They established their headquarters outside the city, near a hot springs Skie had discovered. Kitiara sent spies armed with Toede’s bounty list to Tarsis and other cities in the region and also sent search parties with orders to keep an eye on the major trade routes.
Although the snow hampered their efforts considerably, one of the search parties did come across something, though not what Kit had expected.
“Why haven’t Rag and his baaz reported in?” Kitiara asked the sivak commander of her squad of draconians.
The sivak had no idea, and he sent a patrol on dragonback to find out. They returned with unfortunate news.
“Rag and his men are dead, my lord,” the sivak reported. “We found what was left of them near a bridge south of Tarsis. The tracks in the snow indicated three men riding horses. They were on the road leading from Rigitt. One of the horses apparently bolted, for its tracks ran off back to the south. Two horses left the bridge together, traveling west, leaving the road and cutting across country.
“We found the runaway horse wandering about the plains,” the sivak added, “and on it was this.”
He held up a bracer decorated with the kingfisher and the rose.
“Solamnic Knights,” Kitiara muttered irritably. She shuffled through reports from her other spies, searching for one of them in particular.
The knight, Derek Crownguard, traveling with two fellow knights, arrived in Rigitt. The three men hired horses, stating they were planning to ride to Tarsis…
“Son of a bitch,” swore Kitiara.
Of course it had to have been them. Who else but Solamnic knights would have dispatched draconian warriors so handily? She couldn’t believe it.
“How long have they been dead?” she asked.
“A couple of days, maybe,” the sivak replied.
“Son of a bitch!” Kit swore again, this time with more vehemence. “So the bridge was left unwatched for days. The felons we are after could have crossed unnoticed, entering Tarsis without our knowledge.”
“We didn’t see any other footprints, but we will find them if they did, my lord,” the sivak promised, and that proved to be the case.
“Those you seek are in Tarsis, my lord,” the sivak reported a day later. “They entered the gates this morning. All of them.” He pointed to the bounty list. “Matches the descriptions perfectly. They are staying in the Red Dragon Inn.”
“Excellent,” said Kitiara, rising. Her face was flushed, her eyes glinting with excitement. “Summon Skie. I will fly there immediately-”
“There is, um, a slight problem.” The sivak gave a deferential cough. “Some of them have been arrested.”
“What?” Kitiara glared at him, hands on her hips. “Arrested? Who was the fool who ordered that?”
The moment she mentioned the word “fool” the answer came to her.
“Toede!”
“Not Highlord Toede in person,” the sivak said. “He sent a draconian emissary who is conducting the ‘negotiations’ with the Lord of Tarsis in Toede’s name. It seems that one of the gate guards recognized the Solamnic knight-this Sturm Brightblade,” added the sivak, consulting the list. “The gate guard told the Lord of Tarsis, who seemed inclined to make nothing of it. The draconian emissary insisted that the guards be sent to bring in the knight and his companions for ‘questioning’.”
“I’ll wring that hob’s neck!” Kit said through her teeth. “Does this emissary know these people are on this bounty list?”
“I don’t think he made the connection, my lord. All he knew was that a Solamnic knight had arrived in the city. The reason I say that is because some of the group were allowed to remain in the inn. The half-elf, the knight, the elf, the dwarf and the kender were the only ones taken into custody.”
Kitiara relaxed. “So the half-elf and the others are in prison.”
The sivak coughed again. “No, my lord.”
“By our Queen, what else went wrong?” Kit demanded.
“It seems there was a riot, and in the confusion the kender disappeared. The others appeared in court along with another elf, who turned out to be daughter of King Lorac. They were all being taken off to prison when the guards were attacked by three cloaked men who rescued the prisoners.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Kit in a dangerously calm voice. “The three men who rescued them were Solamnic knights.”
“It appears so, my lord,” said the sivak after a slight hesitation. “My informant overheard them speaking the Solamnic tongue, and the knight, Brightblade, recognized the others.”
Kitiara slumped back down in her chair. “Where are they now?”
“I regret to say the knight and his companions escaped. My men are searching for them. However, the women on the list and the other men, including the wizard and the cleric of Paladine, are still in the inn.”
“At least something has gone right,” said Kit, good spirits returning. “The half-elf will not abandon these people. They’re his friends. He’ll be back for them. Keep your spies at the Red Dragon Inn. No, wait. I will go there myself-”
“There’s, uh, one more problem, my lord,” the sivak said, sidling back a few steps to be out of sword range in case her wrath got the better of her. “Highlord Toede has ordered the attack. As we speak, dragons are flying on Tarsis.”
“I told that fool to wait for my signal!” Kitiara fumed to Skie as the dragon climbed toward the clouds.
She pressed herself close to Skie’s body, hunching down low over the dragon’s neck so as to add as little possible wind resistance. Taking off was always the most difficult part for the dragons. Even without riders, lifting their ponderous bodies into the air required great strength. Some riders were inconsiderate of their mounts, doing little to aid them and sometimes actually impeding them.
Kitiara understood instinctively how to help Skie, perhaps because she loved flying. When in the air, she and her dragon melded together. She felt almost as if she was the one who had wings. In battle, she knew Skie’s every move before he made it, just as he knew by the touch of her knees on his flanks or her hand upon his neck where she wanted to go-always to the fiercest part of the fighting.
A flight of blue dragons soared after them, each dragon leaping into the air, following Skie, their leader. This was always a proud moment for him, and for her, as he knew well.
“The reds will not be pleased to see us,” Skie shouted over the rush of cold air.
Kitiara remarked what the red dragons could do with themselves and added a few choice words about what they could do with Toede into the bargain.
“We are looking for an inn called the Red Dragon,” she told Skie.
“I think you’re a little late!” he called out.
They had just come in sight of Tarsis-or rather what had once been Tarsis.
Smoke and flame billowed into the air. Skie’s nostrils twitched and he shook his mane. He enjoyed the stench of destruction, but clouds of thick smoke would make seeing anything on the ground below damn difficult.
Kitiara had anticipated this, however, and had sent scouts into the city. She and Skie waited at some distance for the scouts to return, the dragon wheeling in easy circles just beyond the clouds of smoke. They had not been waiting long when a wyvern-rider came into view, emerging from the pall that covered the doomed city. Sighting the Highlord, the wyvern-rider changed course and flew over to them in haste.
“Slow down,” Kitiara commanded her dragon.
Skie’s lip curled in a sneer, but he did as he was ordered. Like most dragons, he detested wyverns. He considered them filthy beasts, a mockery of dragons, with their grotesque bird-legs, stunted, scaly bodies, and barbed tails. He glared at the wyvern as it approached, warning it not to come too near. Since the blue dragon could have snapped the wyvern in two with one bite, the wyvern heeded the blue’s warning, forcing the sivak rider to shout at the top of his lungs to make himself heard.
“The inn has been hit, my lord! Part of it has collapsed. The Red Wing�
��s troops have it surrounded.” The sivak draconian gestured. “That flight of reds you see is going to-”
Kitiara wasn’t about to wait to hear what the reds were planning to do. Skie understood her need, and he had altered course and was soaring after the reds before she had given him the command.
“Return to your post!” she shouted at the sivak, who saluted, and the wyvern sped thankfully away.
Blue dragons are smaller and more maneuverable than the hulking red dragons. Skie and his blues easily caught up with the reds, who were, as Skie had predicted, extremely displeased to see them. The reds glared balefully at the blues, who glared just as balefully back.
Kitiara and the leader of the Red Wing held a brief midair conference; the red shouting to Kit that he had orders from Toede to kill-not capture-the felons if he found them. Kit shouted back that he would be the one killed, not captured, unless he brought the assassins to her alive and well. The commander of the Red Wing knew Kitiara. He also knew Toede. He saluted Kit respectfully and flew off.
“Locate the inn,” Kit ordered Skie and the rest of the blues. “We’re searching for three people, remember, a half-elf, a human wizard, and his big, dumb-looking brother.”
The dragons flew into the smoke, blinking their eyes and keeping sharp watch to make certain no smoldering cinder landed on the vulnerable membranes of their wings. The blues had to be careful, for the reds, drunk with the joy of killing and burning, were heedless and reckless in their flight, swooping down on hapless people trying to escape, breathing flame on them, then watching them run, screaming, hair and clothes on fire, until they collapsed in the street.
Paying no attention to where they were going, the reds blundered into buildings, smashing them, knocking them down with their tails. They would also blunder into each other in the smoke and confusion, and Skie and the other blue dragons had to do some fancy maneuvering to avoid collisions. A few jolts of lightning breath helped drive away reds who flew too close.
The stench of burnt flesh, the screams of the dying, the rumble of falling towers, was nothing new to Kitiara. She paid little heed to anything going on around her, concentrating instead on peering through the smoke into the occasional patch of clear air created by the flapping of Skie’s wings.
She had scouted out the part of the city in which the inn was located and she soon spotted it, for it was-or had been-one of the larger buildings in the area. The inn was under attack by draconian forces, battling those inside.
Kit sucked in her breath. She knew perfectly well who was in there, fighting for his life and the lives of his friends. She imagined herself strolling into the inn amidst the smoke, climbing over the rubble, finding Tanis, reaching out her hand to him, and saying, “Come with me.” He’d be astonished, of course. She could picture the look on his face.
“Griffons!” Skie bellowed.
Kitiara blinked away her reverie and peered intently through the eyeslits of her helm, cursing the smoke, for she couldn’t see. Then there they were, a flight of griffons flying low beneath the smoke, coming to the rescue of those trapped in the inn.
Kitiara uttered an exclamation of anger. Griffons are ferocious creatures, afraid of nothing, and they fell on the draconians who surrounded the inn, snatching them up in their sharp talons, snapping off their heads with their beaks, as an eagle eats a rat.
“There are elves mixed up in this!” Skie snarled.
Griffons, though fiercely independent, revere elves, and bonded griffons will serve them if their need is great. Griffons on their own would have never flown into a raging battle, risking their lives to save humans. These griffons were here on orders from some elf lord. Those who had been trapped in the ruins of the inn could be seen clambering onto the backs of the griffons, who wasted no time. Having picked up their passengers, they took off, flying north.
“Who escaped?” Kit cried. “Could you see them?”
Skie was about to answer when a red dragon appeared, barreling through the smoke. Catching sight of the fleeing griffons, the red flew after them, intending to incinerate them.
“Cut him off!” Kitiara ordered.
Skie disapproved of Kit involving herself in this fight, but he did enjoy thwarting any red dragon, who, because they were bigger, considered themselves better. Skie swooped in front of the red’s nose, forcing the huge dragon to almost flip himself head over tail in order to avoid a crash.
“Are you mad?” the red roared furiously. “They’re escaping!”
Kitiara ordered the red to go kill people in some other part of the city and sent her blue dragons off in pursuit of the griffons, reminding them several times that the people the griffons carried were to be taken alive and brought straight back to her.
“Aren’t we going after them?” Skie demanded.
“I need to make sure who they were. I don’t want to leave until I find out they were the ones who escaped. I couldn’t see them. Could you?” she yelled at Skie.
Skie had been able to get a good look at them while Kit was arguing with the red dragon.
“Your wizard and a large human warrior, a human female with red hair and a man clad in leather. He could have been a half-breed. He looked to be the leader, for he was giving the orders. Oh, and a couple of barbarians.”
Kitiara asked him sharply, “There was no blonde elf woman?”
“No, lord,” said Skie, wondering what this had to do with anything.
“Good,” Kitiara said. “Maybe she’s dead.” Then she frowned. “What about Flint, Sturm and the kender? Tanis would never leave them behind… So maybe that wasn’t him on the griffon…”
“What are your orders, Lord?” Skie asked impatiently.
The dragon was hoping she would think better of this folly and tell him to recall the blues who had gone winging after the griffons. Fast beasts, griffons. They were already nearly out of sight. The blues would be hard-pressed to catch them. He hoped she would tell him they were all going to go back to Solamnia, to forests teeming with deer and glorious battles to be fought and cities to be conquered.
What she told him was not what he had hoped for or expected. Her order confounded him utterly.
“Set me down on the street.”
Skie twisted his head around to stare at her. “Are you mad?”
“I know what I am about,” she said. “That cleric of Paladine, Elistan, was not among those you mentioned, yet he was staying at the inn. I must find out what has become of him.”
“You said the cleric was of no importance! He wasn’t the one you were after. Those you were after are disappearing over the horizon.”
“I’ve changed my mind. Set me down!” Kitiara repeated angrily. “You go with the other blues. Continue your pursuit of those on griffon-back, and when you catch them, bring them back to camp. Alive!” she emphasized. “I want them alive.”
“Highlord,” said Skie earnestly, doing as he was told but not liking it, “you are taking a great risk! This city is going up in flames, and it’s filled with draconians thirsting for trouble. They’ll kill you first and find out you are a Highlord after!”
“I can take care of myself,” Kit told him.
“The one you seek has escaped Tarsis! Why go back? Don’t tell me that you’re chasing after some foul cleric!”
Kit glared at him as she hoisted herself out of the saddle, but she did not answer. The dragon had no idea what she was scheming. But he knew full well it had nothing to do with the war and everything to do with her current obsession.
“Kitiara,” Skie pleaded, “let this go. You risk not only your command, you risk your life!”
“You have your orders,” Kitiara told him, and Skie saw by the look in her eye that he continued this argument at his peril.
Skie landed on the only patch of open ground he could find-the marketplace. The area was littered with bodies, the smoldering ruins of stalls and trampled vegetables, terrified dogs howling, and roving draconians, their swords red with blood. Kitiara climbed out of t
he saddle.
“Remember!” she said to Skie, as he was about to take to the air, “I want them alive!”
Skie grunted that he’d only heard that about six hundred times. He flew up through the smoke that had smelled so good to him at the start, but which he now found annoying, for it clogged his lungs and stung his eyes.
He would obey Kitiara’s orders, though the last thing Kit needed was to be caught by Ariakas romping in the bed of a half-elf who had killed Verminaard.
Skie would chase after this half-elf, but he’d be damned if he was going to catch him!
Iolanthe watched Kitiara make her way through the ravaged city. The smell of burning was in the air here as well, but the smell did not come from smoldering wooden beams or charred flesh. The smell came from the burnt black curls-a few wisps of hair withering in the fire of Iolanthe’s spell.
Iolanthe was in her chambers in Neraka, watching Kitiara with intense interest, noting those details she might decide to share with Ariakas when she made her report to him. He no longer sat in on the spellcasting when Iolanthe spied on Kit. He was too busy, he told her curtly.
Iolanthe knew the truth. He would never admit it, but he was deeply hurt by Kitiara’s betrayal. It was the winternorn, Feal-Thas, who had placed the last rock on Kitiara’s funeral pyre. He had sent Ariakas a detailed report on Kitiara, claiming to have probed the depths of Kitiara’s soul to discover she was infatuated with a halfelf who was implicated in the slaying of Verminaard. Iolanthe had been there when he’d read the report, and Ariakas had flown into such a blind, furious rage that for a few moments Iolanthe had trembled for her own life.
Ariakas had eventually calmed down, but though his fury no longer blazed, it continued to smolder. He was convinced that Kitiara was responsible for the death of Verminaard. Ariakas sent his guards to Solamnia in search of Kit, only to be told by her sub commander, Bakaris, that she was not around. She had gone off on some mysterious errand with Skie and had taken a flight of blues with her.
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