If nothing came of it afterward, then at least she would be content in the knowledge that she had done her best to bring the truth to light. If people were still unwilling to look upon that light, then she would turn her back on it and let the matter rest once and for all.
When she told her relatives of her plans they thought her insane. The high justice was an important and busy man, they said, who had no time for a simple maid—a simple former maid—from an outlying keep.
But she remained undaunted. She was not just a simple chamber maid. She had been at one time, but she had been elevated in status and had been Lady Korinne’s lady-in-waiting. Surely the high justice would be happy to meet with her.
But her first visit to the Hall of High Justice on the shores of the Bay of Branchala in the west end of Palanthas was anything but successful. She was made to wait for hours in a cold and damp room, only to be forgotten by the knight who had told her to wait there.
That night, she traveled the darkened streets of Palanthas to the home of Leyla Gladria where she was immediately taken in. There she told her story to the elderly woman who was keen to hear anything having to do with the all-too-brief life of her beloved daughter and even briefer life of her long-awaited grandchild.
Finally, Mirrel had found a sympathetic ear, and more.
“I knew that man would be bad for my daughter, knight or no!” she said. “I always felt there was another side to Soth, a darker side. But he was so charming from the first, much too charming if you ask me.”
Mirrel listened attentively and patiently to the elderly woman as she talked for what seemed like hours. She didn’t mind, even when Leyla Gladria began repeating herself or crying out loud. Mirrel realized that the old woman still needed to come to terms with the loss of her daughter, and understood that if she could help ease some of the elderly woman’s pain, then she would be fulfilling her oath of loyalty to the former Lady Korinne.
When Leyla Gladria’s bitter words came to an end and she had composed herself somewhat, she looked at Mirrel and nodded. “If it’s an audience with the high justice you want, then that’s just what you’ll get.”
“According to what I remember of these mountains, the hedge witch’s cabin should be somewhere near the foot of that mountain there.” Soth pointed at a great snowcapped mountain, one of the tallest peaks in all of the Dargaard Mountains.
“Lead the way,” said Caradoc. Soth’s seneschal was unsure of the purpose of their journey to this nearly uninhabited part of the Dargaard Range. He had mentioned something about killing a witch to preserve the truth, but none of it made much sense. Eventually, Caradoc had merely shrugged it off as yet another mysterious aftereffect of the tragedy that had befallen Lord Soth.
The two knights headed south into the deep dark rift in the mountain range called the Soul’s Wound. After an hour’s ride they came upon the small stone cottage, an odd structure partially obscured by the encroaching mountains which loomed over it like a tidal wave ready to crash down upon it at any moment.
“There it is!” cried Caradoc.
Soth kicked at the ribs of his mount and hurried toward the small stone cottage. Caradoc followed.
The windows of the cottage were dark and lifeless.
Soth dismounted and walked up to the front door. After a moment of hesitation he drew his broadsword, then reared back and kicked down the door. He crouched down to fit through the doorway and entered the cottage with his sword held out in front of him.
Slowly he moved through the room, searching the dark corners.
For what? Caradoc wondered.
At last he turned back toward the entrance, an angry scowl on his face. “The hag is gone!” he said.
And then suddenly his broadsword was slicing through the air in a fit of rage, smashing chairs and tables and anything else the blade could find and destroy.
Caradoc first covered his face to protect it from flying debris, then stepped outside and waited patiently for Soth’s fury to run its course.
The next morning a trio of knights arrived at the home of Mirrel’s relatives and a most handsome man with long red hair and an equally long scarlet mustache knocked on the door.
Mirrel answered the door, still dressed in her nightdress.
“Are you Mirrel?” asked the knight. “The former lady-in-waiting of Lady Korinne of Dargaard Keep?”
“Yes,” said Mirrel, at a loss as to what was going on.
“Lord Caladen has asked us to escort you to the Hall of High Justice. Please make ready to leave immediately.”
Mirrel hurriedly changed her clothes, then rode with the knights to the Hall of High Justice. Upon their arrival they were sent immediately into the inner hall. Then Mirrel alone was led up to a heavy wooden door bearing the symbol of the Knights of Solamnia—the majestic kingfisher with its wings half extended, grasping a sword with its sharp claws. There was a rose beneath the bird, and a crown above it.
She knocked on the door.
“Come in,” said a voice.
She opened the door. Sitting in the middle of the room was Lord Caladen. Across from him was another chair, presumably for her to be seated upon. There were no other windows or doorways to the room; what was said within it never went beyond its four walls.
She entered the room and sat down, her heart pounding hard inside her chest and her throat uncomfortably dry.
Lord Caladen smiled.
At once, Mirrel felt more relaxed.
“Leyla Gladria has told me that I might be interested in hearing what you have to say.”
“Very interested,” said Mirrel, breathing a deep sigh of relief.
“All right, then. Tell me.”
And she did.
Murder, thought Lord Caladen. It was a serious charge. And the murder of a man’s own wife and child, well, there was no more serious matter on the face of Krynn.
But could someone as vaunted as Lord Loren Soth, Knight of the Rose, be capable of such a crime? He was an excellent leader, a fearless warrior and from all accounts a kind and just man.
From all accounts, except for the very vivid and detailed one told by Lady Korinne’s former lady-in-waiting. If the woman was to be believed, Soth had been unfaithful to his wife with an elf-maid, even when his wife had been carrying his child. This charge was not all that hard to believe considering the reputation of the knight’s father, Aynkell Soth.
But while being a philanderer was against the Oath and the Measure, Lord Caladen was inclined to look the other way on such matters. He wanted to disbelieve the accusation of murder, dismiss the charges as the misguided vengeance of a dismissed lady, but too many things she’d said had made too much sense.
There were rumors regarding the matter, rumors which had traveled to Palanthas well before the arrival of the former maid named Mirrel. People in the keep had heard the sounds of a child’s cries, suggesting there had been a live birth. The same people had heard Lady Korinne’s screams, suggesting she had survived the birth as well. And there was the matter of the cremation to consider. Even if Soth had been devastated by the deaths of his wife and child, a lightning quick cremation was not in keeping with Solamnic customs. There should have been a period in which Korinne lay in state so that people could have paid their respects, and then she should have received a proper burial within the Soth family crypt. Such a ceremony was automatic for someone of Lady Korinne’s standing.
Like everyone else, Lord Caladen had heard the rumors that the cremation was performed to prevent the spread of disease, but like everyone else he had a hard time believing it. For what manner of disease causes a woman to die while giving birth?
So, if not to prevent the spread of disease, why then, would the ceremony have been conducted so quickly?
To hide evidence of foul play. It was the only reason Lord Caladen could think of. It was the only explanation that made any sense. Obviously, something was amiss.
And when he thought of how quickly Soth had remarried, and how soon after
Korinne’s death a second child had been born.
Clearly, an investigation was in order.
“Fenton!” called Lord Caladen, summoning his assistant Garnett Fenton, Knight of the Sword.
“Yes, Lord Caladen,” said Fenton as he entered the lord’s office.
“Send a message to Dargaard Keep …”
Chapter 22
It was several weeks before Lord Soth was able to make the trip to Palanthas and by that time the rumors were circulating among the Solamnic Knights of Palanthas like snowflakes in a blizzard. The many knights stationed in the great port city were split as to the reason why Soth had been summoned to the Hall of High Justice. Some believed that he had been negligent in his duties as a Knight of the Rose or had otherwise broken the code of the Oath and the Measure. Others believed he had done something worse, breaking not only the laws of the Knights of Solamnia, but the laws of good conduct by which all in Solamnia—indeed most of Krynn—aspired to live. Still, others emphatically believed him to be completely innocent of everything and anything. To them, this summons was simply a ruse to discredit the good Soth family name.
The lengthy wait for Soth’s arrival provided Lord Caladen ample opportunity to make inquiries about what Mirrel had told him. Much to his dismay, many of the most crucial points had been corroborated by others, some of whom had absolutely no other motive than to speak the truth.
His findings left him no alternative other than to make sure that justice prevailed, no matter what it might do to the reputation of the Knights of Solamnia. In his mind, the knighthood would be better served by the quick and severe condemnation of a guilty knight than by any attempt to ignore or hide the truth. Truth was an unstoppable force and would eventually win out over lies. When that happened, it would bring down more than just a single knight; it would cripple the entire knighthood. No, this was something that had to be dealt with swiftly. And the more swiftly the better.
Soth was greeted by a party of six knights—two from each of the orders—at the base of the High Clerist’s Tower, the stronghold of the Knights of Solamnia that guarded the mountain pass leading into the city.
“Beg your pardon, Lord Soth,” said Sword Knight Garrett Fenton, leader of the escort party. “But the high justice requests that you enter the city alone.”
While this was somewhat irregular, it wasn’t totally unheard of. Still, Soth didn’t understand why he couldn’t remain in the company of his own knights for the rest of the journey. He had been summoned to the city on a matter of routine business, after all. Nevertheless, he respected the wishes of the high justice and parted company with his loyal knights, saying, “Wait for me. I won’t be long.”
“We’ll be here, milord,” said Caradoc. “Or more precisely, we’ll be waiting for you in The Drookit Duck.”
Soth laughed. The Drookit Duck was a popular tavern on the southeastern rim of Palanthas. Visitors to the city who stopped there quite often never made it further into the capital. “Save a tankard for me.”
“I make no promises,” said Caradoc.
All of Soth’s knights laughed.
His six escorts did not.
Soth was taken along a route that led directly to the Hall of High Justice. As they rode the streets, Soth noticed that there were a lot more knights out and about than usual.
Suddenly, he began to have a bad feeling about what was going on. Not only were there knights lining the route, but many of them sat atop their mounts with their swords drawn and at the ready.
Soth took firm hold of the reins and tried to break ranks, but found himself blocked in on all sides by his escorts.
Then he reached for his broadsword, only to see it pulled from its sheath by the knight who had been riding to his left.
In mere seconds Soth had gone from being Lord Soth, Knight of the Rose to Lord Soth, prisoner of High Justice Lord Adam Caladen.
“What is the meaning of this?” he growled at his fellow knights.
None answered.
“Have you all gone mad?”
Again silence.
He struggled to dismount but found it too difficult to move in the tight space left for him by the other knights. Nevertheless, he continued to struggle.
“Lord Caladen will explain it all to you when we arrive at the Hall of High Justice,” said Garrett Fenton. “Until then, Lord Soth, I ask that you conduct yourself with the utmost dignity and honor.”
Soth bit his bottom lip and inhaled an angry breath, but made no more attempts to escape. As they arrived in the courtyard in front of the hall, there were a dozen knights there to receive him, all clad in armor, all with their broadswords drawn.
And at the edge of the large crowd that had gathered, he recognized a familiar face that did not belong to any knight.
It was a woman’s face.
He looked closely at her, realizing it was Isolde’s former lady-in-waiting, the same lady-in-waiting who had served his first wife Korinne so faithfully in the year leading up to her death.
What was her name? Miriam? Miranda? Mir … Mirrel, that was it. She’d been banished from the keep by Isolde. Everyone had thought she would travel to Istar, but apparently she had gone straight to Palanthas instead. Straight to High Justice Caladen.
“You may dismount now,” said Fenton.
Soth got off his horse and the knights moved in around him.
Mirrel moved in closer too, no doubt to get a better look at him in a state of disgrace.
Soth saw her standing there, just a few feet away, separated by a ring of Knights of Solamnia.
Lucky for her, thought Soth.
If not for the knights, she might have already been dead by his hand.
The mood inside the Hall of High Justice was somber. Despite there being many windows along the walls of the hall, little light would shine in until much later in the day. For now the hall was a shadowy place and that cast a pall over the proceedings.
Lord Caladen sat on a great chair that looked almost like a throne. To his left was a young Crown knight, or perhaps just a squire, whose job it would be to make records of the proceedings. To his right was Rose Knight Drey Hallack, who served as an advisor to Lord Caladen on matters of the Oath and the Measure—a subject he had spent most of his life studying.
Farther to the right sat Lord Cyril Mordren, the High Clerist and Olthar Uth Wistan, High Warrior of the Knights of Solamnia. They would not be participating in the inquiry, but were present to show their solidarity with and support for Lord Caladen. An empty chair sat at the far right in honor of Solamnic Grand Master Leopold Gwyn Davis, who had recently died after a long illness. A Grand Circle of Knights was being organized to elect Davis’s successor, but the gathering, which required at least three quarters of the established circles of knights to send two knights representatives to vote, was still many months away.
Over to the left of Lord Caladen sat seven Knights of Solamnia—two Crown, two Sword and three from the order of the Rose—whose simple majority vote would decide the fate of the accused.
Seeing the Hall of High Justice set up for a hearing told Soth that things were far more grave than he had imagined. If he had been called to Palanthas on a simple matter of a breach of the knight’s code, an audience with the high justice alone would have sufficed. The presence of the seven-knight jury told him the charges were much more severe. The only other time Soth had seen a juried hearing had been when one knight had been charged with the murder of another.
Obviously Soth had been accused of murder. Luckily, although he’d been taken prisoner by his escorts, he was still considered innocent until his peers had cause to find him guilty.
Lord Caladen raised his right hand and the murmur that had been a constant background noise in the hall slowly died down.
Soth remained standing in front of the high justice, his shoulders squared and his chest thrust proudly forward. He would concede nothing to his accusers.
“Lord Loren Soth of Dargaard Keep,” said Lord Caladen. “Y
ou have been called to the Hall of High Justice to answer questions in an official inquiry into the death, and circumstances surrounding the death, of your wife, Lady Korinne Soth and her newborn child.”
A collective gasp swept through the hall as the rumors were finally laid to rest and the reason for Soth’s summons was made known to all.
Soth felt his face grow hot as his blood began to roil in anger within him. It was only an inquiry, but he could still be found guilty as a result of the information that came to light. And even if he was cleared of any wrongdoing, his good name would be tarnished for all time by the mere accusation. When this was over, he vowed, those responsible would be made to pay.
A heavy, heavy price.
“A great tragedy,” said Soth, his voice even and noncommittal. “One that has wounded me deeply.” He paused. “I had wanted nothing more than to forget the catastrophe, and had begun the journey down that path.” He paused again. “But of course, in the interest of justice I will answer any questions you may have. Then this matter will be put to rest in my mind, heart and soul.”
Lord Caladen nodded.
The sound of voices rose in volume until the high justice leaned over to the recording secretary and asked for silence.
“Silence!” cried the recording secretary.
Once again, the hall grew quiet.
“Lord Soth,” began Lord Caladen. “There seem to be those who believe that Lady Korinne did not die while in the process of birthing her child.”
“People are entitled to their opinions, however vile,” said Soth.
“They say that instead of dying naturally during the birth, she was murdered by a blade after the fact.”
There was another collective gasp. This time it was peppered with whispers of, “No.”
“An opinion entirely without merit.”
Lord Caladen brought his hands up in front of his chest and brought them together as if in prayer. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not.”
Lord Soth Page 20