Knight of the Black Rose

TWO

“Where is that fool?” Lord Soth growled impatiently. He clutched at the warped, worm-eaten arms of his throne. “The task was simple enough. Caradoc should have returned long before now.”

A transparent figure with long, flowing hair and gently pointed ears hovered before Soth. He has cheated you as you have cheated all who ever trusted you, the banshee keened.

The betrayer is betrayed! another unquiet spirit shrieked as she slithered through the air.

The banshee closest to Soth threw back her head and laughed. Her twelve sisters picked up the cackle. They whirled about the large entry hall that served as Soth’s throne room. Their howling echoed from the stone walls of the circular hall, up the twin stairs that climbed to the balcony, even up to the vaulted ceiling. Anyone within a mile of the keep could have heard the terrifying cacophony through the hall’s shattered doors, but few mortals ever ventured close to Dargaard Keep and the banshees’ wailing would drive even the fiercest creatures from the rocky cliffs.

A banshee moved closer to Soth, her fine-featured visage twisted with hatred. The gods penned the book of your punishment in the blood of two murdered wives and the tears of your own dead child.

The banshee was close enough that Soth could have reached out and struck her if he’d wished. Her face was fleetingly that of a beautiful elven woman. Though her eyes were pale, a slight hint of purest blue shone in them. The wild hair wreathing the creature’s head had been golden long ago. Even the banshee’s lithe movements belied a grace that was granted to elves alone. That flash of beauty passed quickly, though, and the elfmaid was once more a spirit without substance, a luminescent, perverted image of the lovely being she had been.

Your fate is written in that book, Soth of Dargaard, the banshee hissed. It is set down in those pages. You will know treachery!

The ranting of the unquiet spirit had little effect upon Lord Soth, for he no longer felt the sting of conscience or the unsettling fear of the future that plagued some men. The conflagration that had long ago blackened the walls of Dargaard Keep had taken his life. Those on Krynn who’d had the misfortune to cross paths with the lord of Dargaard called him a “death knight,” and the title carried more terror than that of ghost or ghoul or banshee.

“No such book exists-on Krynn or in the heavens. I have made my own destiny.” Soth dismissed the banshees with a wave of his hand. “I gladly take both credit and blame for all the evil I have done.”

And you have done great evil, the nearest banshee wailed. For you were first dark in the light’s hollow, expanding like a stain, a cancer.

Another added her inhuman voice. For you were the shark in the slowed waters beginning to move.

A third and a fourth sang their affronts over the words of the others. For you were the notched head of a snake, sensing forever warmth and form; the inexplicable death in the crib, the long house in betrayal.

The words circled back on themselves, weaving a deafening volume of infamy. At the point when the sounds became an unintelligible scream, a single banshee’s voice rose over the others. For you were once the bravest of the Knights of Solamnia, the most noble in the Order of the Rose. Your heroic deeds were told in song throughout Krynn, from the dwarven halls of Thorbardin to the elf-wrought spires of forest-cloaked Silvanost, from the sacred glades of Sancrist Isle to the temples of Istar’s kingpriest.

Soth scowled beneath the helmet he wore. “You do your task badly,” he said in a voice that sounded as if it came from deep within the earth. “Paladine made you banshees and sent you to haunt my castle. Every night for seven times fifty years, you have been the Father of Good’s accusing mouth, telling me of my failings.”

Suddenly the death knight stood. His ancient armor did not creak. His long cape swirled behind him, but did so in absolute silence. “Your vapid accusations bore me. Only memories cause me pain, and your prattle does nothing to return the most welcome past to life in my mind.”

One of the banshees screamed. The twelve other spirits took up the screech, adding their own weird voices to the chorus. You desire to remember your sins? You must be growing to enjoy the pain! the spirits wailed. We are undone even in this!

“I desire only diversion,” the death knight said at last. He gestured to something hidden in the shadows next to his throne. “After all, that is why I brought Kitiara here.”

With surprising gentleness, Soth pulled aside a shredded, bloodstained cloak. There, half hidden in the mist now drifting in patches across the floor, was the corpse of Kitiara Uth Matar.

Impatience washed over Soth again. “I will have you with me again soon,” he said to the corpse, his voice strained. He bent down and caressed a bloodless cheek. “You will be able to break the pall hanging over this ruined keep, dark heart.”

You will tire of her as you did your other wives, the banshees began. Her end will be-

“Enough!” Soth rumbled, and the banshees backed away. The death knight looked around the room, noting the weak sunlight that bled through the ruined doors, the lengthening shadows that crept across the scorched hall. Those things, along with the mist that was growing thicker with each passing moment, told Soth the day was near its end. “Caradoc has been gone for hours. He will rue this delay!”

Perhaps the battle between the Dark Queen and Raistlin ended before Caradoc could capture the soul, a banshee offered softly. Both Takhisis and Kitiara’s half-brother have reason to keep her in the Abyss.

Clasping his mailed hands together before him, Soth paced across the throne room. His footfalls made no sound on the stones. Neither did his boots stir the mist that curled in through the shattered doors and cloaked the blackened floor. The banshees withdrew into the shadowy corners of the hall as the death knight made his way to the stairs and began to climb. “I go to look for signs of the battle’s outcome,” he proclaimed without looking at the spirits. “Let no one disturb the highlord’s body.”

No windows allowed sunlight entrance to the keep’s hallways, but the death knight could see quite clearly in the darkness. He saw the ancient stone walls and the cracks climbing them like ivy. Even a small rat-thin from starvation and deaf from exposure to the banshees’ constant keening-that ventured meekly from a hole did not go unnoticed. The creature fled when Soth got close, driven away by the unnatural cold radiating from the undead knight.

Stiffly Soth marched down the pitch-dark corridors, thinking aloud about suitable punishments for his tardy seneschal. “Perhaps I should change his clothes to rags,” Soth said. “He was a fop in life, more concerned about brocades than blades, and death has not changed him a bit.”

A warped door on rusted hinges marked the end of the hallway. It groaned long and loud as Soth shoved it open. The room beyond was small but seemed the larger for the gaping hole where the wall had crumbled long ago. Playful breezes swept in from the breach, stirring up the dust and dirt that covered the floor. Because of the view it afforded, this place had been a guard post once. Dargaard Keep no longer had real need of sentries. The reputation of the castle’s lord was more effective at keeping people away than the strongest, dwarven-built walls. Nevertheless, a lone figure walked a post in the rubble-strewn room.

“Ah, Sir Mikel,” Soth said distractedly. “Stand aside.”

The armored figure ceased its pacing. Sir Mikel’s rusty armor was as ancient as Soth’s and hung loosely on his skeletal body. Scabrous yellow ribs shone through the gaps in the knight’s breastplate, and his worn boots hissed and thumped across the floor as he walked. An eyeless, fleshless skull stared out from a raised visor. As the skeletal warrior studied him, Soth wondered if some tiny part remained of the knight’s soul. Mikel, like all thirteen of the Solamnic Knights who had aided Soth in his crimes, had been damned to serve the death knight for eternity. The flesh had abandoned their skeletons long ago, and their individuality had fled them as well. Now, unless Soth gave them orders to follow, the knights ceaselessly walked the posts where they had died.

After a moment, Mikel seemed to recognize his master. He inclined his head and stood aside as the death knight crossed to the breach. Before Soth reached that vantage, he turned to Mikel. “Have you seen Caradoc this day?”

A painfully long pause followed the question, then Sir Mikel nodded haltingly. His bones rubbed together with the noise of stone grinding against stone.

“You saw him this morning, before he ventured into the Abyss on my errand?”

Again Mikel nodded.

“Have you seen him since I returned from Palanthas with the dragon highlord’s body?”

Another pause, and the skeletal warrior shook his head. No spark shone in the voids that were his eye sockets; no expression broke his petrified rictus.

The death knight looked to the sky, darkening by degrees into night. The three moons that watched over Krynn were just beginning to reveal themselves in the heavens. Solinari, the silver-white moon of good magic, was but a sliver in the sky. The symbol of neutrality, Lunitari, shone fully, casting an eerie, blood-red radiance onto the mountains surrounding Dargaard on three sides. The third moon was visible only to creatures of evil like Soth. Nuitari gave off a sort of negative light, a black, putrid glow that shone most fully upon things of darkness.

The stars, too, were beginning to twinkle to life against the velvet sky that stretched from horizon to horizon. Each of the twenty-one gods of Krynn were represented in the heavens by a constellation, a planet, or a moon. The stars denoting Paladine, the Father of Good, were seen as a brave silver dragon. These pinpoints of light, called the Valiant Warrior, stood in opposition to the five-headed dragon known as the Queen of Darkness. In the past, these avatars of godly power had mirrored the deities’ struggles, their triumphs and their defeats. Soth looked to the five-headed dragon now for some sign of the battle that had occurred-or was still occurring-between Takhisis and Raistlin Majere.

The Queen of Darkness was spread across the sky, coiled and ready to strike the Valiant Warrior. Nothing had changed.

“The battle must be over,” Soth rumbled. “Takhisis has defeated the mage.” He turned away from the breach and faced the skeletal Sir Mikel. “I order you to watch the stars, especially the constellation known as the Queen of Darkness. Do you understand?”

The undead knight shuffled to the breach. With preternatural slowness he presented his eyeless sockets to the heavens.

“If the stars break from their natural course, you are to find me,” Soth added and stormed from the place.

The death knight started back through the musty, darkened hallways. With each step he rued the fact he’d trusted his seneschal to retrieve Kitiara’s soul. None of his servants possessed the power to defeat the guardians at the Tower of High Sorcery, so Soth had been forced to go after the highlord’s corpse himself. And of his minions, only Caradoc was intelligent enough to survive a trek across the Abyss. Now it appeared the ghost had either failed or had double-crossed the death knight.

Soth roughly pushed a door from his path, the blow splintering the ancient wood. “Caradoc will regret that his curse requires him to return to Dargaard Keep,” the death knight hissed.

He paused and pondered that truth. There was one place to which the seneschal must return, whether he had succeeded or not with his errand. Soth decided to wait for Caradoc there. His pace quickened as he moved up the stone stairs, higher into the tower that served as the keep’s main building.

Caradoc had been caught up in the curse that doomed Soth to unlife. In life, the seneschal had been a grasping, ambitious man, who had helped his master’s career in any way necessary. He had spread scandalous rumors about any rival who challenged Soth’s position in knightly society. When the Knights’ Council had questioned his master’s claims to certain good deeds, the seneschal bore false witness to uphold Soth’s version. He had even murdered for Soth, taking a dagger to the lord’s first wife while she slept. Even as the fire struck Dargaard, Caradoc had been forging financial records in Soth’s private study. It was there that his bones still rested.

After climbing a number of steps that would have easily winded a strong, mortal man, Soth came upon a landing. The platform was broken away from the wall, and a rift in the stonework floor revealed empty air. The hole plunged downward a dozen feet to the next landing. The frame that once housed the door to the study was partially collapsed. Soth had to step over a large, shattered block of masonry to enter.

Compared to the disarray of the rest of Dargaard, the study was clean, even tidy. The layer of dirt, broken stone, and dust clinging so thickly to the other rooms’ floors was strangely absent. Missing, too, were any fragments from the missing door or the heavy wooden furniture that had once filled the room. A single tapestry covered one wall. Upon the broad, bright field of the cloth, elves clashed against elves. The tapestry depicted the Kinslayer Wars that had rocked the elven nations hundreds of years past. On the floor below the tapestry lay a skeleton.

The room’s single window admitted light from the moons. Red as new-spilled blood, Lunitari colored Caradoc’s fleshless remains and pushed pools of darkness into the study’s corners. Soth walked to the skeleton and frowned. Like the rest of the room, Caradoc’s bones were clean. The decaying flesh had been carefully pulled from them, not gnawed away by the few vermin that inhabited the keep. Its arms had been folded across its chest, giving the skeleton a deceptive look of peace that none of Dargaard’s other inhabitants ever possessed.

Soth knew it must have taken his seneschal years to compose the corpse and clear the debris from the room. Part of Caradoc’s curse-like that of most ghosts-was that his wraithlike body allowed him little contact with the physical world; to move even the smallest pieces of stone would require intense concentration. As in life, though, the ghostly seneschal was overly concerned with his appearance, and it was clear he wanted his remains to be presentable. He had even covered his skull with a silken cloth in the fashion of ancient Solamnic funerals. The death knight bent to pick up the veil.

“That cloth once belonged to Kitiara herself, my lord,” came a trembling voice from behind Soth. “I stole it from her one night when she stayed at the keep.”

The death knight spun about. There, in the shadowy corner near the doorway, cowered Caradoc. “Where is she?” Soth asked quietly.

The seneschal floated from the darkness. The moonlight painted him crimson. “My lord…” he began, then paused as the death knight took a step toward him. “As you can see, I made the journey you requested.”

Caradoc spread his arms wide, gesturing at himself. Though the ghost’s form was transparent, Soth could see that his garments were rumpled and stained. Phantom dust still clung to his boots. “The plains of Pazunia seemed to stretch on forever, and the portal-”

“Where is Kitiara’s soul?” Soth growled impatiently, again moving toward his servant. “Where is your medal of office?”

Bowing his head, Caradoc replied, “We had a bargain, my lord. You promised you would plead my case with Chemosh, that you would convince the Lord of the Undead to make me human.”

“I have not forgotten my promise,” the death knight said, the lie coming easily to his scorched lips. He pointed to the ghost. “The promise will be revoked unless you tell me where Kitiara’s soul is.”

The ghost knew that, had his legs been flesh and blood, they would have crumpled beneath him at the fear he felt. Caradoc looked at the fiery gaze of Lord Soth, forced steel into his voice, and stood tall. “Forgive me, my lord, but I have seen you break your word too many times in the last three and a half centuries. I want-”

“You will demand nothing of me!” Soth shouted and lunged forward.

The ghost evaded the death knight’s mailed hand as it reached for him. He flew across the room to the open window. “Harm me and you will never have her.”

Forcing the fury swelling inside him to subside, Lord Soth faced his seneschal. “Fly out the window if you’d like, Caradoc. I know your curse requires you to return to your corpse eventually.” He raised a hard-soled boot over the skull beneath the tapestry. “Your next threat brings my heel down.”

The ghost froze. He valued nothing so much as the bones that had once housed his soul, and the hope that he might one day be raised from undeath had impelled him to keep his corpse clean and intact. “Wait! Please!”

Soth stood perfectly still, his boot resting lightly on the veiled bones. “Come here.”

Reluctantly the ghost floated toward his master. “I reached Takhisis’s domain as the battle still raged between the Dark Queen and the mortal mage,” he noted as he drew close to Soth.

The death knight placed his foot on the floor once more. “Good,” he said. “Did you locate the soul of Kitiara Uth Matar?”

“Yes. The spell you cast upon my medallion made it easy.”

Soth nodded, and the orange globes of flame that were his eyes flickered in anticipation.

The ghost paused. A look of indecision crossed his face, and he nervously glanced away from the death knight. “She… struggled, my lord,” he continued at last. “Luckily, her spirit was still disoriented from the plunge into the Abyss. As you instructed, I trapped her soul in the medallion.”

The death knight could bear the suspense no longer. His hand darted out and locked around Caradoc’s throat. Before the ghost could react, Soth shredded the neck of his seneschal’s doublet with his other hand. “The medallion’s not here! Where is it?”

The death knight struck Caradoc. No mortal could have done the same, for the ghost’s noncorporeal form protected him from physical attack. To Soth, another undead creature, Caradoc was as solid as the skeleton that lay preserved in the room. “In Pazunia,” the ghost gasped. “I left the medallion in Pazunia.”

“And Kitiara is trapped inside of it?”

“Y-Yes.”

The steel in Soth’s voice was more threatening than the cold emanating from his unliving form. “What do you hope to gain from this, traitor?”

“I–I made a bargain with a powerful tanar’ri lord on my way back from Takhisis’s domain,” he said. “Unless you-” The ghost swallowed hard and forced himself to continue. “Unless you honor your word and see to it I am made mortal again, you will never have Kitiara’s soul.”

Nonchalantly, Soth kicked Caradoc’s remains, shattering the rib cage of the skeleton and splintering both arms. The ghost, still trapped in the death knight’s grip, cried out in anguish. Next, Soth crushed the skull at his feet. Ancient bones fractured and skittered across the floor in the moonlight, disappearing into the thin fog spreading unnoticed on the stones.

“You have no idea how angry you’ve made me,” the death knight said coldly, his voice level.

Soth dragged Caradoc toward the shadowed corner of the study. When he and the whimpering seneschal were covered by the murk that lurked in the corners, the death knight spoke a word of magic. Both creatures disappeared into the darkness. An instant later they emerged from a patch of shadow in the keep’s throne room.

The banshees were hovering near the hall’s high, vaulted ceiling. When the death knight stepped from the darkness, still clutching Caradoc by the throat, the unquiet spirits broke into a mad fit of howling. The thick fog now covering the floor swirled and pulsed, as if it responded to the chilling call of the banshees.

See how he treats his trusted servant! one of the unearthly voices shrieked.

Another of the banshees streaked across the room. I do not see Kitiara’s soul.

The highlord has eluded the death knight’s grasp! Can it be that the book of his fate is correct? Has the master of Dargaard found a traitor in his ranks?

“Do not mock me,” Soth said chillingly, “or I will deal with you after Caradoc.”

The threat quieted the banshees but a little. As the death knight moved to the hall’s center, the spirits floated out of his reach, whispering taunts and barbs. All the while, Caradoc tried in vain to pull free from Soth’s iron grip. “Mercy, my lord,” he cried.

Abruptly Soth marched to his throne, dragging the ghost behind him. There he grasped the hem of his long, purple cloak and fanned the mist away from Kitiara’s still, rigid form. The fog parted for an instant, revealing a corpse covered with tiny drops of water condensed from the ivory mist. On Kitiara’s cheeks, the beads of moisture looked like nothing so much as tears gradually working their way from her deadened eyes.

The death knight gazed at the general’s beautiful face, then he lifted his servant off the ground with one strong arm. “You buy my mercy with Kitiara’s soul. Tell me where to find it.”

During the long return journey from Takhisis’s domain, Caradoc had carefully calculated his bluff. He knew that it was unlikely that Soth would fulfill his promise… unless the death knight believed the seneschal had an ally of greater or equal strength. The substance of the lie had come easily to the seneschal, for even Lord Soth respected the tanar’ri, the terrible fiend-lords that populated the Abyss. How, though, the thought of maintaining the charade terrified the ghost. His only option was to reveal the true location of the medallion and Kitiara’s soul, however, and that would certainly mean the end to the ghost’s hopes for resurrection.

“On my way back across Pazunia,” Caradoc stammered, “I came to an abandoned fortress. I left the medallion-and the highlord’s soul-there.”

“I will open a portal to the Abyss, and you will take me to this fortress.”

“I–I cannot.”

“Why?” Soth snapped. He tightened his strangulating grip on the ghost’s throat.

Caradoc flailed at Soth’s arm, desperate to break away. “A tanar’ri lord arrived at the fortress and took the medallion,” he gasped.

“A tanar’ri lord,” the death knight repeated flatly. He lowered the ghost to the floor.

“Yes, I made a bargain with a very powerful denizen from a place of rotting fungus in the Abyss,” Caradoc said with some relief. He was surprised to find his voice did not quaver now, as if, somehow, the lie gave him strength. “Highlord Kitiara’s soul is trapped in the medallion, and the tanar’ri lord will hold it until I come to collect it… in an unharmed mortal body.”

The banshees hooted with malevolent glee at Caradoc’s words. He has outsmarted you, death knight, they taunted. His new master will shield him from his old. You are undone!

Caradoc looked into the death knight’s glowing eyes, hoping to read something of his intent there, but found them barren of expression.

“Your ploy is clever, Caradoc,” Lord Soth said finally, his voice surprisingly calm. “Though it means I will have to fight this tanar’ri master of yours, I can not let your cleverness go unrewarded.”

That said, the death knight tightened his grip on the ghost’s throat once more. Caradoc squirmed and clutched at Soth’s mailed hand, but the fingers dug slowly, painfully into him. Soon enough the seneschal found he could not speak, then he heard a high ringing in his ears. Soth’s voice broke into his consciousness.

“After I destroy this form, your soul will return to the Lord of the Undead. He will jail you in the void he reserves for ghosts that are no more,” the death knight said.

Caradoc’s vision faded for a moment, then mist rose to block his view of Dargaard’s throne room. He heard the banshees screaming from a place very far away. Only Soth’s voice remained clarion.

“Perhaps Chemosh will resurrect you once again, traitor, but this time as something more mindless-rather like Sir Mikel and the other knights who are condemned to serve me.”

A loud snap sounded from Caradoc’s neck. His head lolled to one side, unsupported by his broken spine. Yet even that did not end the seneschal’s life, so the death knight continued to exert pressure. “Or you may end up as a mane, caught in the army of some monstrous general. I think-”

Abruptly the death knight stopped speaking, his grip faltering. Around him a bank of mist had risen high off the floor, obscuring the throne room, muffling the shrieks and taunts of the banshees. “Is this some kind of trick, Caradoc?”

The ghost, nearly senseless, grunted a reply, but Soth did not comprehend it. Caradoc would tell the death knight where the medallion was if only he would deign to stop the torture. Perhaps if Soth knew that Kitiara’s soul really lay within Dargaard’s walls…

Swirling mist closed in on the death knight and his seneschal. The ivory fog swelled in every corner of Dargaard’s throne room, permeated every stone. The wailing of the banshees faded in Soth’s ears and then stopped.

The mist streamed out the hall’s shattered door into the night as if it had been summoned away. It flowed like water over the cracked stone of the floor, around the charred, worm-eaten throne that was the hall’s only furniture, past the still form of Kitiara Uth Matar, and beneath the thirteen banshees hovering near the ceiling.

Sisters! one of the unquiet spirits cried in astonishment, pointing to the spot where Soth had been standing but a moment earlier.

The death knight and the ghost were gone.