by James Lowder
For a few moments, neither Soth nor Malocchio spoke. It was as if some unwritten rule decreed the first exchange would be an admission of weakness. The stalemate might have continued until the sun set and long after had Magda not spoiled the game.
Whatever dread Malocchio had inspired in the Vistana was gone, banished by the man’s appearance. Such was often the way with fear, she’d found; the half-hidden beast was always more frightening than the thing crouched in the open-not less dangerous, of course, but easier to cope with.
“How long do you two proud birds plan to perch in this spot?” she asked brusquely. “Winter’s not far off, you know. If it’s going to be a long wait, we should look for something warm to feather our nests with.”
“Silence that refuse clinging to your cloak,” Malocchio spat. When he realized he’d been baited into speaking first, he reflexively warded himself against Vistani magic. With a V formed by two fingers of his left hand, he bracketed his eye.
Magda smiled inwardly at the superstitious sign. She’d needed no magic to trip Aderre’s tongue. For all his facade of composure, this butcher was not so certain of his footing here. That might explain the show of force, too. The louder the clatter of arms, the less noticeable the quaver in the general’s voice.
Lord Soth, too, seemed to sense the young man’s uneasiness, for his first words were as provoking as they were unexpected. “My ally is unskilled in the ways of nobility,” the death knight began. “I will not ask you to forgive her, for it would be below one of your rank not to do so.”
Malocchio swallowed whatever caustic reply leapt to his tongue. From the pained expression on his face, it burned like molten lead. He gestured to one of the half-elves, who stepped forward and unrolled a piece of parchment. In a voice that held far more confidence than it should have, he read: ” ‘In the name of justice and honor, the citizens of Invidia demand the extradition of Magda Kulchevich and all Vistani traveling with her, be they formal members of the band of thieves known as the Wanderers or merely-‘ ” “Enough,” Soth said.
The half-elf glanced up from the page. Whether he was supremely foolish or merely convinced of his safety because of his proximity to Lord Aderre, he dropped his gaze back to the edict and continued. ” ‘Or merely those citizens of Sithicus known to her as carrying the taint of Vistani blood. Her crimes are many, but include-’”
Lord Soth spoke again, this time a single word of magic. Only one person heard the word. As soon as it left Soth’s lips, the half-elf who so boldly proclaimed the extradition edict dropped his parchment. A startled look crossed his face before he doubled over in pain. He sprawled on the road for a moment, twitching violently, as the word did its work. A thin ooze that had been his brains seeped from his ears and nose. He vomited up the tattered remnants of his guts. Still the word of power careened inside his increasingly hollow shell, slicing through everything in its way, until finally the half-elf’s skin lay empty on the ground.
“I did not come here to listen to the demands of ‘the people of Invidia,’” Soth noted. “But they have my answer anyway. Now, Lord Aderre, we have matters of state to discuss.”
“He was under my protection,” Malocchio said darkly.
“I understand,” Soth replied, “but I told him to stop. His impudence is to blame for his death, not your failings as a protector.”
Malocchio mocked a bow. “How kind of you to clear my name.”
Soth acknowledged the remark with the barest tilt of his head.
As the lord of Invidia straightened, he produced a dagger. “I’ll be certain to offer you the same courtesy after I’ve corrected that Vistani witch for her earlier impertinence.”
“It would be amusing to see you try,” Soth said calmly, “but I will do you the favor of preventing you from dishonoring yourself in front of your troops.” He gestured to Aderre’s dagger. “Unless you plan to raise that blade against me, I would suggest you sheathe it.”
The Invidian troops stirred. The human soldiers were disciplined enough not to draw their swords, but the ogres raised their clubs and muttered threats. All were ready to charge, awaiting only the word of Lord Aderre.
“It’s tempting,” Malocchio said after a tense moment. He slipped the dagger back into his sleeve and continued, “You rested far too long upon your throne of dust. Things have changed while you slumbered, dead man. Powers have arisen that do not fear you.”
“They should,” Soth said. “The carcass flapping at your feet like a torn sail should be proof enough of that.”
Malocchio shrugged. “They say your kingdom fares little better than this unfortunate soul. Travelers carry back reports of-”
“To the heart of the matter at last,” Soth interrupted. “Call them travelers or agents or spies, I will have no more of your minions crossing into my domain.”
“Your own people are more than happy to help me,” Malocchio said snidely. “They’ll tell me everything they know about you, about your land, about anything, so long as I don’t send them back to Sithicus.”
He pulled the remaining half-elf forward; the fellow was so shocked by the fate of his twin that he could only stare. Malocchio looked at him and laughed. “He doesn’t seem too bright, but that’s what you get with half-breeds, eh? Of course, you wouldn’t know about that. Against your military code to sire bastards, I would think.”
Magda gritted her teeth. Here, at last, she understood the reason Malocchio had trotted out these particular traitors. They were a test. One was meant to gauge the death knight’s magic, the other to discern the state of his memory. Malocchio must have learned enough of Soth’s history to know about the son he’d fathered with the elf maid.
The Vistana opened her mouth to respond, to say something that would spoil Malocchio’s test. She never got the chance. Lord Soth waved one gauntleted hand, as if to wipe the trembling half-elf from existence. “Enough of these games,” the death knight rumbled. “You dally with the past, and I am here to discuss the future.”
“Then we have nothing to discuss.” Malocchio shoved the half-elf aside. The cracked facade of civility was gone, shattered finally by a towering rage. “The future belongs to me, and you forfeited any place in it by consorting with that Vistani trash. I mean to purge every last one of her kind from the world, dead man. Do not doubt that for one moment.”
“I do not doubt your intent,” Soth replied coolly, “and I care nothing for the fate of the gypsies within your lands. But know that Magda and her troupe are my subjects, my allies. This alliance is as my power: unquestionable, inviolate. I will not stand for any discourtesy shown to her troupe by you or your agents.”
Discourtesy, Magda mused. An odd term for the slaughter Aderre has in mind for us. She regarded the death knight, standing stiffly by her side. It’s as if he’s speaking from rote, she thought, drawing half-remembered words from his order’s ancient code.
“Furthermore,” Soth continued, “you will cease any traffic with my subjects, particularly the elves of the Iron Hills. You would be ill-advised to offer support to them or their leader.”
Malocchio could scarcely contain himself. He turned his back to Soth, as if to walk away, then whirled around and stabbed an accusing finger at him. “You have no right to lecture me like some, some��� child. If the White Rose and her Thorns will bring me one step closer to seeing that whore dead, I will empty my treasury to fund their war with you.”
The next few minutes of Malocchio’s rant were lost to Lord Soth. A single word sounded through his mind again and again: her. The White Rose was a woman.
Since he had risen from the throne at Nedragaard Keep, the death knight had been tormented by myriad fractured memories. The strongest of these was a woman’s face-a dark-haired beauty with a crooked smile. Her image flitted about the ruined castle of Soth’s memories, always out of reach, just a turn of the corner away. Now, thanks to Malocchio’s revelation, that phantom had a form and a name.
She was a warrior, a general in the
Dark Queen’s armies on Krynn. He had been dead for hundreds of years when he met her, but Soth instantly recognized the woman as his perfect foil, a dark gem with facets enough to keep him occupied for all eternity. The fractured memory had healed itself, and she was revealed before his mind’s eye. She stood defiant, clad in the blue armor of a dragon highlord.
Kitiara!
She must be the White Rose.
In the hours before he’d been drawn into the netherworld, Lord Soth had attempted to capture Kitiara’s soul. He had planned to raise her as his undead consort. That plan would have succeeded, too, had it not been for the treacherous ghost who had served as his seneschal on Krynn-Caradoc, the death knight recalled bitterly. That whimpering cur had attempted to barter the captured soul for some reward so trifling Soth could not recall it now. The betrayal had cost Soth dearly. Before he could retrieve Kit’s essence, he found himself transported far from Krynn, stranded in the domain of Strahd von Zarovich.
Kitiara’s soul must have been taken, too, Soth decided. It had eluded him for all these years. Now, though, she had shown herself. Of course her army knew his true history; she had witnessed some of his dark deeds herself. Soth smiled grimly; it seemed Kit had not lost her will to fight. He was certain, though, that he would win her to his side in the end. It was their destiny.
The death knight’s sudden preoccupation was lost on neither Magda nor Malocchio. The raunie watched the Invidian troops, alert to the possibility of attack. Though she tried not to betray her concern, she could not help but glance at Soth. The death knight’s burning eyes were little more than faint sparks. His arms hung slack at his sides.
The lord of Invidia continued to catalogue his grievances against Soth and Sithicus, pausing now and then to voice his hatred for the Vistani and anyone who harbored their kind. Hidden within his rant were the words of a command. It was heard only by the poisonous serpents that lay coiled near the river. These creatures, by the lives they had stolen, had helped the waterway earn the name “Widow’s Tears.”
At Malocchio’s subtle bidding, a trio of serpents crossed from the weed-choked bank on the Invidian side of the river and slithered onto Sithican soil. With the stealth only snakes possess, they crept along the rail. Hidden by the lengthening shadows of twilight, they crawled to within striking distance of Magda’s legs.
With a savage snarl, Sabak whirled to meet them. In the blink of an eye, he had two of the snakes in his jaws. Green poison and limp pieces of reptilian flesh mingled with the hound’s own frothy drool and hung like icicles from his chops.
Alerted by Sabak’s snarl, Magda turned in time to kick the third serpent away, back toward Sithican soil. The hound took off after the retreating snake. As he bounded across the bridge, Sabak’s paws burned smoking prints into the stones. Like his ancestor, the mythical hound of Kulchek the Wanderer, this beast did not hunt without leaving a clear trail for his master.
The last serpent was almost to the grass and relative safety when Sabak grabbed its tail and flung it from side to side. The serpent reared, hissing loudly and displaying its glistening fangs. Sabak paused for a moment; the potential threat this creature posed was clear even to his canine intelligence. He made a few quick feints at its head, trying to draw the serpent forward. Finally, the enraged snake lunged toward one of Sabak’s front paws. The hound sidestepped the attack and snatched the creature by the tail. With a deliberate twist of his neck, Sabak snapped the serpent’s head against the bridge. Sabak’s tail swished happily as he sniffed the gory remains.
Magda breathed a sigh of relief as her faithful hound trotted back onto the bridge. She was so startled by the abrupt attack, so caught up in Sabak’s skirmish, that she hadn’t seen Soth draw his sword. The death knight leveled the blade at Malocchio in a manner that made it quite clear he intended to bury that ancient steel in the black-garbed man’s skull.
For his part, Malocchio sighed raggedly. “In for a penny,” he said and gave the signal for his troops to attack.
The vanguard clattered onto the bridge. Soth did not reposition his blade as the ogres thudded across the stones. He kept his arm stiff, the blade pointed at Malocchio, stoically watching the ogres rumble forward in a sweaty, swearing mass.
Magda cast Soth a frantic glance. The ogres were close enough that she could smell the stench they gave off, and still the death knight stood. Was he lost in another reverie?
Magda got her answer an instant later. The first of the ogres had reached the tip of Soth’s outstretched sword, far enough onto the bridge that the entire vanguard had pressed in behind him. The ogre raised its club with both hands and shouted “Invidia!”
The ogre did not see Soth open his empty left hand. Neither did he see the small spark of orange flame erupt from the death knight’s palm and speed toward him like a sling bullet. The ogre only realized his peril at the very instant his patriotic cry had left his lips. A fireball, his sluggish ogre mind noted. Uh oh-The magical fire incinerated the ogre at the front of the charge, then swelled to fill the bridge. The rest of the brutes in the first two ranks met a similar fate. Those half-dozen ogres toward the back were less fortunate. The fire had diminished just enough to allow them to realize they were ablaze, then to shriek in agony before they died.
The burst of flame blinded Magda for a moment, and the horrible whoosh made by its passing left her ears ringing, so she didn’t hear the clumsy splashing beneath the bridge, nor Sabak’s warning barks. Before she knew she was in danger, her head snapped back with incredible force.
A brutish hand covered in rotting river weeds had grabbed her by the hair. As the stars of pain cleared from her eyes, she saw the ogre to which that much-crusted hand belonged. He was clinging to the rail. He and the remaining troops had used the vanguard’s demise as a distraction.
At a thought, Gard was in her hand. Before the brute could drop back into the water, taking her-or at least her head-with him, Magda twisted around so that her stomach braced against the rail. The ogre’s face was so close to hers that she could count the hairs on each wart dotting his pug nose.
The Vistana lashed out with her cudgel and kicked away from the rail at the same time. That single blow from Gard caved in the left side of the ogre’s face; his death cry was punctuated by the clatter of his broken teeth on the rail. But the ogre never relaxed his grip. As the corpse dropped from the bridge, it tore loose a bloody trophy. The ogre sank into the weedy mire still clutching that hank of hair and scalp.
Panting, Magda fell against the rail. She looked up to see Soth calmly assessing the situation. Ogres were scrambling up from the water on either side of the bridge. A dozen human soldiers held both ends. The troops on the Sithican side, still wet from their charge across the river, had swords. The soldiers standing with Malocchio had strung bows and were already nocking arrows.
The Invidian lord gestured to the archers. “They may not kill you, Soth, but they’re almost certain to pierce her withered heart.”
The death knight waved his gauntleted hand once, directing outward the awful, unearthly cold that wracked his body. Before the archers could loose a single arrow, they found themselves facing a wall of ice that sealed off the entire Invidian end of the bridge. Soth turned to the other human soldiers. “You are in my kingdom now,” he said, and raised his sword.
Magda didn’t see what happened next; two more ogres had pulled themselves up onto the bridge. She turned to face the first. The other had to contend with Sabak.
The Vistana sparred with the brute, testing him for weaknesses. She knew better than to rush the duel. Impatience would only cause her to make a fatal mistake. But Magda was tiring much more quickly than she had expected. Each blow from the ogre’s club made her arms shake just a little more, her guard drop a little lower. When she remembered that there were more ogres to fend off after this one, Magda felt an unprecedented despair sweep over her. Once I could have stood alone against such threats, she thought, but no longer.
That realization was und
erscored for Magda when the ogre’s next blow knocked her from her feet. She kept her hold on Gard, countering with a strike that broke the brute’s leg. Still she was vulnerable, if the ogre could only take advantage of the situation.
Fortunately, he couldn’t.
Sabak entered the fray, having finished off his own adversary. As the wounded ogre hobbled forward, the hound sank his teeth into the brute’s side. He came away with a mouthful of rusted chain mail and more than a little of the flesh beneath. When the ogre toppled, Sabak went for his throat.
A weird howl drew Magda’s attention back to Lord Soth. The death knight stood at the bridge’s center, arms raised over his head. The air behind him had split open. In full battle regalia, thirteen banshees thundered out of the torn sky. They rode chariots of bone drawn by wyverns. The dragon-winged beasts lifted them high over the bridge, but only long enough to choose a victim. The howling spirits descended upon the troops trapped on the Sithican side of the span.
Magda watched in horror as the banshees drew their weapons, swords and flails of ice, and attacked. The humans tried to run, but that only fueled the wyverns’ battle lust. The beasts lashed out at the soldiers with talons, impaling them with barbed tails. Those few the wyverns spared were cut down by the banshees long before they reached safety.
The ogres fared no better. Soth slaughtered the few remaining on the bridge. The rest fell to Sabak or the banshees. The brutes who had yet to climb onto the bridge were the fortunate ones. Their awkwardness or their fear of Soth had left them some hope of escape. Using the bridge as cover, they stumbled back to the Invidian shore. Onkar, the ogre with the missing nose, led the retreat. They skirted the wall of ice, which had finally begun to show the effects of the archers’ steel, and vanished into the woods.