tiberia stretched her neck down as far as she could, focusing on her target. A fireball barely half as large as Kaz struck one of the red dragon’s injured paws. Under other circumstances, Infernus might have shrugged it off. Wounded as he was, however, the crimson leviathan reacted with a shriek of agony.

Tiberia flapped her wings with all the strength she could muster, at the same time pushing away from her dark counterpart with her legs and tail. Infernus tried to grab hold again, but the other injured forepaw could not maintain its grip.

The red dragon fell below, backside down. Infernus might have righted himself had he had more time, but they were already too close to the ground.

Only then did Kaz see that they were over the circus.

The streets and stands were already filled with running and milling figures, all trying to avoid the massive forms plummeting down at them. Tiberia could regain control before they reached the circus, but Kaz saw that Infernus was going to land half in the field and half on the stands, crushing hundreds.

“Tiberia! Knock him into the field!” The field was large enough to contain four beasts the size of Infernus if only they could shove him to the side.

He could have saved his breath, for the young silver dragon was already swooping down, evidently having come to the same realization as the minotaur. Tiberia strained with her talons, trying to gain some hold on the hapless, writhing red. Infernus no longer seemed aware of what was happening to him. He merely snapped at the smaller dragon and tried to slash one of Tiberia’s legs with his own claws.

The silver dragon seized the one limb. Infernus dug into her paw. Tiberia did not cry out. Her wings shifted.

Infernus crashed into the ground, Tiberia landing on him, then rolling away. Kaz was thrown toward the red dragon.

He bounced against Infernus, then slid helplessly down the crimson terror’s side. Belatedly Kaz realized that Tiberia had prevented a major disaster. Both dragons had managed to land on the field.

But what had happened to the silver dragon? Kaz stumbled to his feet and looked around, trying to orient himself at the same time. His left leg seemed on the verge of collapse, his wounded arm was half numb, and his ribs hurt, but he refused to allow the pain to overwhelm him as he searched. Kaz could not see the silver dragon’s immense form, though.

Then he saw the small, very human shape lying against one wall of the field. So accustomed to the human form, Tiberia had reverted to it upon unconsciousness.

Kaz prayed the young female was only unconscious.

Then movement behind him reminded the minotaur there was another dragon to consider. Infernus had taken the brunt of the fall and was gravely injured, but the red leviathan was remarkably strong … strong enough still to grasp victory from defeat.

There was only Kaz to stop him. Minotaurs filled the stands, but they stood uncertainly, clearly stunned and confused by the spectacle. By the time they chose to act, it might be too late.

Kaz looked around for some sort of weapon, something he could use to finish off the dragon. To his surprise, he found just what he needed not far from him. It was a godsend, especially considering the shape it had worn when last he had seen it.

Honor’s Face, no longer a dragonlance, lay not more than a few feet away. It could not have arrived there of its own accord, yet, there it was. Kaz did not question how it came to be there. He seized it with renewed hope, took one last look at the still form of Ty, then charged toward Infernus.

The dragon suddenly succeeded in righting himself, flipping over and nearly crushing Kaz in the process. But Infernus was not yet recovered enough to rise, much less fly. Still, it wouldn’t be long, and Kaz had to move swiftly.

He leapt. The dragon saw him, but too late. The minotaur landed on the upper edge of one wing, then scrambled up to the red dragon’s shoulder. Savage jaws snapped at him, but Infernus could not twist his neck enough to reach the minotaur. The red dragon tried to shift enough so that he could bring a paw up, but his injuries and twisted position made it difficult.

Kaz reached the neck. Infernus tried to shake him off, but Kaz hooked his feet into the scales and held fast. He gripped his axe.

“Leave me, gnat, or I will crush you! I command it!”

“No more commands, Infernus, not as high priest or dragon! It’s time we were allowed to make our own way in the world!”

“Ungrateful fool!” bellowed the injured dragon, sounding much like the high priest. His voice echoed throughout the circus. “I have guided your race to the glory it has attained! I have molded you into the finest warriors! I sent you into slavery time and again, the better to cull the weak and bring to the forefront the stubbornness, the pride, and the strength you now display! All I ask in return is your allegiance! We will rule the world!”

“You mean you’ll rule the world … we’ll just do the dying for you.” Kaz raised his battle-axe.

“Your kind was nothing before me and will be nothing without me!” Infernus punctuated the statement by snapping at Kaz. The red dragon was clearly weak, thankfully too weak to cast any spell, it seemed.

“We’ll take that chance.” Kaz aimed.

Infernus suddenly began to push up. Even as the minotaur brought the axe down with all his might, the red leviathan tried to roll over toward him. Infernus intended to crush Kaz beneath him.

“I am your master!” the red terror roared. “I am your destiny!”

Kaz’s footing started to fail, but he did not let up. Honor’s Face struck the dragon’s neck, sinking deep. Infernus, hissing in agony, pushed harder. Kaz raised the weapon again, knowing he might not complete another swing.

“Paladine, let this blow swing true!” he snarled through clenched teeth. His world was tilting, and only one secured foot prevented him from toppling off the spinning beast.

Once again, Kaz brought the magical axe down.

Once again, the axe changed. It seemed larger, longer, the blades growing as huge as Kaz himself. Yet it was no harder to hold the oversized axe and was no more difficult to guide toward its target. In fact, it was almost as if Honor’s Face directed his hand toward the most vital spot on the dragon’s neck.

The mirrorlike blade struck deep into Infernus … and continued to bite. Incredibly, the cut spread, penetrating the entire neck. Infernus bellowed, and his whole body shook. Kaz lost his grip on the axe and, finally, his footing. He slid backward and would have fallen headfirst to the ground if not for the grappling hook still caught in the dragon’s neck. More out of luck than skill, the minotaur caught hold of the rope. He was flung around, but his drop slowed.

The red’s shaking ceased.

Still dangling, Kaz waited. Infernus shuddered again, but the motion ended after only a few seconds. Kaz waited a little longer, then began to climb back.

The first thing he saw was Honor’s Face. The axe lay on the upper part of the dragon’s shoulder. It was back to normal size. Its mirror finish was as pristine as ever.

The second thing he saw was that Infernus’s head and neck had been cleanly severed from the body.

Too exhausted to cheer much about the red leviathan’s death, Kaz dragged himself over to the axe and picked it up. His battered reflection stared back at him.

“Wish I’d known before that you could do that,” he muttered. “It would’ve come in handy now and then.”

All around him, the air filled with thunder. No, Kaz corrected himself, it was not thunder, but the stomping of hundreds of minotaur feet.

Applause and cheers added to the stomping. Kaz heard someone call his name, someone whose voice was familiar to him. Others in the audience, either taking their lead from that voice or recognizing him on their own, also called his name. It quickly grew into a chant that he had no doubt could be heard throughout all of Nethosak.

Then the guards arrived. They started toward the area where Kaz and the dragon were, but before they could get very far, minotaurs began to pour from the stands. They came from all sides. Kaz readied the axe, thinking he could take a few of his enemies with him, when he suddenly noticed that the newcomers were not attacking. They were forming a defensive ring around both the massive corpse and the minotaur, weapons displayed against the guard.

Only then did Kaz recognize several of them as members of Clan Orilg.

“Kaz!” called one warrior. He fought his way through the others and clambered up the dragon as if it were something he did every day. The crowd continued to chant and applaud.

“Hecar? How did all this come about?”

“You can thank Helati and Brogan for it.”

It looked as if more than simply Orilg had come to his aid. It was not possible for the entire clan to be here, since many members lived far from Nethosak, which meant that a number of the minotaurs defending his position had to hail from other clans.

“Helati had a little talk with Dastrun and the clan. … I’ll tell you later how she did that. Not even certain I understand myself. She found out what you’d been up to and what you’d been fool enough to agree to. Then she heard you were supposed to die in the circus today, so she reminded the clan of what its honor meant. It finally agreed to help.” Hecar glanced at the crowd and grinned. He clearly enjoyed the moment. “We were supposed to charge the field when they brought you out … but no one expected this sort of entrance! That’s something I’ll have to tell you about in detail later.” His eyes widened. “Fliara and the others —”

“Are there.” Kaz pointed at one of the entrances. Fliara, Delbin … and, if Kaz was not mistaken, his brother Toron, whom he had not seen in longer a time than Fliara. There was no mistaking that streak of hair or that face.

He wondered if Toron knew about their father.

“I think they want to make you emperor, Kaz.”

“Polik might have something to say about that.”

“I doubt it. He was on the platform taking his victory bows when you and the dragons fell.” Hecar shook his head in disgust. “And never have I seen a more pathetic combat. Anyone who did not wonder at his challenger’s sluggishness already knew that the combat had been rigged. The longer it went – and it seemed even Polik thought it went too long – the more pitiful it became. It was more a slow slaughter than a battle.”

Blinking, Kaz looked down the field. Toward the back end of the great beast he made out a portion of the splintered and exceedingly flattened platform used for imperial challenges. There was no sign of a body on what little of the platform could be seen, and he had no desire to go and verify his friend’s words. What was left of the late emperor would be something that would appeal to neither his stomach nor his eyes.

“So you see, they have no qualms about making you emperor. After all, how many minotaurs fight and slay a dragon, especially one of such size, and especially one everyone heard claim it was their master and destiny?” The other minotaur snorted. “As if we would ever accept such a beast as our master!”

Kaz scanned the throng. Hecar was probably correct about the crowd wanting to crown him. Even among those of the circle, there was obvious sentiment for Kaz. One or two members scowled or pretended indifference, but with the exception of those few and a handful of clerics, everyone was saluting the slayer of the dragon.

Dragon? In the aftermath of the red terror’s death, Kaz had momentarily forgotten the other dragon, the brave youngster that Kaz considered more responsible for the red’s destruction than he.

Abandoning Hecar, he leapt off the massive corpse and went directly toward where he had last seen the young female.

Ty was still there, still unmoving. Kaz broke through the defensive ring and hurried to her side. He knelt down, turning Ty over. The female was breathing. Giving thanks to Paladine, Kaz raised her in his arms. As he did, Ty opened her eyes.

“Kaz?”

“Hush, Ty. It’s all right. We beat him. Infernus is dead.”

“Did I do good?”

The minotaur snorted. “You did the best anyone could’ve done under the circumstances. I’m proud of you. Your parents would’ve been proud of you, too.”

Ty smiled, then closed her eyes again.

“The balance is almost restored. You have the gratitude of many, Kaz.”

Still carrying the transformed Ty, Kaz turned. The gray man, staff in hand, stood behind him.

“I thought I broke that,” the minotaur commented, referring to the staff. “And what’s that you’re saying about the balance almost being restored? Infernus is dead. The danger is past. When the smoke clears, they’ll see that this invasion is going to drive us only to ruin.”

“The invasion does not matter without Infernus, Kaz. If they launch it, the minotaurs will fail. This is not their time … if such a time is ever to come. I can promise you that.” The mage glanced down at his staff. “As for this, it is more durable than it appears.”

“What about the balance, then? What do you mean?”

His hooded companion sighed. “The red dragon is dead, but the silver remains. If she remains too long, one of the Dark Lady’s draconian creatures will awaken. Although it might be hard to believe, there are worse dragons than Infernus. Should both dragons remain in the world for very long, the compact made at the end of the war will crumble. It has been crumbling these past eight years. I have been busy, very busy, but for a long time even I did not know the truth. Still, Takhisis will be allowed to renew her drive for conquest much too soon if the hatchling is not dealt with immediately.”

“I think you told me that before, but what can I do?”

“There are two choices, Kaz.” The gray man studied Ty. “I may take her to where she must go. However, I can take her only if she truly wants to leave.”

“And the other choice?”

“She must die, minotaur. You will have to kill her, since I am forbidden to do so. She must die or the world returns to imbalance, and thousands of others must die in the ensuing conflicts.”

“I won’t kill her! You’re mad, mage!” Kaz backed away from the gray figure.

“Then she must leave. She must come with me.”

“To what? To where? She obviously knows nothing about where you want to take her! She knows only this world.” It seemed unfair to the minotaur that Ty had to be taken from everything and everyone she knew because some gods had made a deal. Ty belonged here. Kaz would be more than happy to allow her to stay in the settlement. In the short time since he had met her, she had proven a brave, honorable companion.

“Kaz?”

He looked down to see that Ty had opened her eyes again. By the looks of her, the young woman had heard everything that had been said. “Ty, I —”

“Kaz, I’ll go with him.”

“Listen! The gods don’t have to have their way! They —”

Ty slipped out of his grip. Her stance was unsteady, but she refused help from the minotaur. She gazed at both Kaz and the gray man. “I know I don’t have a choice, really, Kaz. I have to leave.” Ty steadied herself. “I don’t want another war like the one you’ve talked about, Kaz. It sounds awful. Fighting Infernus showed me how terrible another war would be.”

“Do you mean that?” It still seemed unfair to Kaz, but the female sounded determined.

“I do. If I stay much longer, another dragon will awake. I couldn’t face that. Too many people would get hurt or die, including maybe you and Delbin.”

“The decision is made, then,” announced the gray man. His expression softened. “For what it is worth, Tiberia, I regret it must be so. You deserve to live as you desire. I can say only that you shall at least join your sire and your siblings where you are going.”

Ty brightened. “I’ll see them?”

“I promise.” The gray mage smiled. “Then you all shall have a pleasant sleep.”

Sleep was one thing Ty definitely needed. The female required time for her injuries to heal. She closed her eyes, then asked, “Is it far? I don’t think I can fly far.”

“You will not need to fly.” Raising his staff, the gray man looked behind him. A hole appeared, a hole that glowed brightly from within. “We will walk. It is not so far that way.” He extended his free hand to the transformed dragon. “If you are ready, we should leave very soon.”

Ty turned to Kaz. “Could – could you say good-bye to Delbin for me? I wish there were more time, but … I don’t want another dragon like Infernus coming.”

“I’ll say good-bye to Delbin for you.”

She leapt forward, wrapping her arms around the minotaur. Kaz froze, then slowly hugged Ty back. “I won’t forget you, Kaz! Thank you for everything.”

Kaz lifted her chin, meeting Ty’s eyes. “You are an honorable warrior, Tiberia, and a good lass, as my father would have said.”

Ty lowered her gaze. “I’m sorry about Ganth, Kaz. If it hadn’t been for me —”

“Don’t think that. Infernus was responsible. Ganth would thank you. You avenged not only him and my mother, but all those minotaurs who died so that Infernus could mold us to his and the Dark Queen’s damnable vision.”

From behind Ty, the gray man called, “Tiberia. It must be soon. Already there is stirring.”

Breaking away, the young human dragon joined the mage. Ty looked back at Kaz and smiled.

“Paladine watch over you, Ty,” the minotaur called.

“Thank you again, Kaz. … I’ll think of you.”

“And I you.”

“You have my gratitude, too, Kaz,” added the gray figure, somewhat sadly. “And my apologies for what I had to do. Know that your father … and mother … watch over you.”

“I understand … and thank you, mage.”

With that, the pair walked into the hole. As they entered, Ty waved one last time. The hole vanished as she lowered her hand.

It was over, just like that. Kaz felt cheated. The female had hardly time to recover and enjoy some peace with her newfound friends. She had hardly time to see the world. Then again, as a dragon, she might someday see a world that existed long after Kaz was gone.

“Kaz!” There was no mistaking Delbin’s voice. “Kaz! Is Ty all right? Where is she? I thought she was over here, but —”

“Take a breath, Delbin,” said Hecar.

Kaz turned to face his friends and family. Hecar stood there with Delbin and Kaz’s brother and sister. They were not alone, either. There was an entire contingent of minotaurs, not all of them from the clan of Orilg. One group in particular simultaneously interested and worried him. They were members of the Supreme Circle. There also was a handful of clerics.

“I’ll tell you about Ty later, Delbin,” he said, warily watching the others close in on him. “I promise.”

The circle paid little mind to Kaz’s friends and relations, barging through the gathering without comment. Kaz looked them over and saw that all eight members were there, their identities marked by the clasps of their cloaks. Three he recognized personally, but the others not at all.

“Hail, Kaziganthi de-Orilg!” called a scarred warrior with gray fur on top and one eye covered with a patch. His name was Athus, and Kaz recalled him from the war. Athus had never struck him as someone who would bow to the high priest’s dictates, but it was difficult to say how the old warrior had changed over the years.

“Hail, Athus.” Kaz surveyed the gathering. “Come to personally arrest me this time?”

“His Holiness —” began one cleric.

“There is your high priest.” Athus pointed at the red dragon’s huge form. “We all heard the voice. We all know that voice and that tone even if the form is different. Am I right, Kaziganthi?”

“You are.”

“It is a lie!” The same cleric pushed forward. “When the high priest comes —”

Kaz snorted. “You should begin thinking more about which of you is going to be the new high priest, rather than wasting time on empty protests. Jopfer, as you knew him anyway, is dead. That leaves a vacancy that must be filled, don’t you think?”

The cleric shut up. Kaz watched with amusement as the robed figures began to eye one another. These were some of the red dragon’s highest-ranking servants. Any one of them could claim the right of succession. There would be some duels before the week was out, which did not sadden Kaz in the least.

Athus also seemed to enjoy the clerics’ sudden realization. He finally shook his head, responding to Kaz’s earlier question. “No, Kaziganthi, we’ve not come to arrest you. Far from it. If anything, I think the majority of us are quite pleased to see you.”

That was exactly as he had feared. Kaz remained quiet, waiting.

“Emperor Polik is dead.” A trace of a smile again escaped Athus. “Definitely dead. As his challenger died before him, there is a void that must be filled, a void even more important than that which the priesthood faces.” The graying minotaur ignored dark looks from more than one cleric. “I think we’ve all seen and heard enough today to know who exemplifies what we most seek in an emperor. Honor, bravery, determination to face all odds in the course of one’s duty, and, of course, the cunning and strength needed to attain victory in combat.”

“Listen all around you, Kaziganthi,” spoke one of the other members, a shorter, wider minotaur with one crooked horn and, for one of their kind, what would be called a flat snout. “They are still chanting your name. They want you, Kaziganthi! We want you!”

Athus nodded. “We salute you, Emperor Kaziganthi, slayer of dragons and champion of the people!”

The clansmen of Orilg who stood nearby cheered, especially Kaz’s siblings. But Hecar seemed less enthusiastic. He was proud of his sister’s mate, but he knew Kaz better than the rest. He was probably the only one here who truly knew what Kaz thought of becoming emperor.

Kaz faced the circle and the clerics. He could not deny feeling pride that he had been so chosen. It was the greatest accolade his people could have given him.

“I prefer Kaz as a name,” he responded, standing as tall as he could. His body wanted to lie down and sleep for a month, but he did not listen to it, not yet. “And I prefer to decline your offer. I’m not the kind of emperor you want, and I never will be. You’ll have to fight that out among yourselves.”

As soon as he was finished speaking, Kaz walked past the stunned and gaping minotaur leaders, joined his family and friends, and headed for the circus’s nearest exit.

Chapter 19

THE FUTURE

Kaz could not help but admire Nethosak as the ship carrying him and the others departed for the south. His people had indeed accomplished much in a few short years, yet if they could forego their historic drive for power and spend more time on improving their lives, he believed they would accomplish much, much more. The minotaur race was indeed destined for glory. However, one did not necessarily need to achieve glory through conquest.

He hoped some of what he had said to the Supreme Circle and the rest had sunk in, but only time would tell.

“I can’t believe how much you got out of them, considering you threw the throne back in their faces,” Hecar remarked, standing next to him. “This ship, calling off the invasion, the funeral pyre for your father … a magnificent, touching sight that was, too.”

Kaz nodded. He, Fliara, and Toron’s family had represented the children of Ganth and Kyri, the others being far off in other parts of the homeland. They would be notified, however, along with other relations. The pyre had rivaled those of great emperors of the past. Dastrun, much to Kaz’s pleasure, had been forced to give a great speech extolling the old mariner’s accomplishments. He had done an excellent job of it, too, perhaps hoping he would be able to maintain his position as patriarch even though both of his patrons were now dead.

There had been other pyres, too: one for Scurn, who Kaz made certain was honored for his bravery, and one, not very well attended, for the late emperor. The burning of Infernus’s body had taken a great deal more effort, considering both the dragon’s size and its natural resistance to fire. A variety of flammable oils had helped that effort.

Kaz turned to his friend. “Should I have accepted?”

“No. I, like the others, was proud that they wanted you, but it’s not right for you. You want something different. You don’t want to conquer a world. Besides, Helati would have killed both of us if you had accepted.”

Kaz chuckled. “There is that. As for conquest, hopefully the Supreme Circle and the new emperor will think long before they embark on rash adventures. The gray man said that if they continued with the invasion, they would fail.”

“I’d like to meet this gray man … and give him a piece of my mind. I still haven’t forgiven him for using you, maybe all of us, like that. No, I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather give him a piece of my fist.”

Now that things were calmer and Kaz could think, he felt he understood the mage better. There was always a hint of sorrow in those eyes, sorrow and, most of all, frustration.

Thinking of the mage made him think of Ty. Most of the minotaurs had taken his word that the silver dragon had vanished because her work had been done, but Hecar and the kender had wanted to know a little more, especially Delbin. It had taken some effort to explain to the kender, but when Kaz had finished, Delbin had been so impressed by what had happened, he had immediately sought his notebook … at which point the kender had discovered one or two objects that belonged to Athus, as it turned out.

“Forget the mage,” Kaz told his companion. “He did what had to be done.” After another pause, he asked, “Do you think they really listened?”

Kaz had been forced to make a speech rejecting the crown for the benefit of the crowd, while trying to keep from offending them. He knew, he told them, that he would not be a good emperor. He had enough trouble leading his own small settlement. He recommended some immediate changes concerning one or two members of the circle, who saved themselves further dishonor by resigning there and then. As for the clerics, they needed to spend some time working themselves back into the good graces of the people.

Toward the end of the speech, after telling everyone what Infernus had done, Kaz reminded the minotaurs of what mattered most. They were their own leaders now, possibly for the first time in their nation’s existence. If they made mistakes, they could blame only themselves.

“Remember that life without truth or honor is nothing,” he had concluded. “If we are the children of destiny, we must act suitably.”

“Are you two going to stand by that rail through the entire trip?” bellowed Toron from behind Hecar and Kaz. Kaz’s brother had decided to join the settlement, taking his family – his mate and three small children – with him. They evidently were still below, possibly with Fliara, whose company Hecar seemed to enjoy.

In fact, there were more than a hundred minotaurs aboard the ship, dubbed Dragonslayer in Kaz’s honor, and even the crew included new additions to the settlement. Several were from his old clan, but many had come from others. There would be more coming as the weeks went on. Kaz might have rejected the role of emperor, but he still had found no way around turning his back on the village that had grown around his dwelling. With a hundred more minotaurs, it would be more like a town from now on.

He hoped he would not be calling it a city before long.

At least there were not any gully dwarves aboard. Clan Orilg and the circle had taken it upon themselves to escort the creatures back to their home, such as it was. Galump had become unelected leader of the newly released slaves, who had nearly forgotten their enslavement already; such was the benefit of a limited memory span.

“We were taking one last look at Nethosak,” Hecar finally responded to Toron.

“I can do without the entire homeland! There are better adventures than fighting one worthless war after another. I would rather my children explore when they grow older.”

Coming from Toron, who had always played warrior even as a very young child, that was something. Kaz nodded his agreement. “Exploration would be good. There’s another continent. Why should Nethosak be the only one sending ships to chart it?”

Hecar looked both of them over. “First you’re going to take some time to raise your children, Kaz, or Helati will have both of our hides … and you would do well to do the same with your own mate, Toron. She seems the strong-minded type when it comes to family.”

Kaz’s brother laughed heartily. “Perhaps I’ll go down even now and see if my mate needs me. I’ll leave you two alone to admire Nethosak.”

As he departed, Hecar mumbled, “It’s going to take me a while to get used to him, Kaz.”

“Think of him as a younger me.”

“I’d rather not. You couldn’t ever have been like that.”

Kaz laughed. The two of them returned their gazes to the shore. Kaz knew that the bulk of minotaur history to come would always emanate from Mithas and Kothas, especially from Nethosak. Good or ill, though, the future would be determined by the minotaurs themselves. Kaz suspected their basic nature would not change much.

The dream of destiny would, of course, continue without Infernus. Deep inside, Kaz suspected that most of his people needed the dream, if only because they felt too unlike the other races to comfortably live with them.

“We have been enslaved, but have always thrown off our shackles,” Kaz found himself whispering. “We have been driven back, but always returned to the fray stronger than before. We have risen to new heights when all other races have fallen into decay. We are the future of Krynn, the masters of the entire world. We are the children of destiny.”

Hecar grunted in disgust. “Are we really?”

He shrugged. Nethosak was tiny in the distance now, seemingly inconsequential. Kaz squinted and thought he could still make out what might have been the ruined roof of the temple.

“I don’t know,” the minotaur murmured more to himself than to his companion. “I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

They watched Nethosak continue to shrink, thinking no more about its future. After all, Kaz and the others, including Helati and the rest of those already at the settlement, had their own to consider … and that was more pressing at the moment.

The End of The Age of Might

The Age of Dreams will be released early 2013.