Dragonlance 08 - Dragons of the Highlord Skies (41 page)

“Did Raistlin really teach you how to do that?” Laurana asked, sitting beside Tas, hoping to distract the kender from his torment of the knight.

“Yes, he did,” said Tas proudly, adding eagerly, “I’ll tell you the story. It’s very interesting. Flint was designing a setting for a jeweled pendant for one of his customers, and the pendant went missing. I offered to help him find it, and so I left to go to Raistlin and Caramon’s house to ask if they might have seen it. Caramon wasn’t home and Raistlin had his nose in a book. He said I wasn’t to bother him and I said I would just sit down and wait for Caramon to come back, and Raistlin asked me if I meant to stay there all day, annoying him, and I said yes, I had to find this jeweled pendant, and then he put down the book and came over to me and turned all my pockets inside out and, would you believe it? There was the pendant!”

Tas had to stop for breath before continuing. “I was really happy to think I’d found it and I said I’d take it back to Flint, but Raistlin said, no, he would take it to Flint after supper and I was to go away and leave him alone. I said I thought I would wait for Caramon anyway, because I hadn’t seen him since yesterday. Raistlin eyed me in that way of his that kind of sends crawly feelings through you and then he asked would I go if he taught me a magic trick? I said I would
have
to go, because I’d want to show the trick to Flint.

“Raistlin held the jewel up to light and he said the magic words and he made rainbows! Then he had me hold the jewel up the to the light and taught me the magic words and
I
made rainbows! He showed me another magic trick, too. Here, I’ll do it for you.”

He held the crystal to the sun so that the light passed through it and beamed brightly on the floor. Tas shoved aside one of the fur rugs, exposing the ice beneath. He held the crystal steady, focusing it on the ice. The light struck the ice and it began to melt. The children gasped in wonder.

“See?” said Tas proudly. “Magic! The time I did that for Flint, I set the tablecloth on fire.”

Laurana hid a smile. It wasn’t magic. Elves had been using prisms for as long as there had been elves and crystals, fire and rainbows.

Fire and rainbows.

Laurana stared at the melting ice and suddenly she knew how the Ice Folk could defeat their foes.

Laurana stood up. First she thought she would tell the others, and then she thought she wouldn’t. What was she doing? Here she was, an elf maiden, telling battle-hardened Solamnic knights how to fight. They wouldn’t listen to her. Worse, they might laugh at her. There was another problem. Her idea depended on faith in the gods. Was her faith strong enough? Would she bet her life and the lives of her friends and the lives of the Ice Folk on that faith?

Laurana walked slowly back. She imagined speaking out and felt suddenly queasy, as she had the very first time she’d played her harp for her parents’ guests. She’d given a beautiful performance, or so her mother had told her. Laurana couldn’t remember any of it, except throwing up afterward. Since her mother’s death, Laurana had acted as her father’s hostess. She had performed numerous times for their guests. She’d spoken before dignitaries and later, she’d talked to the assembled refugees, and she had not been nervous, perhaps because she had been in her father’s shadow or in Elistan’s. Now, if she spoke up, she would have to stand on her own in the glaring sunlight.

Keep quiet, you fool
, Laurana scolded herself and she was determined to obey and then she thought of Sturm, telling her to stand up for what she believed in.

“I know how to assault Ice Wall Castle,” she said and, as they stared at her in astonishment, she added breathlessly, surprised at her own courage, “With the help of the gods, we will make the castle attack itself.”

10

Too much of a good horse.

The priest of Takhisis.

itiara rode all night. Salah Kahn’s horse had been languishing in his stall for several days and was spoiling for a gallop. Kitiara had to occasionally rein him in, so as not to tire him out. They had a long journey ahead of them. Dargaard Keep was hundreds of miles distant, and danger crouched behind every bush, watched every crossroads.

She tried to calculate, as she rode, when her absence would be discovered. She hoped not until dawn, at the time of her scheduled execution, but with the chaos over the destruction of the Dark Abbey, she couldn’t be certain. Dragons would carry the news of her escape far and wide. Word would spread fast.

The one advantage she had was that Ariakas would assume she would head for Solamnia, there to join up with her blue dragon command and lead them in rebellion against him. It was what he would have done in her place. He would concentrate his searchers on the roads leading to Solamnia. Those bounty hunters would be disappointed. Kit wasn’t heading west. She was riding north, to the accursed realm known as Nightlund, a land no one visited unless he had a death wish or an exceptionally good reason for not being anywhere else.

Part of Solamnia, the realm had originally been known as Knightlund. The land was heavily wooded, rugged, and mountainous. Not suitable for farming, at the time of the Cataclysm it was only sparsely populated. A wealthy and influential Knight of the Rose, Sir Loren Soth, was ruler of the region. His family’s keep was built in the northern part of Dargaard Mountains. Designed to resemble a rose, the castle was considered a marvel of architecture. Family legend had it that Soth’s grandfather imported dwarven craftsman to build the castle and that its construction took one hundred years. A city called Dargaard grew up around the keep, but most of the other settlements in Knightlund were located along the river and did brisk business in milling, logging, and fishing.

The Cataclysm devastated Knightlund. Earthquakes split the mountains. The river overflowed its banks and, in some places, shifted course. Every settlement along the river was destroyed. Lives were lost, livelihoods ended.

The people in other regions of Solamnia were also hard-hit by the disaster. Concentrating on their own survival, they could not worry about what was happening in Knightlund. Most believed the lord of the region was dealing with the disaster.

Then survivors came stumbling out of that land, telling strange and terrible tales. The once-magnificent Dargaard Keep was destroyed, and that was not the worst of the story. Murder had been done in the keep; its mistress and her little child had died horribly in a fire that had swept through the wondrous castle, leaving it blackened and crumbling. With her dying breath, so it was said, she had called down a curse on the man who could have saved her and his child, but in his jealousy and rage, he had walked off and left them to perish in the flames.

Sir Loren Soth, once a proud and noble knight of Solamnia, was now a knight of death, doomed to live in the shadowy realm of the undead. The wailing voices of the elf women who shared his curse moaned night after night, repeating to him the tale of his tragic downfall. Warriors of fire, bone and blackened armor, stained with their own blood, were constrained by their master’s curse to mount eternal patrol atop the crumbling walls and slay in fury any living person who challenged them.

The gods of Light had doomed Lord Soth to a tormented existence, forced to constantly reflect upon his own guilt. They hoped eventually he would ask forgiveness, redemption. Takhisis wanted to claim him for her own and she gifted him with powerful magicks, hoping to persuade him to turn his back on salvation and serve her. But Soth had apparently turned his back on all gods—good and evil, for he would not march forth to terrorize the world as Takhisis had hoped. He remained in his keep, brooding and terrible, dealing merciless death to those who dared disturb him.

These were the reports from Knightlund, and few believed them at first, but more stories came out of that dark land and all told the same tale. The city of Dargaard, which had escaped the Cataclysm relatively unscathed, was abandoned; its citizens fled in terror, vowing to never go back, but with the stories of dread banshees and undead warriors came tales of fabulous treasure, wealth unimaginable stashed away in the storerooms of the keep. Many were the greedy and venturesome who traveled to Dargaard in search of fame, wealth, and glory. The only ones who ever returned were those who had been so stricken by terror at the sight of the keep’s blackened walls and broken towers that they never went closer. Such was the land’s evil repute that some grim jokester suggested the name be changed from “Knightlund” to “Nightlund”. Over time, that was how the realm became generally known, and now it was written thus on the maps.

No one had actually seen Lord Soth, or, if any person had, he had not lived to tell of it. Was the death knight a myth, a creation of mothers trying to scare children into good behavior? Perhaps it was a tale from the excited mind of some inventive kender? Or did he really exist?

Kitiara would have been the first to discount such fanciful stories but for Queen Takhisis, who had been so persistent in her urging, and for another reason. Kit’s father had traveled to Nightlund. Drawn by rumor of wealth untold and scoffing at the “granny tales,” Gregor uth Matar was one of the few to make it back alive. This happened because, as he freely admitted, his instinct for self-preservation had convinced him that no amount of money was worth the danger. He had always joked about his journey to Nightlund, but when, as a little girl, Kit had pressed him for details, Gregor had told her that some things were best forgotten. He had laughed when he said it, but there had been a shadowed look in his eye that she had never seen before, a look she had never forgotten.

And here she was, riding to this dread land, home to the living as well as the dead, a haunt for the desperate and dangerous, driven to hiding in Nightlund because they were hunted everywhere else.

As Kitiara rode that night, she thought of this, thought of her father, recalled the horror stories she had heard. Not far from Neraka, she came to a fork in the road. One highway led west. The other led north. Kit reined in her horse. She looked to the west, to Skie, who would be over his sulking fit by now and wondering what had happened to her. She was sorely tempted to take the western route, return to her troops, challenge Ariakas. Do just what he feared she would do.

She considered this option, forcing herself to examine it. Skie would side with her, she was sure of that. She would not be able to count upon the other blue dragons. Queen Takhisis, angry over Kit breaking her vow, would turn her back on her and the blue dragons would not go against their Queen. Kit’s own troops would be divided. She might rally half of them to her cause. The others would desert. Handsome Bakaris would join her, but he was not all that trustworthy. He’d turn on her in an instant if the money was good enough.

Kitiara shifted in the saddle. There was one other reason, the most important, why she would not ride west. She might break her vow to her Queen, but Kitiara uth Matar could not break a vow to herself. She had vowed to return to Ariakas in triumph, strong and powerful, so strong he would not dare cross her. To accomplish that, she needed a strong and powerful ally—an ally such as Lord Soth. It was either victory or death.

Kitiara rode north.

Day dawned, bright and cold, and Kit realized the horse was going to be a problem. The magnificent stallion with his jet-black glossy coat, his long mane, sweeping tail, and powerfully muscled body was obviously a valuable animal. People stopped and stared at him in admiration. Their gaze shifted to his rider, to Kit, clad once more in her gambeson. She had used the poignard to slash the threads’ embroidered design off the quilted fabric of her gambeson, already worn from much use. She had no cloak in this cold weather and that made her look even more down-at-the-heels. Everyone who saw that horse would instantly wonder how a shabby sellsword such as herself had managed to acquire the rare and noble beast. Everyone she met would be certain to remember the expensive horse and its beggarly rider.

Kit left the main road, seeking shelter in the woods. She searched until she found a shallow depression where she could tether the horse. Worn out from her exhausting ordeal, she needed sleep. Kit’s mind was busy with the problem of the horse as she drifted off. She had named him Windracer and she needed his strength, power and stamina to carry her to Nightlund. She needed his speed in case Ariakas’s forces closed in on her. She had to find some way they could ride openly on the road and not call attention to themselves.

Her mind worked as she slept, and Kit woke refreshed in the early evening, with what she hoped was a solution to her problem.

Leaving the horse concealed in the forest, Kit made herself even more disreputable-looking. She smeared dirt on her face, shook her hair over her eyes, then returned to the highway. She was still too close to Neraka for comfort, and her heart beat rapidly when a troop of goblin soldiers marched past on their way into the city. She crouched behind a tree and the goblin soldiers passed by her, never noticing she was there.

A merchant caravan approached, but it was guarded by several well-armed mercenaries and she allowed it to pass. After that, with night closing in, the number of travelers dwindled. Kit was starting to grow frustrated and impatient. She was wasting valuable time, and she had just about decided to risk riding as she was when the traveler she had been hoping to meet came along—a priest of Takhisis, obviously of high rank, probably a spiritor. A large medallion of faith dangled ostentatiously from a heavy golden chain around his neck. He wore black velvet robes and a lamb’s wool cloak of fine quality. His fingers were adorned with rings of jet and onyx set in gold. His saddle and trappings were expensive hand-tooled leather.

He was a short man, of stout build with a ruddy complexion. Unlike the dark priests of the Temple, he obviously enjoyed his dinner and his wine. He carried no weapon other than a riding crop. Kit waited for his armed escort to appear, but no one came. She heard no sound of hoofbeats. Though he was riding the roads near Neraka alone, the priest did not seem worried or nervous. Kit should have wondered about this odd circumstance but she was in haste and this victim was too perfect to pass up.

As the priest’s horse drew near, Kit rose from her place by the tree. Keeping her head lowered to conceal her features, she limped up to the priest, her hand extended.

“Please, dark father,” she said, her voice harsh, “spare a steel coin for a soldier wounded in the service of our Queen.”

The priest cast her a baleful glance and raised his riding crop in a threatening manner.

“Wretched cur, I have nothing to give you,” he said churlishly. “It is unseemly for one of our troops to be caught begging. Take your miserable carcass off the public road!”

“Please, father …” Kitiara whined.

The priest lashed out at her with the riding crop, striking for her head. The blow missed, but Kit gave a cry and fell back as though it had landed.

The priest rode on without a look. Kit waited a moment to be certain he was alone and no guards were following at a distance. Seeing no one else on the road, she ran lightly and silently after him. She leaped, vaulted onto the back of the horse, and wrapped her arm around the priest’s neck. She put her knife to his throat.

The priest was taken completely by surprise. At the touch of cold steel, he gasped and went stiff in the saddle.

“I asked you nicely the first time, dark father,” Kit said reproachfully. “You refused to give me anything, so now I’m insisting. It’s only because you are a servant of the Dark Queen that I don’t slit your throat, so you might want to thank her. Now get down off the horse.”

She shifted the knife to the man’s ribs and gave him a prod. She could feel his pudgy body quivering, and she assumed it was with fear. The dark priest sullenly dismounted. Kitiara slid deftly off the horse to land on the ground behind him. He started to turn. She kicked his knees out from under him, and he sagged to the ground with a groan.