Flint nodded uncomfortably. Tasslehoff shuffled his feet.
“Only Tanis could have told her about the dream we all shared,” Laurana continued, swallowing a choking feeling in her throat. “I saw him with her in the dream, just as I saw Sturm’s death. The dream’s coming true.…”
“Now wait a minute,” Flint said gruffly, grabbing hold of reality as a drowning man grabs a piece of wood. “You said yourself you saw your own death in the dream, right after Sturm’s. And you didn’t die. And nothing hacked up Sturm’s body, either.”
“I haven’t died yet, like I did in the dream,” Tas said helpfully. “And I’ve picked lots of locks, well, not lots, but a few here and there, and none were poisoned. Besides, Laurana, Tanis wouldn’t—”
Flint shot Tas a warning glance. The kender lapsed into silence. But Laurana had seen the glance and understood. Her lips tightened.
“Yes, he would. You both know it. He loves her.” Laurana was quiet a moment, then, “I’m going. I’ll exchange Bakaris.”
Flint heaved a sigh. He had seen this coming. “Laurana—”
“Wait a minute, Flint,” she interrupted. “If Tanis received a message saying you were dying, what would he do?”
“That’s not the point,” Flint mumbled.
“If he had to go into the Abyss itself, past a thousand dragons, he’d come to you—”
“Perhaps and perhaps not,” said Flint gruffly. “Not if he was leader of an army. Not if he had responsibilities, people depending on him. He’d know I’d understand—”
Laurana’s face might have been carved of marble, so impassive and pure and cold was her expression. “I never asked for these responsibilities. I never wanted them. We can make it look as if Bakaris escaped—”
“Don’t do it, Laurana!” Tas begged. “He’s the officer who brought back Derek and Lord Alfred’s body at the High Clerist’s Tower, the officer you shot in the arm with the arrow. He hates you, Laurana! I—I saw the way he looked at you the day we captured him!”
Flint’s brows drew together. “The lords and your brother are still below. We’ll discuss the best way to handle this—”
“I’m not discussing anything,” Laurana stated, lifting her chin in the old imperious gesture the dwarf knew so well. “I’m the general. It’s my decision.”
“Maybe you should ask someone’s advice—”
Laurana regarded the dwarf with bitter amusement. “Whose?” she asked. “Gilthanas’s? What would I say? That Kitiara and I want to exchange lovers? No, we’ll tell no one. What would the knights have done with Bakaris anyway? Execute him according to knightly ritual. They owe me something for all I’ve done. I’ll take Bakaris as payment.”
“Laurana”—Flint tried desperately to think of some way to penetrate her frozen mask—“there is a protocol that must be followed in prisoner exchange. You’re right. You are the general, and you must know how important this is! You were in your father’s court long enough—” That was a mistake. The dwarf knew it as soon as he opened his mouth and he groaned inwardly.
“I am no longer in my father’s court!” Laurana flashed. “And to the Abyss with protocol!” Rising to her feet, she regarded Flint coldly, as if he were someone she had just met. The dwarf was, in fact, strongly reminded of her as he had seen her in Qualinesti, the evening she had run away from her home to follow after Tanis in childish infatuation.
“Thank you for bringing this message. I have a great deal to do before morning. If you have any regard for Tanis, please return to your rooms and say nothing to anyone.”
Tasslehoff cast Flint an alarmed glance. Flushing, the dwarf tried hastily to undo the damage.
“Now, Laurana,” he said gruffly, “don’t take my words to heart. If you’ve made your decision, I’ll support you. I’m just being an old crotchety grandfather, that’s all. I worry about you, even if you are a general. And you should take me with you—like the note says—”
“Me, too!” cried Tas indignantly.
Flint glared at him, but Laurana didn’t notice. Her expression softened. “Thank you, Flint. You too, Tas,” she said wearily. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. But I really believe I should go alone.”
“No,” Flint said stubbornly. “I care about Tanis as much as you. If there’s any chance he is dy—” The dwarf choked and wiped his hand across his eyes. Then he swallowed the lump in his throat. “I want to be with him.”
“Me, too,” mumbled Tas, subdued.
“Very well.” Laurana smiled sadly. “I can’t blame you. And I’m sure he’d want you to be there.”
She sounded so certain, so positive she would see Tanis. The dwarf saw it in her eyes. He made one final effort. “Laurana, what if it’s a trap? An ambush—”
Laurana’s expression froze again. Her eyes narrowed angrily. Flint’s protest was lost in his beard. He glanced at Tas. The kender shook his head.
The old dwarf sighed.
2
The penalty of failure.
T here it is, sir,” said the dragon, a huge red monster with glistening black eyes and a wing span that was like the shadows of night. “Dargaard Keep. Wait, you can see it clearly in the moonlight … when the clouds part.”
“I see it,” replied a deep voice. The dragon, hearing the dagger-edged anger in the man’s tone, began his descent swiftly, spiraling round and round as he tested the shifting air currents among the mountains. Nervously eyeing the keep surrounded by the rocky crags of the jagged mountains, the dragon looked for a place to make a smooth and easy landing. It would never do to jounce Lord Ariakas.
At the far northern end of the Dargaard Mountains stood their destination—Dargaard Keep, as dark and dismal as its legends. Once—when the world was young—Dargaard Keep had graced the mountain peaks, its rose-colored walls rising in graceful sweeping beauty up from the rock in the very likeness of a rose itself. But now, thought Ariakas grimly, the rose has died. The Highlord was not a poetic man, nor was he much given to flights of fancy. But the fire-blackened, crumbling castle atop the rock looked so much like a decayed rose upon a withering bush that the image struck him forcibly. Black latticework, stretching from broken tower to broken tower, no longer formed the petals of the rose. Instead, mused Ariakas, it is the web of the insect whose poison had killed it.
The great red dragon wheeled a final time. The southern wall surrounding the courtyard had fallen a thousand feet to the base of the cliff during the Cataclysm, leaving a clear passage to the gates of the keep itself. Breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief, the red saw smooth tiled pavement beyond, broken only here and there by rents in the stonework, suitable for a smooth landing. Even dragons—who feared few things on Krynn—found it healthier to avoid Lord Ariakas’s displeasure.
In the courtyard below, there was a sudden fever of activity, looking like an anthill disturbed by the approach of a wasp. Draconians shrieked and pointed. The captain of the night watch came hurrying to the battlements, looking over the edge into the courtyard. The draconians were right. A flight of red dragons were indeed landing in the courtyard, one of them bearing an officer, too, by the armor. The captain watched uneasily as the man leaped from the dragonsaddle before his mount had come to halt. The dragon’s wings beat furiously to avoid striking the officer, sending dust billowing about him in moonlit clouds as he strode purposefully across the stones of the courtyard toward the door. His black boots rang on the pavement, sounding like a death knell.
And, with that thought, the captain gasped, suddenly recognizing the officer. Turning, nearly stumbling over the draconian in his haste, he cursed the soldier and ran through the keep in search of Acting Commander Garibanus.
Lord Ariakas’s mailed fist fell upon the wooden door with a thunderous blow that sent splinters flying. Draconians scrambled to open it, then shrank back abjectly as the Dragon Highlord stalked inside, accompanied by a blast of cold wind that extinguished the candles and caused torch flames to waver.
Casting a swift glance
from behind the gleaming mask of the dragonhelm as he entered, Ariakas saw a large circular hallway spanned by a vaulted, domed ceiling. Two giant curved staircases rose from either side of the entryway, leading up to a balcony on the second level. As Ariakas looked around, ignoring the groveling draconians, he saw Garibanus emerge from a doorway near the top of the stairs, hastily buttoning his trousers and pulling a shirt over his head. The captain of the watch stood, quaking, next to Garibanus, pointing down at the Dragon Highlord.
Ariakas guessed in a moment whose company the acting commander had been enjoying. Apparently he was filling in for the missing Bakaris in more ways than one!
“So that’s where she is!” Lord Ariakas thought in satisfaction. He strode across the hallway and up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Draconians scuttled out of his path like rats. The captain of the guard disappeared. Ariakas was fully halfway up the stairs before Garibanus had collected himself enough to address him.
“L-Lord Ariakas,” he stammered, stuffing his shirt into his pants and hurrying down the stairs. “This is an—er—unexpected honor.”
“Not unexpected, I believe?” Arkiakas said smoothly, his voice sounding strangely metallic coming from the depths of the dragonhelm.
“Well, perhaps not,” Garibanus said with a weak laugh.
Ariakas continued climbing, his eyes fixed on a doorway above him. Realizing the Lord’s intended destination, Garibanus interposed himself between Ariakas and the door.
“My lord,” he began apologetically, “Kitiara is dressing. She—”
Without a word, without even pausing in his stride, Lord Ariakas swung his gloved hand. The blow caught Garibanus in the ribcage. There was a whooshing sound, like a bellows deflating, and the sound of bones cracking, then a wet soggy splatter as the force of the blow sent the young man’s body into the wall opposite the stairs some ten yards distant. The limp body slid to the floor below, but Ariakas never noticed. Without a backward glance, he resumed his climb, his eyes on the door at the top of the stairs.
Lord Ariakas, commander-in-chief of the dragonarmies, reporting directly to the Dark Queen herself, was a brilliant man, a military genius. Ariakas had nearly held the rulership of the Ansalon continent in his grasp. Already he was styling himself “Emperor.” His Queen was truly pleased with him, his rewards from her were many and lavish.
But now he saw his beautiful dream slipping through his fingers like smoke from autumn fires. He had received reports of his troops fleeing wildly across the Solamnic plains, falling back from Palanthas, withdrawing from Vingaard Keep, abandoning plans for the siege of Kalaman. The elves had allied with human forces in Northern and Southern Ergoth. The mountain dwarves had emerged from their subterranean home of Thorbardin and, it was reported, allied with their ancient enemies, the hill dwarves and a group of human refugees in an attempt to drive the dragonarmies from Abanasinia. Silvanesti had been freed. A Dragon Highlord had been killed in Ice Wall. And, if rumor was to be believed, a group of gully dwarves held Pax Tharkas!
Thinking of this as he swept up the stairs, Ariakas worked himself into a fury. Few survived Lord Ariakas’s displeasure. None survived his furies.
Ariakas inherited his position of authority from his father, who had been a cleric in high standing with the Queen of Darkness. Although only forty, Ariakas had held his position almost twenty years—his father having met an untimely death at the hands of his own son. When Ariakas was two, he had watched his father brutally murder his mother, who had been attempting to flee with her little son before the child became as perverted with evil as his father.
Though Ariakas always treated his father with outward shows of respect, he never forgot his mother’s murder. He worked hard and excelled in his studies, making his father inordinately proud. Many wondered whether that pride was with the father as he felt the first thrusts of the knife-blade his nineteen-year-old son plunged into his body in revenge for his mother’s death—and with an eye to the throne of Dragon Highlord.
Certainly it was no great tragedy to the Queen of Darkness, who quickly found young Ariakas more than made up for the loss of her favorite cleric. The young man had no clerical talents himself, but his considerable skills as a magic-user won him the Black Robes and the commendations of the evil wizards who instructed him. Although he passed the dreadful Tests in the Tower of High Sorcery, magic was not his love. He practiced it infrequently, and never wore the Black Robes that marked his standing as a wizard of evil powers.
Ariakas’s true passion was war. It was he who had devised the strategy that had enabled the Dragon Highlords and their armies to subjugate almost all of the continent of Ansalon. It was he who had insured that they met with almost no resistance, for it had been Ariakas’s brilliant strategy to move swiftly, striking the divided human, elf, and dwarven races before they had time to unite, and snap them up piecemeal. By summer, Ariakas’s plan called for him to rule Ansalon unchallenged. Other Dragon Highlords on other continents of Krynn were looking to him with undisguised envy, and fear. For one continent could never satisfy Ariakas. Already his eyes were turning westward, across the Sirrion Sea.
But now—disaster.
Reaching the door of Kitiara’s bedchamber, Ariakas found it locked. Coldly he spoke one word in the language of magic and the heavy wooden door blew apart. Ariakas strode through the shower of sparks and blue flame that engulfed the door into Kitiara’s chamber, his hand on his sword.
Kit was in bed. At the sight of Ariakas she rose, her hand clutching a silken dressing gown around her lithe body. Even through his raging fury, Ariakas was still forced to admire the woman who, of all his commanders, he had come to rely on most. Though his arrival must have caught her offguard, though she must know she had forfeited her life by allowing herself to be defeated, she faced him coolly and calmly. Not a spark of fear lit her brown eyes, not a murmur escaped her lips.
This only served to enrage Ariakas further, reminding him of his extreme disappointment in her. Without speaking, he yanked off the dragonhelm and hurled it across the room where it slammed into an ornately carved wooden chest, shattering it like glass.
At the sight of Ariakas’s face, Kitiara momentarily lost control and shrank back in her bed, her hand nervously clasping the ribbons of her gown.
Few there were who could look up Ariakas’s face without blenching. It was a face devoid of any human emotion. Even his anger showed only in the twitching of a muscle along his jaw. Long black hair swept down around his pallid features. A day’s growth of beard appeared blue on his smooth-shaven skin. His eyes were black and cold as an ice-bound lake.
Ariakas reached the side of the bed in a bound. Ripping down the curtains that hung around it, he reached out and grabbed hold of Kitiara’s short, curly hair. Dragging her from her bed, he hurled her to the stone floor.
Kitiara fell heavily, an exclamation of pain escaping her. But she recovered quickly, and was already starting to twist to her feet like a cat when Ariakas’s voice froze her.
“Stay on your knees, Kitiara,” he said. Slowly and deliberately he removed his long, shining sword from its scabbard. “Stay on your knees and bow your head, as the condemned do when they come to the block. For I am your executioner, Kitiara. Thus do my commanders pay for their failure!”
Kitiara remained kneeling, but she looked up at him. Seeing the flame of hatred in her brown eyes, Ariakas felt a moment’s thankfulness that he held his sword in his hand. Once more he was compelled to admire her. Even facing imminent death, there was no fear in her eyes. Only defiance.
He raised his blade, but the blow did not fall.
Bone-cold fingers wrapped around the wrist of his swordarm.
“I believe you should hear the Highlord’s explanation,” said a hollow voice.
Lord Ariakas was a strong man. He could hurl a spear with force enough to drive it completely through the body of a horse. He could break a man’s neck with one twist of his hand. Yet he found he could not wrench himself loose
from the chill grasp that was slowly crushing his wrist. Finally, in agony, Ariakas dropped the sword. It fell to the floor with a clatter.
Somewhat shaken, Kitiara rose to her feet. Making a gesture, she commanded her minion to release Ariakas. The Lord whirled around, raising a hand to call forth the magic that would reduce this creature to cinders.
Then he stopped. Sucking in his breath, Ariakas stumbled backward, the magic spell he had been prepared to cast slipping from his mind.
Before him stood a figure no taller than himself, clad in armor so old it predated the Cataclysm. The armor was that of a Knight of Solamnia. The symbol of the Order of the Rose was traced upon the front, barely visible and worn with age. The armored figure wore no helm, it carried no weapon. Yet Ariakas—staring at it—fell back another step. For the figure he stared at was not the figure of a living man.
The being’s face was transparent. Ariakas could see right through it to the wall beyond. A pale light flickered in the cavernous eyes. It stared straight ahead, as if it, too, could see right through Ariakas.
“A death knight!” he whispered in awe.
The Lord rubbed his aching wrist, numb with the cold of those who dwell in realms far removed from the warmth of living flesh. More frightened than he dared admit, Ariakas bent down to retrieve his sword, muttering a charm to ward off the aftereffects of such a deadly touch. Rising, he cast a bitter glance at Kitiara, who was regarding him with a crooked smile.
“This—this creature serves you?” he asked hoarsely.
Kitiara shrugged. “Let us say, we agree to serve each other.”
Ariakas regarded her in grudging admiration. Casting a sidelong glance at the death knight, he sheathed his sword.
“Does he always frequent your bedroom?” he sneered. His wrist ached abominably.
“He comes and goes as he chooses,” Kitiara replied. She gathered the folds of the gown casually around her body, reacting apparently more from the chill in the early spring air than out of a desire for modesty. Shivering, she ran her hand through her curly hair and shrugged. “It’s his castle, after all.”
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