by Dragon Lance
Underchancellor Vinas Solamnus was one of the priests most concerned with keeping his flame lit. He held the sconce against his robe and cupped one hand over the vent at the top. The shadow of his hand touched the backs of the priests before him – the doe-eyed woman and her split-headed friend.
Beadle Titus nudged Vinas with his elbow. “Drop your hand. It’s making shadows. The light of truth should not be obscured.”
“Neither should it be snuffed,” countered Vinas.
They walked along for a while, the crash of boots and clop of hooves and cries of peasants combining in a ceaseless and meaningless clamor.
Still sheltering his candle flame, Vinas watched the backs of the two priests ahead of them. He nudged Titus’s arm and said, “What do you think of that pair?”
The hulking Beadle seemed for a moment to struggle with his need to be honest and his desire to be charitable. At last he came out with, “I don’t know why, but I don’t trust them.”
“Me neither,” Vinas confessed. “The woman visited father today – something about blessing the rings.”
Titus’s expression darkened. “The man was messing about in the dome. He said he’d almost caught a saboteur. I sent an architect up to check the dome, but never heard back from him.”
They had time for no more; the parade had reached the steps of the great temple. The black watch fanned out, pushing back the peasant hordes that hoped to stream in after the bride.
The woman alighted now from the carriage. Her young skin looked nearly as pale as her white, pearl-bedizened dress. Steadied on the arm of her father, she began the long climb to the temple above.
*
Luccia elbowed free of a gap-toothed young man. She almost got caught between him and an imperial guardsman. The peasant would not be getting past that palisade of sword and muscle, and would likely pay for his efforts with a few more of his dwindling teeth.
Luccia had no desire to win past the soldiers, but only to glimpse again the band of priests. She thought she had seen one whose face was... what? He did not look like a priest, not at heart. He walked with a martial stride rather than a monk’s stroll. He fretted over his candle, holding a hand above its vent and so making his own anxious face especially radiant. Though the cleric beside him was three heads taller and twice as wide as he, the young man who had caught Luccia’s eye looked too burly, too physical for so ethereal an office.
Luccia rose halfway up the first flight of steps and stood on tiptoe to see over the multitude.
There he was. His face was candle-bright in the deepening dusk. At first there were no shadows to define his features – only two glowing eyes. Still, she would have known him from the eyes alone. The man paused to draw the hem of his robe up from a snagging boot. The candle dipped down and cast his cleft jaw in square relief, then his cheekbones, his brow, and hair thick and windblown.
“Vinas Solamnus,” she whispered beneath her breath.
He was gone in the next moment, obscured behind the retreating shoulders of the man-mountain. Even so, in that space between heartbeats, he had unknowingly washed away the past four years of freedom fighting and bread-pillaging. He had reduced her to the infatuated fifteen-year-old girl he had left behind-
The Five Harvest Battles with their one hundred and twenty-three massacred villagers... the Summer of the Soot Sun... the entire vocabulary of her experience in the resistance fled from her. She suddenly wanted to break through the line, rush up beside her discontented soldier-priest, dash his candle to the ground, take his hand, and drag him back to that time four years ago....
The crowd surged up the stairs. She moved with the rising peasants – her people – pushing after the regal procession and toward the Temple of Paladine.
*
Adrenas Solamnus watched the loud, solemn procession edge down the central aisle of Paladine’s temple. In the thousand stone benches to either side of the parade, a veritable army of nobles and senators stood and sang. Ahead of the procession, a corps of fifty herald trumpeters and fifty pipers and fifty drummers played. Even so, at the moment when the future empress glided past her black-garbed escort to proceed up the aisle alone, the echoing cavern seemed utterly quiet, utterly still.
She was beautiful in white, a tender dove floating above the mere mortals. Though thirty noble maids bore the hem of her gown, she walked alone. It was an enormous train of cloth to be drawn by that tiny, brown-haired girl. The gold-veined marble looked gray and dirty beneath her delicate feet.
“What do you think of my freckled Phrygia?” came a voice very near Adrenas’s ear.
He turned to find Emperor Emann himself standing there, a gray-haired man with a feline face and intense silver eyes. “Quite the spotless white rose, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, Emperor,” replied Adrenas with solemn awe. “She is a dove. I look forward to meeting her.”
Emperor Quisling cast a sharply amused glance toward his best man and said, “As do I, Adrenas. As do I.” Adrenas tried to hide his surprise, but failed. Emann continued, “That is the problem with virgins: you can’t really know them until they are no longer virgins, and by then it’s too late. I only hope she learns quickly. I’m used to riding racehorses, not speckle-bellied ponies.”
Unsure how to respond to that, Adrenas looked toward the woman and nodded. Like the other warlords of Ergoth’s past century, Emperor Quisling was crude, brutal, and lecherous. Adrenas watched the fragile vision of that child in white, and wondered how the emperor could so brusquely speak of horses and riding.
The consummation tonight would be nothing short of a conquest. Emann would win her the same way he had won everything in his life, including Adrenas’s friendship. Vinas would say his father was in bed with evil, and that one could not rise from such a bed unsullied.
“Do you have the rings?” the emperor asked.
Adrenas bit his lip in surprise. He patted the woolen panel of the Solamnus family tabard. “They are here, in my pocket. The case was too large to carry.”
“Fine,” replied the emperor, stepping forward and motioning Adrenas to follow... at a distance, “because that is our cue.”
With his bride only a small, retreating spot of white among the roaring multitude, Emperor Emann Quisling started down the aisle.
Adrenas waited. He peered ahead. There, the crowd of priests, including his son, gathered on the dais beneath the dragon statue. He looked behind him, where the two great doors slowly closed upon gray throngs of peasants.
Breathing deeply, the best man began a measured procession behind his ruler and friend.
The bride reached the central altar to Paladine. She stopped before the white-and-gold robed priests. Half of the emperor’s black watch stood at grim attention behind the priests, and the other half lined the aisle where Emann walked.
With such protections, what assassin could possibly succeed tonight?
At last, the emperor stepped up beside his bride. Before them stood the greatest priests and warriors of Ergoth. Behind stood senators and nobles and a handful of peasants. The processional hymn ended. Trumpet, pipe, drum, and voice ceased. Only a strident echo kept on, rolling in heady waves through the temple.
*
Underchancellor Vinas Solamnus struggled to keep his hands from his ears. The din rattled away. A toneless rumble replaced it – the distant thunder of an approaching storm. The smell of rain filled the air. It was a cold, changing wind.
Vinas shivered, despite the weight of his robe and the warmth of the long walk. A wife for this ruthless politician would mean children, sons – a dynasty, perhaps. All of it would rest on that tiny little girl, who visibly trembled beside the warlord. Vinas felt cold and sick.
The Bishop of Daltigoth motioned for the people to sit. He began a sonorous homily, the sound of which would certainly die away before it reached the peasants.
Vinas sighed. As always, the peasants would be denied... or spared. Vinas himself lost track of the homily. He glanced at Titus
. The giant stood forward on the balls of his feet, nodding empathetically. There would be no commiserating with him after the ceremony. Vinas blinked and focused on his father, who looked old and very weary.
A flash of none-too-distant lightning shone in the northern windows. It lit up the bride in a blue glow, but cast the emperor in shadow. Vinas waited for the thunder. The bishop spoke on until it came crashing, like the war drum of Kiri-Jolith himself. The bride swayed. Instead of reaching out to steady her, the emperor glanced up at her in irritation.
Even Vinas’s father seemed shaken. He patted a panel of his tabard, as he had done five times already since the bishop’s drone had begun. This time, though, he reached into his robes and drew out something – what was it?
A lightning strike glinted on the bejeweled rings. As though fearing the very thunder would steal the jewels, Adrenas slipped the rings onto his fingers. The bride’s ring was clutched on the second knuckle of his pinky finger, and the emperor’s ring was jammed down on his middle finger.
Look at him, thought Vinas in concern. He can hardly stand there behind the emperor. He wavers like a child before the gallows. The old noble seemed almost to be falling asleep.
Adrenas glanced down at his hand and lifted it to inspect it. A thin ribbon of blood showed beneath the emperor’s ring.
Blood? Vinas wondered at that. Was his father so nervous as to have wounded himself with a ring?
It didn’t matter. The bishop had just requested the rings. Adrenas gingerly worked the things off his fingers, wiped the blood away on his tabard, and lifted both rings toward the bishop. The high cleric had no sooner received the bands than Vinas’s father swooned and crumpled to the ground. A murmur ran through the throng. The bishop, too, paused. The same irritation that the emperor had cast toward his wife he now directed toward the fallen old man.
Vinas broke ranks and hurried to his father. He knelt. A thin stream of blood flowed where the man’s forehead had struck the stairs.
Black watchmen converged. They studied the crowd for signs of attack. A contingent slipped, silent as shadows, around father and son.
Vinas rolled his father over. The man still breathed, but very shallowly and very rapidly. “Father, Father,” he said, lightly stroking the man’s cheek with the back of his hand.
Adrenas did not stir.
“Vinas, we need to take him from the temple. We need to let the wedding resume.”
Vinas looked up at the sound of that voice. He saw a familiar face, oddly shaved. “Gaias! Help me, here.”
“Let’s go, Vinas,” said Gaias. He and his companions hoisted Adrenas from the ground and began bearing him swiftly away. “Come along. I’m sure he will be fine once he gets some air.”
Vinas nodded, following. Behind them, the bishop resumed his speech.
“Vinas,” came a raspy whisper. “Vinas, it is the ring.”
“Father, rest,” Vinas said. The group shuffled toward Mishakal’s gate. “The bishop has them now.”
“It’s enchanted, or poisoned, somehow,” Adrenas gasped. His eyes were watery. “If Emann puts it on, he, too, will die.”
“Poisoned?” Vinas wondered aloud. The moment he voiced the thought, he remembered the priestess and her supposed blessing. “The emperor...”
“I’m dying, son,” Adrenas said. “I can feel it. Cold mud in my bones.”
Gaias looked grave, though one of his companions sneered, “You’re not dying, old man. We’ll get you out in the rain, and you’ll be dancing all night at the royal ball.”
“Father, I’ll stay with you.”
“Go, Son,” Adrenas said as they bore him through an antechamber that led to the garden. “Do not disobey me in this one last request.”
A thin moan rose in Vinas’s throat. “Good-bye, Father.”
“Good-bye, Vinas.”
Vinas turned and ran back through the antechamber. A black-garbed figure appeared beside the archway leading to the sanctuary – Gaias.
“I’ll tell my men to let us through,” Gaias said urgently.
Vinas nodded, striding into the sanctuary and rushing across the floor.
“Let us pass,” hissed Gaias to his black watch comrades.
Just as Vinas reached the line of bodyguards, lightning flashed on both sides of the temple. A simultaneous thunderclap rattled the very foundation stones.
Vinas fought his way past the guards. They tried to pursue him but were held back by Gaias. As he barked commands, three more lightning strikes shook the building. They showed Vinas making great strides, halfway to the emperor... beside the emperor... wrenching the ring free from that untouchable hand. Without pause, Vinas plunged into the stunned and immobile ranks of priests.
One of the clerics turned away. Vinas bounded after her, knocking over a few of his compatriots. A priest grabbed him, but Vinas knocked him away with an elbow to the face. Vinas had almost caught up with the retreating cleric when someone grabbed his robe.
Vinas lunged. His free hand wrapped around a child-thin ankle in white. He held tight as he crashed to the ground.
His was only the first body to fall. The priestess followed. Then a soft and grunting form dropped atop Vinas and seized the hand that held the emperor’s ring. Someone else clambered over his legs, pinning him to the ground. More weight. Panicked priests piled on to insure that he would not get away.
None of that mattered. It mattered only that Vinas still held the woman’s ankle. She would not get away, this murderess and assassin. Perhaps she would even have an antidote that would save his father.
As the thunderstorm deepened, the pile of priests lightened. Gaias and the other black watchmen had arrived and were pulling clerics off Vinas. As the priests were lifted away and sorted out, the circle of guards surrounded Vinas and the woman. Gaias stood over the assassin, his sword tip resting on her young throat.
Then, entering like a god amid rolling thunder, the emperor himself reached the top of the dais and pushed past the wall of watchmen.
“By Sargonnas, what is this, Solamnus?” the emperor growled.
Breathless, still tangled up with a priest or two, Vinas said, “This woman is... an assassin.” No other word could so quickly silence a crowd. Vinas went on to explain to the shocked emperor, “She poisoned your ring. Father put it on. He is outside, dying.”
The emperor’s cold gaze turned on the priestess. “Speak, woman, but do so quickly. Your death will be as long and public as your confession.”
She looked down. The facade of innocence peeled from her face like dead flesh from a skull. “Tell this man to release me.”
Solamnus merely tightened his grip. “I will not.”
The emperor drew his ornamental sword, strode to the woman’s side, and aimed its tip at her right eye. “Speak, woman!”
“Yes,” she shouted. “I am an assassin. I planned your death here, at your wedding, before even the consummating kiss. Yes, by now this man’s father is dead. Yes, you will kill me for my crimes, and do so brutally and slowly, but not until this confession of mine is done.”
Vinas stared at the woman, hearing little after the pronouncement of his father’s death. He bowed his head, realizing she spoke the truth.
So Adrenas Solamnus was gone. His father had been right about so many things – right all along. There would no longer be anyone in all the world to save Vinas from his follies.
He glimpsed movement above him. Directly above.
The gold dragon hung there in glory. The statue swayed slowly on its chain. Why would it be swaying?
“The man was messing about in the dome. He said he’d almost caught a saboteur. I sent an architect up to check the dome, but never heard back from him.”
As Titus’s words echoed in Vinas’s head, the statue’s sway deepened, and it shuddered. No one else saw it. No one else heard it. It was a moment of fate. It was an irreversible moment that would shape the rest of Vinas Solamnus’s life.
Paladine began to fall. Vinas Solamnus
released his father’s killer. In one swift motion, he rolled onto his feet. His shoulder caught the emperor in the gut, knocking him to one side.
“Paladine is falling!” was all he could think to scream.
The dragon descended.
Its gold tail struck in the spot where the emperor had just stood – where the assassin had, too, though she was fleeing past watchmen. The tail cracked against the marble dais. Welds failed, and razor-sharp triangles of metal leapt away, catching watchmen in throats, stomachs, and faces.
Vinas ran amid stumbling, colliding, dying men.
The tail crumpled so quickly it seemed to be plunging into water rather than striking stone. It drew the rest of the massive dragon downward, tipping it out toward the congregation. As if the dragon lived and had its own willpower, one of its hind claws arced down toward Vinas and the emperor. Its knife-edge ripped open Vinas’s shoulder and would have dragged him down had it not sliced away his vestments.
Vinas did not tarry. He rushed away from the shadow of that descending claw, down the dais stairs. Behind him, the dragon limb struck sparks on the marble steps. Tiny jags of metal exploded from the statue and jabbed into Vinas’s back. Still he ran.
He reached the center aisle, choked now with fleeing, screaming, trampling senators. He bulled into them, and was dragged down by the churning bodies. Trying not to fall, Vinas flung the emperor forward, over the heads of the panicked crowd.
Then came a blunt weight that smashed him to the floor among the other bodies. The shriek and roar of crashing metal echoed violently through the great temple, mixed with the cries and screams of the people. Those crushed beneath the fallen statue made little noise for lack of breath. It was, rather, the gore-splattered senators just one step beyond, who screamed.
Vinas heard all of this where he lay trapped, bleeding, beneath the horned head of Paladine, god of good. He watched as the terrified senators fled back toward the nobles, and they in the direction of the peasants. He saw a ragged and bloodied contingent of the black watch, led by Gaias, escort a limping emperor away. His bride-to-be tended the man. Priests moved among the wounded, laying healing hands on them.