Dalamar The Dark

Chapter 6

In the dawn of the day, with the sky turning to rosy lavender and the late night mists rising from the little lily ponds in the Garden of Astarin, Alhana Starbreeze went through the Tower of the Stars, through high chambers and low, in search of her father. She went in silence, as was her way. Her soft leather slippers made no sound upon the marble floors. The hem of her azure damasked gown did not whisper against her ankles. She wore upon her arms the golden bracelets her father had given to her mother upon the day of her birth, nine circlets, each shaped like twining vines. These did not ring one against another as she went, for she walked with her hands clasped before her, tightly held so that her knuckles shone white where bone pressed against flesh.

She went from room to room. In his empty bedchamber a green tunic lay upon the bed, embroidered in silver runes. Beside lay hose of softest brushed wool. At the foot of the bed on the cool marble floor stood Lorac's slippers, golden leather tanned to buttery softness. A small coffer of mahogany chased with silver sat unopened beside the tunic. In it, she knew, lay the Speaker's jewels, necklaces, pendants, circlets to hold his hair from his brow-all made by the most skilled dwarf smiths in the days when there had been commerce between Silvanesti and Thorbardin. That was a long time ago. Now the dwarves kept themselves apart from the world in their mountain fastness, and the Silvanesti elves stayed always within the confines of the Barrier Hedge. The only thing they had in common was their need to keep themselves removed from the rest of the world and a stubborn disdain for outlanders.

Alhana did not find her father in the library or the music room. She hastened to the solarium, but he was not there. Neither was he in the arboretum, though she had hoped to find him there, enjoying the rising light in those sweet sunny rooms where flowers grew in riotous profusion. She went out onto the gallery where it rounded the well of the audience chamber, and her heart sank.

A green glow, shimmering and shining, reached up from the floor of the audience hall and stained the white marble rail and balustrades to the unpleasant green of algae scumming on a still pond. A cold sheen of sweat broke out on her face. She had seen this light before, in dark dungeons in the late watches when her father had waked from nightmare.

Her hand on the cold marble rail, Alhana leaned over, looking down into the well, and mere she saw Lorac Caladon. He sat upon his throne, hunched over a little. He held something cradled in his hands, a thing from which that dreadful light emanated. The green glow shone upward, giving his face a terrible hue, a corpse's hue.

Alhana shuddered. Her heart pounding, she lifted her skirts and ran swiftly across the floor to the wide, winding staircase.

"Father!" she cried, her voice ringing in echoes around the gallery and into the well of the chamber below.

He looked up, but only slowly, as one who is roused from a deep sleep. His face held no color but that of the orb's green glow. With startling suddenness, his eyes flashed, like lightning leaping out from running clouds.

"Be still!" he called.

And he was her father. He was her king.

Alhana stopped midstep, her hand upon the cold marble banister, her foot poised to take the last step.

"Father?"

His voice an ugly snarl, he said, "Be still."

The light of the orb pulsed, like a malevolent heart beating.

Far away, up in the gallery, she heard the voices of servants talking to each other, a woman's raised in question, a man's enjoining silence. Alhana took a step closer to her father, down from the last stair and onto the floor of the audience hall.

"Father," she whispered, "Father, you frighten me. Are you well?"

He did not move, not even to look at her. Another step, and another, and now, by the last light of day, she saw her father's lips tremble. Why, this is the trembling of an old man, she thought, the thought itself like a whisper of treason.

Lorac old? Lorac trembling? Lorac-oh, dear gods, was he frightened?

The green glow faded, drawing back from the king's face, from the hall, and returning to the orb itself. Emboldened, Alhana took another step and then another. At last, when Lorac made no protest, she ran swiftly across the hard marble floor, her little slippers pattering now, her arm-rings jangling in metal's harshest voice. She ran, and she knelt beside him, the Speaker on his throne.

He sat in perfect stillness. His face, like marble, showed no expression, but his eyes, his eyes…

Alhana Starbreeze covered her father's hands with her own, gently. When he did not resist, she lifted the orb and set it upon the stand. In the moment she did, she nearly dropped it. The stand, once white ivory and shaped like two hands lifted in offering, had changed. It was the same stand. She knew it. She could see that, but something had warped it. Something had scraped and clawed it, and now it was not two hands at all, but one large, broad claw with five talons curled. Into those talons, into that claw, the dragon orb of Istar fit as neatly as it had always done.

"My child," whispered the king, her father looking up at her, "my poor Alhana."

His eyes were awash in sadness so deep, so terrible, that Alhana, seeing them, felt she would fall into them as into a drowning pool.

"Father." She touched his face and held it with both hands. Beneath her hands she felt a trembling, the flesh of his face quivering. It was, she thought in horror, in pity, as though he longed to weep but had lost the ability. "Father, please tell me. What is wrong?"

He looked at her from within the frame of her white hands, and now she saw that his pupils were dilated, grown so wide that they gave his eyes the appearance of being coal black. Alhana shivered, and she withdrew her glance in fear. But she did not withdraw her hands, for she feared that if she let him go, her father, the king of all the Sylvan Land, would fall away, spinning down into a terrible dark place.

"My child," he said, his voice quavering. "My child, the world is lost."

What spell had the orb cast to catch him? What spell out of doomed Istar worked here in Silvanost?

"No," she murmured, stepping back, her hands still on him so that he, too, must rise. "No," she said softly, urgently, her arm around his shoulders. How thin they seemed! How bowed down with care! "Father, the world is not lost. Neither is the kingdom. We have the gods on our side. We have E'li himself, and so we will prevail."

Lorac said nothing to agree or protest. Breathing shallowly, like a man in sleep, he allowed her to lead him down from the throne and up the long winding staircase to his chambers. They went in haste, or as quickly as Alhana could manage, for though she neither saw nor heard servants in the gallery, she did hear their voices in the various chambers they passed. She must not allow Lorac to be seen in this condition, not under any circumstance.

Once safely inside her father's suite, she found his chamberlain there, old Lelan, and gave the king into his care. Whispering and hushing, Lelan took the king to his bed and settled him there, sweeping all his careful arrangement of clothing to the floor and tossing the mahogany coffer into a corner of the room as though it were all some pile of leaves blown in with the wind.

"What has happened to him, Lady?" he asked, pulling the bedsilk up over the king's shoulders, daring from long affection to smooth the king's hair back from his face as he would a feverish child's.

Alhana shook her head. "I don't know. I found him like this." She said nothing of the Orb. "Tend him as best you can, Lelan, and be certain to say nothing to anyone. My father will come to himself soon, and we will see that he suffers only from lack of sleep and too much care. I don't have to tell you how deeply it would embarrass him to learn that news of this"-she groped for a word-"this discomfiture had reached anyone's ears."

Lelan bowed. "It will be as you say, my lady."

It would be, she knew, and that knowledge made up the full sum of her confidence as she walked out into the gallery again. Down in the audience hall where the Emerald Throne sat, where the Dragon Orb crouched upon the transformed stand, green light again pulsed. Very faintly it shone now, as though from a great distance.

By the light of that glow Alhana Starbreeze had the sudden vision of her own hands upon the crystal globe, her own fingers grasping the smoothness of the Orb, light shining through and showing what flesh hid-bones and muscle and even blood pulsing through veins. She saw herself lifting the Orb and carrying it all the way up to the gallery, there to lean out over the rail and fling this artifact of unholy Istar down to smash upon the cold marble of the floor below.

And yet, even as she longed to do that, she knew she would not. In some far part of her soul she knew that she must not. The Orb was not only an artifact of Istar, it was an artifact of Lorac Caladon's Test of Magic. The Orb and the King of the Silvanesti were inextricably linked.

The world is lost! So the king had whispered, so her father had groaned as he stared into the light of an orb that had seen the Cataclysm take Istar down into the sea and reshape the face of Krynn.

Alhana turned her back on the light pulsing like a long slow heartbeat, and she went along the gallery to her own quarters. There she sat in the embrasure of the tall window that faced northward. A wisp of fragrance drifted through the open window, the scent of morning in Silvanost, of the dewy herb beds in the Garden of Astarin, the pungent odor of boxwood, the sweetness of breads and cakes as the bakers trundled their wares to the kitchen doors of their customers. It all smelled too normal, so real and safe. And yet, not much was normal these days, and what was real- the war on the border, the refugees on the King's Road, a hungry horde, a shambling host-did not inspire her to feel safe.

Lord Tellin sat in utter stillness, quiet in body, quiet of speech, quiet-Dalamar was certain-in heart and soul. Sitting beneath a tall aspen, beneath leaves gone golden, the cleric was like a statue, something hewn from the raw strong stone of the earth, unmoved and unmoving. He sat but a hand's breadth from a fall that would have killed him if he moved too swiftly or the wrong way, a long stony tumble to the floor of a narrow glen.

Did he breathe? Dalamar looked up from his work of sorting spell components and squinted at Tellin. Faintly, the sweat-stained cloth of his white robe rippled over Tellin's breast. He breathed, but only barely.

The Windriders on griffins had long since flown away north, gone in the night under cover of darkness to take their positions for the battle. Dalamar didn't miss them. The odor of lion's musk and bird mustiness was not a pleasant one. He looked up at the sky where storm clouds hung low. Beneath them the aspen leaves glowed like a king's hoard of gold. All around them, mages and Wildrunners sorted themselves out into two groups, the sound of them like the rattle of swords, the rumble of storms soon to come. Tellin, though, sat at peace beneath the branches of a lone aspen, and didn't seem to hear them. Upon his knee lay a scroll containing the Dawn Hymn to E'li, but he had a keener eye for the embroidered scroll case than for the scroll itself. It might be argued that he knew the hymn by heart, but if it were, Dalamar wouldn't be the one arguing. If Lord Tellin had any prayer in his heart now, it was that all the barriers of tradition and law fall before a returning hero, that Lord Ralan would grant a cleric his sister's hand.

Dalamar bent his head over his work, checking to see that the oils he had brought-of heliotrope, mimosa, and sandalwood-remained safely stoppered in their earthen vials. He had sealed these with wax from candles on the altars of E'li. So Ylle Savath had commanded all her mages to do. He lifted each and smelled, scenting nothing on the wax and so knowing the seals were true. He examined each small pouch of herbs, flax seed, rowan bark, and elf dock. All these were sound, no pouch had become torn or uncinched in the northward run.

A damp wind rose up, chill here in the north of the kingdom, smelling of rain and sorrow. Aspen leaves rattled, sounding like regret, and on the wings of the wind came the faint trace of smoke. Tellin looked around frowning, then shook his head, realizing the truth of the smoke. It didn't come from this encampment of Wildrunners. Lord Konnal, Garan's second and the commander of his ground forces, had firmly forbidden fires. They were too close to the border for that. This smoke was old and heavy, the smoke of a large burning that had happened some time ago.

"A village," Dalamar said.

Tellin nodded. The smoke was the death-flag hung above one of the villages or towns that had fallen to Phair Caron's raiding parties. They'd seen too many of those on the way north, ghost-villages where the land lay black, where trees stood staggering with their bark burned off and others lay felled by axes for the savage joy of killing when there were no more elves to murder. And there had been murder done, great murder and terrible killing. The proof lay in the wolf-picked bones littering the villages, the empty-eyed skulls gleaming white in the moonlight. By sign of clothing, it became sickeningly clear that reports of selective killing-of the murder of men and women of fighting age only-were true. The dragonarmy was depriving the elves of defenders and leaving the weak and hungry to drain resources.

Voices rose, then hushed suddenly, the sound of the Wildrunners getting ready to depart. Lord Garan had made his plans so that the city of Sithelnost would not be caught between two armies, so that it would not find itself on the fall-back route if-gods forbid-his army should have to retreat. So the Wildrunners and the mages now sat at the stony edge of the forest, west of the Thon-Thalas and well north of Sithelnost. The Trueheart Mines lay but ten miles outside the western bounds of the forest itself, the high tors where Phair Caron had her base camp less than half that distance north and east. Most of the soldiers would continue north to the border, there to wait word to begin the attack on Phair Caron's army. All but a few of the mages would stay here, hidden below in the glen. Protected by a guard of Wildrunners posted high on the glen's walls, the mages would be able to work their magic in reasonable safety. Those of the mages who went with the bulk of the army were strong in the skills of mindspeaking so that they could relay Lord Garan's commands back to Ylle Savath.

Ravens spun out, black over the glen, cawing and rasping and sailing down low. Something lay dead down there, and the raucous ravens rejoiced.

Lord Tellin said, "You wish you were going with the Wildrunners, don't you, Dalamar?"

Dalamar shrugged, head low as he replaced the pouches and vials into his leather scrip. Never looking behind to the drop below, to the ravens calling the feast, Tellin came and sat beside Dalamar, his erstwhile servant.

"It doesn't seem fair, does it? That you have to stay here when you want to be there."

Again Dalamar shrugged. He hadn't yet become used to Lord Tellin's keen eye, quick questions, and the uncomfortable insight. Sometimes it seemed the cleric could look right into a person's heart and see the joys there, the fears, and the sorrows. Others among the army liked that, Wildrunners coming to a cleric for comfort and assurance in these days before the battle. Dalamar didn't like it at all. He was too used to his privacy and well content to keep to himself. And, were truth to be told-though this truth must never be! — he found little comfort in the idea of E'li's abiding love. Each time he heard the phrase or listened as some cleric spoke of the god as the Dragon's Lord, the Defender of Good, he felt like one hearing the hollowness of a lie.

Where was E'li the Defender while young elves were being killed by the legions of Takhisis? Where was the Dragon's Lord while warriors on dragonback drove old men and women and children out onto the road to starve and die? Not here, certainly not here.

The wind grew damper, cooler still. "It's all right," Dalamar said, breathing the smoke of a cruel burning. "I'm here, my lord, and taking my part in the plan."

It was a small part, though perhaps only he thought so, for Dalamar, who had conceived this bold plan Lady Ylle and Lord Garan had scorned and Speaker Lorac had embraced, was not chosen to stand in the enspelled chain of mages, bound hand and heart to each other and dedicated, body and soul, to the weaving of those powerful spells of illusion that would confuse the Highlord's army and give the Silvanesti their chance to rid their borders of the threat that had so long brooded there. No, he was to be a minor part of his own idea's execution, in the web of the magic but standing only to support the working mages with his own strength so theirs would not fail. What, after all, could a mage do in such a strong weaving of magic if he had but simple apprentice skills? Nothing, nothing. And yet, murmured a bitterness in his heart, he was not what they thought him, was he? He had more skill than they might imagine, those skills acquired and nurtured in a darker place than any school Ylle Savath permitted.

"Come on," Dalamar said, cinching his scrip tight and standing to stretch his long legs. "Let's see if we can find ourselves a place in the ravine before every mage around starts crowding in."

"Ah," said Lord Tellin, "I'm not going into the ravine. I'm going north with the Wildrunners." He twisted a wry smile. "They say it's all very nice to have a cleric with the army, but better if he earns his keep. I'm going to be one of the runners between the commanders of the ground troops. But I'll walk down with you. There's a Wildrunner down there who wants me to bless a medallion. Come on, let's

go."

In brooding silence Dalamar followed the cleric down

the winding narrow path that would take them to the glen's floor. The lower they went the fainter the sounds of the departing Wildrunners became. The breeze that had quickened above, died now between the stony walls of the glen. From below drifted the cries of ravens at their bloody festival. The way was rough and the footing unsteady. As Tellin's sure stride took him down the path, and the white shape of him was seen now only as shimmering in shadows, Dalamar remembered a thing he'd overheard about himself one night in the kitchen of Lord Ralan's hall: "If that one was a dwarf, you'd say he was of all dwarves the most dour. I don't think there's even a word in our tongue to say as much about him."

It had not been a compliment, but Dalamar wouldn't deny it had been a reasonably accurate observation. He was not a man possessed of many friends. If truth were told, there were very few people he liked, even fewer he respected. Smiling grimly, he realized the whole lot of those he respected went walking ahead of him, the cleric Tellin Windglimmer who dared a dream as unreachable as the one he himself held.

He looked down into the shadows of the glen where day had not yet come, down where ravens quarreled at their breakfast. A sudden gust of wind tore at his stained white robes and whipped his dark hair all around his face. Lord Tellin cried out, stumbling, his footing lost. His heart thundering as though those were his own feet staggering, Dalamar grabbed the cleric's arm and pulled back hard. Tellin staggered but held his ground.

Shuddering, Tellin gasped, "Thank you."

Dalamar bent to pick up the pouch Tellin had let fall. His hand shook, but bending and reaching hid that. Out from the top of the pouch peeked Lady Lynntha's embroidered scroll case, a hummingbird in flight above a ruby red rose. He poked it back down and returned the pouch.

"Have a care, my lord," he said, his mouth still dry with the sudden fear. "It would be a shame to lose you before the army gets to use you."

Lord Tellin laughed weakly. They went the rest of the way in silence, down into the glen where they parted ways, each vanishing into the restless crowd of white robes.

In the tent of the Highlord, the scent of leather and steel and sweat mingled with stinging smoke and the remains of Phair Caron's breakfast. Food depots had been moved in the night, and all the stores hauled around the back of the nearest tor. The forges were still, their fires low, the smoke that had hung over the camp dissipating on the morning breeze. On the tors dragons woke, stretching long necks, their red scales shining in the sullen light of a sunless day. One sounded a long bugling cry-Blood Gem, eager for the day and the battle. Outside, the army moved, battalions of ogres forming, squadrons of humans taking up their swords and barbed lances. They sounded like a distant avalanche, stone rolling unstoppable down a mountainside, sweeping all before it into death.

Phair Caron smiled, liking the image. She heard the voices of draconians, their language like cursing, as they belted on their harnesses and took up their swords, but she saw no goblins. That was because two nights before they had ranged out in small troops, her spies and her scouts.

One goblin had come to her in the first hour of the day to tell her he'd sensed a great commotion in the Silvanesti Forest, elves marching north. "But I don't know where the griffins are, lady," the goblin had said, sniveling as all its kind do, scuffling the dirt and looking at her out the corner of its eye as if it were the third hound in a hard pack. "Sky leaves no track, wind tells some things and not others." Goblin-talk, but she took his meaning. Griffins and Windriders were near, but not seen. Well, Garan of the Silvanesti was no fool. He had his griffins secreted somewhere and never mind the stink of them.

Outside, one sharp voice shouted an order, and another responded. Phair Caron looked around at the bare essentials of her camp-life-a small coffer in which she kept her clothing, the table upon which her breakfast lay scattered in grease and bones, the map still pinned to the tent wall. No more did she have but her war-gear, and that lay ready upon the lid of the coffer. With careful, precise motions, she lifted her mail shirt of shining steel and pulled it over her head. It settled comfortably on her shoulders, the weight of it like the hand of an old friend. She drew on her trews of red leather and belted on a long, tooled leather scabbard. She took up her hair and braided it, winding those braids round her head like a golden crown. She lifted her dragon helm and placed it on her head. Last, she reached for her sword. The grip, made of one whole ruby, fitted perfectly into her hand. Sliding the blade into the scabbard, she whispered, "I am yours, Dark Majesty. Lady of Death, Lady of Dread, my soul is yours, my heart is yours."

Her prayer made, she walked out into the young day beneath an iron sky. If the sun rose, it rose far away and behind a gray curtain of storm waiting to be born. Outside the tent, two human soldiers snapped to sudden attention. On the ground before them lay the dragon saddle, a hulk of leather and straps and steel. She gestured to it, and one of the two hefted it onto his shoulder. The other she dismissed with a curt word, sending him into the mass of the army to find his troop, his captain, and his place in the battle. She went to a clear place near the tors and bid the soldier wait. He did, his eye on the Highlord and the dragons on the heights.

"Stand easy," she said, and she didn't blame the man for his unease. She asked a lot of her soldiers, but not the impossible until the impossible was necessary. For some, like this one, it was only barely possible to stand still and not flee the great beasts on the tors.

Phair Caron lifted her head, smelling the damp breeze, the stink of sweat and leather, the musk of dragon, the weary odor of campfires being doused. These things she smelled as one who encounters a favored perfume. On the tors the dragons roused, their cries contentious, the beasts growing restless. Hawks and eagles and the gulls from the sea had abandoned the sky. Even ravens kept low, hiding in the shadows of the tors, waiting.

"It is good," she said to the day and to the soldier beside her.

A scar-faced youngster from Nordmaar by the blond look of him, one of those who'd early seen the wisdom of running with the strongest wolf, he said, "Milady, it is." He looked to the tors again, the red dragons preening. He swallowed hard, but managed a grin. " We'll carve those elf bastards to ribbons."

She slapped his shoulder-he staggered a bit-and said, "Go now, back to your troop-unless you'd like to help me haul the saddle onto the dragon."

Color mounted to his face, a flush of embarrassment because he'd like to have gone away, or one of pride for being asked to help the Highlord at this important task. The youngster held his ground. "I'm at your command, Milady."

Phair Caron's laughter rang out against the tors. He, and thousands other. Nearby, soldiers stopped what they were doing, some curious, others moved to cheer. She raised her arm, circling her fist in the air. Blood Gem lifted up from the stony height, wide wings spread. The soldier went white, but he stood firm as the dragon sailed down to the clear place where Phair Caron waited. At the Highlord's request, Blood Gem bent his knees, bringing his bulk closer to the ground. Together, the guard and his commander hefted the saddle, shifting it onto the dragon's broad back.

"Enough," she said when that was done. "Go now and find a good place for the battle."

He saluted, and then he bowed, his eyes on hers, a little in love with her, but mostly terrified of her. "The Dark Queen go with you, Milady," he said.

"She always does. Now, go!"

Phair Caron completed the task of saddling the dragon herself, and no one in her army had the temerity to offer to help. She had long ago learned that in battle she must harness herself and harness her dragon. No one else could do that so well as she. No one else could be counted on. The dragon lowered a wing for her to climb, lifting her when she was steady and letting her clamber into the saddle.

Her heart found a rhythm unlike any other she knew, thundering on the brink of battle. She looked around at the other dragons spiraling down from the tors, her captains saddling their steeds, her army spreading around her, finding the shape of their battle formations. Her blood ran in her, racing through her veins, slamming through the chambers of her heart, sounding like the drums of war. Somewhere Lord Garan of the Silvanesti waited, his army in place, his Windriders ready to take the griffins into battle.

"It's strange we don't smell the griffins," she said. "I usually smell those things no matter if they are upwind or down."

Blood Gem turned his head, his long neck snaking back so that he and his rider were eye to eye. He opened his mighty jaws wide and the dull light of the gray morning slid lazily along fangs that were as long as Phair Caron's forearm. Never worry, lady. I have a taste for griffin today. We'll flush them out no matter how deeply they hide.

She looked back over her shoulder to the dark shadows of the tors. The wind came from the east, and she imagined that she could smell the sea so far away. She looked at her five commanders. Each sat ready upon his own crimson steed with five wily warriors ranged behind, ready to support the legions on the ground. Beside her, Tramd rode upon Doom. The mage's handsome face shone lively with anticipation, cheeks flushed, blue eyes glinting. Seeing him like that, it wasn't easy to remember that here was simply unliving flesh made animate by the will of a mage who resided in a place that he'd not chosen to reveal to Phair Caron.

"All right," she said, her right hand gripping the hold on the saddle, her left filled up with her ruby-gripped sword. "Let's do what we do best, my friend."

With a wild cry, Blood Gem lifted from the ground, and in the moment his roaring began, the sky filled up with a concerted shout like war-horns winding as the rest of the red dragons leaped into the sky. Wide wings outspread, they sailed from the tors, each with a helmed and armored rider, the Highlord and her mage and four of her strongest, most canny commanders.

Screaming his joy, Blood Gem thrust downward with powerful wings, surging ahead of all. Upon his back Phair Caron matched his battle cry, her voice the rough song of all her rage. She pumped her fist in the air, saluting her dragon riders. One after another, the mage and her commanders returned the salute.

Below, her army had found its shape, five legions of ogres and humans and the dark-spawn of Takhisis's heart- the fierce dragonmen who were neither human or dragonkind, but a hideous combination of each. They went like an arrow, the dragonmen at the fore to make the arrow's point, the other companies spreading out behind so that, from this cold height, they looked like the arrow's shaft.

This glorious arrow she would loose right into the heart of the Silvanesti nation.

The speed of her flight took her out past the foothills, out where her raids had blackened the forest with burning. Nothing grew there now, nothing lived. All the game was dead or had fled, and the vegetation was burned to the root.

Phair Caron laughed, and her laughter echoed in the roaring of her dragons.

"They will starve in winter, those elves, and they will sell their souls to me for food if ever they want to eat again!"

Blood Gem banked and turned, taking her back over the army, the roaring mass of warriors who now longed to loose every horror of war as though setting a feast table for their Dark Queen. Phair Caron lifted the visor of her dragon helm. Sword high, she flung back her head and loosed her wild war cry again. The cold wind of the heights stung tears from her eyes and tried to snatch the breath from her lungs. That no wind could do, for it seemed to Phair Caron of Tarsis that from the day she'd scrabbled in the gutters of the city for a copper tossed by an elf complaining of his supper, she had been aimed like a weapon in the hand of the Dark Goddess herself, right at this killing moment.

"For Takhisis!" she shouted. And on the ground, the dark tide of her army echoed her roaring charge.

In the very moment the cries reached her, as her heart was rising, her blood running hot with the lust for killing, Phair Caron turned and saw what had become of the griffins.

They were behind her.