“Tell me about yourself, Kitiara uth Matar,” Ariakas said, gesturing to the slave to refill their wine cups. He noted that Kitiara drank hers neat and that she enjoyed it, but she could put the cup aside. Unlike Balif, who had drained his first and gulped his second and was now starting on a third.
“Not much to tell, sir,” she said. “I was born and raised in Solace in Abanasinia. My father was Gregor uth Matar, a Solamnic of noble birth, a Knight. He was one of their best warriors,” she added, a statement of fact, not bragging. “But he couldn’t stomach their petty little rules, the way they try to run a man’s life. He sold his sword and his talents where he chose to sell it. He took me to see my first battle when I was five and taught me to use a sword, taught me how to fight. He left home when I was young. I haven’t seen him since.”
“And you?” Ariakas asked.
Kitiara lifted her chin. “I’m my father’s daughter, sir.”
“Meaning you don’t like rules?” He frowned. “You don’t like to obey orders?”
She paused, thinking out her words carefully, shrewd enough to know her future depended on them, but with strength and pride and confidence enough to tell the truth.
“If I found a commander I admired, a commander in whom I could place my trust and my respect, a commander who had both common sense and intelligence, I would obey the orders given by such a commander. And …” She hesitated.
“And?” Ariakas repeated, urging her on with a smile.
She lowered her dark lashes, her eyes glimmered beneath them. “And, of course, such a commander must make it worth my while.”
Ariakas leaned back from the table and laughed. He laughed long and loud, banging his cup on the table, laughed until one of his aides—defying all convention—peered inside the tent to see what had so captured his lordship’s fancy. Ariakas was not generally celebrated for his good humor.
“I think I can promise you a commander who can satisfy all your requirements, Kitiara uth Matar. I have need of several more officers. I think you will fill the bill. You must prove yourself, of course. Prove your courage, your skill, your resourcefulness.”
“I am ready, sir,” Kitiara said coolly. “Name your task.”
“Captain Balif, you have done well,” said Lord Ariakas. “I will see to it that you are rewarded.” Writing on a small scrap of paper, Ariakas yelled for his aide, who entered with alacrity. “Take Captain Balif to the counting room. Give the pursers this.” He handed over the chit. “Come back to see me tomorrow, Captain. I have another assignment for you.”
Balif rose somewhat unsteadily to his feet. He accepted his dismissal with good humor, having caught sight of the amount written down on the chit. He knew well enough that he’d lost Kitiara, that she’d moved to a higher level, a level where he could not follow. He also knew her well enough to guess that she was not likely to exert herself in the future on his behalf. He’d had his reward. He rested his hand on her shoulder as he passed. She shrugged off his touch, and so they parted.
Having rid himself of his aide and Captain Balif, Ariakas pulled shut the tent flaps. He came up behind Kitiara, grabbed hold of a handful of dark, crisp curls, pulled her head back, and kissed her on the lips, kissed her hard, roughly.
His passion was returned, returned with a force that startled him. She kissed him fiercely, her nails digging into the bare flesh of his arms. And then, when he would have taken more, she broke free of him.
“Is this how I am to prove myself, sir?” she asked. “In your bed?”
“No, damn it! Of course not,” he said harshly. Grabbing hold of her around her waist, he pulled her body close to his. “But we might as well enjoy ourselves!”
She leaned away from him, arching her back, her hands on his chest. She was not being coy, she wasn’t fighting him. Indeed, to judge by her glistening eyes and quickened breathing, she was fighting her own desires.
“Think, sir! You say you want to make me an officer?”
“I do. I will!”
“Then if you take me to your bed now, it will be whispered among the soldiers that you have made an officer of your toy, a plaything. You said yourself that the men should have respect for their officers. Will they have respect for me?”
Ariakas regarded her in silence. He had never before met a woman like this, a woman who could meet him—and best him—on his own ground. Still, he did not release her. He had never before met a woman who so tantalized him.
“Let me prove myself to you, sir,” Kitiara continued, not drawing away from him, but nestling close, close enough that he could feel her warmth, the quivering tension in her body. “Let me make a name for myself in your army. Let your soldiers speak of my courage in battle. Then they will say that Lord Ariakas takes a warrior to his bed, not a whore.”
Ariakas ran his hand through her curly hair, entangling his fingers. His hand clenched in her curls, pulling her hair painfully. He saw the involuntary tears start to her eyes. “Never before has any woman said ‘no’ to me and lived to tell of it,” he said.
He gazed at her long, waiting to see a flicker of fear in those dark eyes. If he had seen it, he would have snapped her neck.
She regarded him calmly, steadfastly, with a hint of the crooked smile on her lips.
Ariakas laughed, somewhat ruefully, and released her. “Very well, Kitiara uth Matar. What you say makes sense. I will give you a chance to prove yourself. I have need of a messenger.”
“I suppose you have plenty of message boys,” Kitiara said, looking displeased. “I seek glory in battle.”
“Let us say that I had plenty of message boys,” Ariakas said with an unpleasant smile. He poured two cups of wine, to blunt the edge of their unfulfilled desire. “Their numbers are dwindling. I have sent four prior to this and not a single one has returned.”
Kitiara’s good humor returned. “This sounds more promising, sir. What is the message and to whom is it to be delivered?”
Ariakas’s heavy black brows drew together, his expression stern and grim. His hand clenched over the wooden wine cup. “This is the message. You will say that I, Ariakas, general of the armies of Her Dark Majesty, command him, in the name of Her Dark Majesty, to report to me here in Sanction. You will tell him that I have need of him, that Her Dark Majesty has need of him. You will tell him that he defies me—and his Queen—at his peril.”
“I will carry your message, sir,” said Kitiara. She arched an eyebrow. “But the man may need persuading. Do I have your permission to do what I need to do in order to force his compliance?”
Ariakas smiled slyly. “You have my permission to try to force him to obey me, Kitiara uth Matar. Though you may not find that an easy task.”
Kitiara tossed her head. “I have never met the man who said ‘no’ to me, sir, and lived to tell of it. What is his name? And where do I find him?”
“He lives in a cave in the mountains near Neraka. His name is Immolatus.”
Kitiara frowned. “Immolatus. An odd name for a man.”
“For a man, yes,” said Ariakas, pouring out another cup of wine. He had the feeling she was going to need it. “But not for a dragon.”
7
KITIARA LAY BENEATH HER BLANKETS, HER ARMS BENEATH HER HEAD, glowering up at the red moon, the laughing red moon. Kit knew very well why the moon laughed.
“Snipe hunt,” Kitiara fumed aloud, with a vicious snap of her teeth over the words. “It’s a goddam snipe hunt!”
Tossing off the blankets, for she could not sleep, she stomped around the small fire, drank some water, then, bored and frustrated, she sat back down, to poke at the red-glowing charred logs with a stick. Sending a shower of sparks into the night sky, she accidentally doused what remained of the small blaze. Kitiara was remembering a snipe hunt, remembered the prank, which had been played on the gullible Caramon.
All the companions were in on the prank, with the exception of Sturm Brightblade, who, if he had been told about it, would have lectured them interminably and end
ed by spoiling their fun. He would have let the snipe out of the bag, so to speak.
Whenever the friends came together, Kitiara, Tanis, Raistlin, Tasslehoff, and Flint spoke of the glories of the snipe hunt, of the excitement of the chase, the ferocity of the snipe when cornered, the tenderness of snipe meat, which was said to rival chicken in flavor. Caramon listened with round eyes, open mouth, and growling stomach.
“The snipe can only be caught by the light of Solinari,” Tanis said.
“You must wait in the woods, quiet as a sleepwalking elf, with a bag in your hand,” Flint counseled. “And you must call, ‘Come to the bag for a treat, snipe! Come to the bag for a treat!’ ”
“For you see, Caramon,” Kitiara told her brother, “snipes are so gullible that when they hear these words, they will hurry straight to you and run right into the bag.”
“At that point, you must tie the ends of the sack together swiftly,” Raistlin instructed, “and hold the bag fast, for once the snipe realizes he has been tricked, he will try to free himself and, if he does, he will tear apart his captor.”
“How big are they?” Caramon asked, looking a little daunted.
“Oh, no larger than a squirrel,” Tasslehoff assured him. “But they have teeth sharp as a wolf and claws sharp as a zombie’s and a great spiked tail like a scorpion.”
“Be sure to take a good strong sack, lad,” Flint advised, and was then forced to muzzle the kender, who was suddenly overcome with a severe attack of the giggles.
“But aren’t the rest of you coming?” Caramon asked, surprised.
“The snipe is sacred to elves,” Tanis said solemnly. “I am forbidden to kill one.”
“I’m too old,” Flint said with a sigh. “My snipe hunting days are over. It is for you to uphold the honor of Solace.”
“I killed my snipe when I was twelve,” Kitiara said proudly.
“Gee!” Caramon was impressed, also downcast. He was already eighteen and had never heard of a snipe before now. He held up his head. “I won’t let you down!”
“We know you won’t, my brother,” Raistlin said, laying his hand on his twin’s broad shoulder. “We are all very proud of you.”
How they laughed that night, all of them together in Flint’s house, picturing Caramon standing out there all night, pale and quivering in the darkness, calling out, “Come to my bag for a treat, snipe!” And they laughed still more in the morning, when Caramon appeared, breathless with excitement, holding up a bag containing the elusive snipe, which was wriggling a great deal.
“Why’s it giggling?” Caramon asked, peering at the sack.
“That’s a sound made by all captured snipe,” Raistlin said, barely able to speak for his suppressed laughter. “Tell us of your hunt, my brother.”
Caramon told them how he had called and how the snipe had come rushing out of the darkness and jumped into his sack, how he—Caramon—had bravely pulled together the end of the sack and, after a struggle, subdued the vicious snipe.
“Should we hit it over the head before we let it out?” Caramon asked, brandishing a stick.
“No!” the snipe squeaked.
“Yes!” Flint roared, making an unsuccessful attempt to snatch the stick from Caramon.
At this, Tanis, feeling the prank had gone far enough, freed the snipe, who looked very much like Tasslehoff Burrfoot.
No one laughed louder than Caramon, once the joke was explained to him, all of them assuring him that they had fallen for it. All except Kit, who said that she, for one, had never been such a booby as to go on a snipe hunt.
At least not until now.
“I might as well be standing in these blasted mountains with a sack in my hand calling ‘Here, dragon, here! I have a treat for you!’ ” She swore in disgust, kicked irritably at the charred remains of the log and wondered again as she had wondered for the past seven days—ever since she had left Sanction—why General Ariakas had sent her on this ridiculous mission. Kitiara believed in dragons about as much as she believed in snipes.
Dragons! She snorted in disgust. The people of Sanction talked of nothing else but dragons. People claimed to worship dragons, the Temple of the Dark Queen was formed in the image of a dragon, Balif had once asked Kit if she would be afraid to meet a dragon. Yet, to Kitiara’s knowledge, none of these people had ever set eyes upon a dragon. A real fire-breathing, brimstone-eating dragon. The only dragon they knew was a dragon carved from the cold stone of a mountain.
When Ariakas had first told her she was meeting a dragon, Kit had laughed.
“It is no joke, uth Matar,” General Ariakas had told her, but she had seen his dark eyes glint.
Then, still thinking it was a joke and he was making sport of her, she had been angry. The glint had disappeared from the general’s dark eyes, cold and cruel and empty.
“I have given you a mission, uth Matar,” General Ariakas had told her, his voice as cold and empty as his eyes. “Take it or leave it.”
She had taken it—what choice did she have? She had requested an escort of soldiers. General Ariakas had refused brusquely. He could not, he said, afford to lose any more men on this mission. Did uth Matar feel incapable of handling this assignment on her own? Perhaps he would find someone else. Someone more interested in gaining his favor.
Kitiara had accepted General Ariakas’s challenge to go into the Khalkist mountains, where this alleged dragon named Immolatus lived. The dragon had lived here for centuries, or so Ariakas told her, prior to being awakened by the Queen of Darkness. Kitiara had no choice but to accept.
Her first three days out of Sanction, Kitiara had been on her guard, watching for the ambush she was certain was coming, the ambush ordered by Ariakas, the ambush meant to test her fighting skills. She vowed that she would not be the one left holding the bag, or, if she was, that there would be heads inside.
But three days passed quietly. No one sprang at her out of the darkness, no one jumped her from behind a bush except an irate chipmunk, disturbed in his springtime foraging.
Ariakas had provided her with a map showing her destination, a map he said came from the priests of the Temple of Luerkhisis, a map revealing the location of the cavern of the supposed dragon. The nearer she drew to her destination, the more desolate became the countryside. Kitiara began to be uneasy. Certainly if she had chosen a location where one might find a dragon, this would be it. On the fourth day, even the few hopeful vultures that had been keeping a hungry eye on her since Sanction disappeared with ominous-sounding croaks as she climbed farther up the side of the mountain.
Not a bird, not an animal, not a bug did Kit see on her fifth day. No flies buzzed around her meal of dried trail beef. No ants came to drag off the crumbs of waybread. She had traveled far and fast. Sanction was out of sight behind the peaks of the second mountain, its peak hidden by the perpetual cloud of steam that hung over the Lords of Doom. Sometimes she could feel the ground tremble beneath her feet. She had put this down to the rumblings of the unquiet mountains, but now she wondered. Perhaps it was the rumbling of a great wyrm, turning and twisting in his dreams of treasure, dreams of death.
On the sixth day, Kitiara began to feel truly alarmed. The ground on which she walked was empty of life, barren. Admittedly she was up past the tree line and had left spring’s warmth far below. But she should have found a few scraggly bushes clinging precariously to the rocks in the sunshine, patches of snow in the shadows. No snow remained, and she wondered what had caused it to melt. The one bush she did find on the trail was blackened, the rocks scorched, as if a forest fire had swept the side of the mountain. But there could not be a forest fire in an area where there were no trees.
She was puzzling over this phenomenon, had just about decided it must have been a lightning strike, when she rounded a gigantic granite boulder and stumbled upon the corpse.
Kit started and fell back a pace. She had seen plenty of dead men before, but none quite like this. The body had been consumed in fire, a blaze so hot that it had
left behind only the larger bones of the body, such as the skull and the ribs, the spine and the legs. Smaller bones, those of the toes and fingers, were burned away.
The corpse lay facedown. He had been fleeing his enemy when the fire blasted him, searing the flesh from his body. Kitiara recognized the emblem on the blackened helm that still covered the head. The same emblem was on his sword, which lay several paces behind him. She guessed that if she turned over the corpse to look at the breastplate in which lay his bones, like a rib roast on a metal platter, she would see the same emblem yet again—the black-feathered eagle with outstretched wings, the emblem of General Ariakas.
Kitiara began to believe.
“You might have the last laugh after all, Caramon,” she said ruefully, squinting in the sunlight to scan the top of the mountain.
She saw nothing except blue sky, but feeling exposed and vulnerable on the side of the steep mountain, she crouched behind the granite boulder, noted as she did so that where the boulder itself had been touched by the flames, the rock had started to melt.
“Damn it all to the Abyss and back,” Kit said to herself, as she sat down on the ground in the boulder’s shadow, with the charred corpse keeping her gloomy company. “A dragon. I’ll be damned. A real, live dragon.
“Oh, stop it, Kit,” she scolded herself. “It’s impossible. You’ll be believing in ghouls next. The poor bastard was hit by lightning.”
But she was lying to herself. She could see the man clearly, fleeing from pursuit, flinging down his sword in his panicked flight, its blade of good solid steel, useless against such a terrible enemy.
Kitiara reached her hand into a leather pouch marked with the emblem of the black eagle and pulled out a small scroll—vellum rolled tight and thrust through a ring. She regarded the scroll with frowning thoughtfulness, chewing her nether lip. General Ariakas had given her the scroll, telling her that she was to deliver it to Immolatus.
Furious at the deceit being played upon her, Kit had taken the scroll without looking at it, thrust it angrily into her pouch. She had listened with barely concealed scorn to Ariakas telling her what he knew of dragons, just as she herself had told Caramon all she knew of snipes.
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