Spectre Of The Black Rose

Fifteen

The tripartite army's cry of unity reverberated from the walls of Nedragaard Keep, echoed across the Great Chasm, and finally faded. The leaders of the three allied forces stood for a moment, bathed in the glow of fellowship, before turning to consider the seemingly inviolable fortress looming before them. The good cheer fled, and the relief at having finally ended their long marches soured into exhaustion.

It was Gerhard, commander of the miners and farmers from the south, who gave voice to the question vexing them all. "Well," he asked gruffly, "now what do we do?"

"The isthmus is too narrow for any large-scale frontal assault," noted the elven general Ulrisch, an effete nobleman from Har-Thelen. "Perhaps we could mount a sneak attack from the chasm and have a few dozen men attempt to gain access to the keep from below. They could reset the bridge, allowing the rest of-"

"Who'd be idiot enough to climb down into those shadows?" interrupted Gerhard.

"Why, your miners, of course," the elf sniffed. "They're used to the dark. Besides, all those stories about the chasm are silly. It's just another hole in the ground."

"Well, then, your elves can go," Gerhard snapped. "It's your idea, after all."

The commander of the former Invidian forces, a particularly gruesome ogre named Onkar, snorted his amusement. He immediately scratched furiously at the gaping hole where his nose once had been. Snorting always made the tattered flesh there quiver.

"What for do you think we carry all this wood?" Onkar asked, gesturing to the heaps of timber piled at the center of the garden-graveyard. As each company of ogres and mercenaries arrived from the north, jingling with the gold and silver Azrael had used to buy their loyalty, they dutifully deposited more logs and beams onto the stack. There was enough there now to construct the frame for a fairly large house.

"Siege engines," the elf noted, "Of course. That would have been my next suggestion. Only we have nothing to hurl at the keep."

"Elves," Gerhard grumbled. "We have plenty of elves."

Onkar removed his foot from the large granite headstone upon which he had planted it. The stone was ornately carved, inscribed with the name Gelbmartin and the badge belonging to the lord steward of the keep. The ogre reached down and yanked it from the ground. "These make good crash," he said. "When we run out, we dig up the dead guys and fling them, too."

Gerhard and Ulrisch stared at the brute. "Crude, but creative," the elf said at last. "You supervise the stockpiling of the… missiles, Onkar, and we two will begin construction of the catapults." He encircled Gerhard's shoulder with an arm and steered him away from the brute. "Let us discuss the division of labor."

When they were safely out of earshot, the elf murmured, "Is there anything about this situation you find odd?"

Gerhard shrugged. "Odd? Like you pointy-eared wine sippers showing some spine for once-that kind of odd?"

With an exasperated grimace on his face, Ulrisch rolled up his shirt sleeve. His arm was a mass of scars from elbow to wrist. "I was captured by my Iron Hills kin. They flayed my arm, and a few other parts of my body you wouldn't care to see, before I managed to escape." He let the sleeve slip back into place.

Gerhard patted the politska's silver axe hanging at his belt. "I've peeled a few people in my day, too. None of 'em escaped, of course. Still, you're all right by me if you stood up to that sort of torture."

"I'm so glad," the elf said blandly, "but you still haven't answered my original question." At the blank look on Gerhard's face, Ulrisch prompted, "Our situation. Do you find anything odd about it? Where, for example, is Azrael?"

"Back at the mine," Gerhard said quickly.

"And what, exactly, are we supposed to accomplish here without him?"

The politska remained silent.

Ulrisch nodded curtly. "You're catching on. Even if we do manage to get inside the keep, who here will stand against Soth?"

"We've been tricked," Gerhard rumbled.

"Used," the elf corrected. "We are a diversion, nothing more."

Gerhard kicked the dirt and muttered a string of obscenities as vile as any creature lurking in the Great Chasm. "So what do we do about it?" he asked after he'd calmed a little.

"Play the role assigned us," the elf replied.

"Why not leave?"

"Azrael stationed some of your axe-wielding comrades in Har-Thelen just before we left," Ulrisch noted mournfully. "I thought it an uncharacteristically thoughtful gesture on his part to guard the city while we fought. I suspect now that none of us would find our families alive upon our return should we betray him or not do a creditable job in this siege."

Gerhard closed his eyes tightly, picturing the camp where the families of his troops awaited their return. It, too, was guarded by the Politskara. "We're all dead men," he murmured.

"Not necessarily," the elf said. "I suggest we keep the Invidians-pardon me, former Invidians-to the front ranks. From the clank their purses make, they've been paid too well to notice their peril." He paused to survey the fire-blackened walls of Nedragaard Keep. "And hope."

"For what?" Gerhard asked.

"For Soth to discover Azrael's plan, whatever that may be, or for the dwarf to succeed in his scheme." The elf sighed raggedly. "It doesn't matter which, so long as it happens before the lord of Nedragaard decides to sweep us from his stoop."

"To me, my knights!"

From the gallery overlooking the main hall, Lord Soth watched the thirteen undead warriors arrive from their various stations around the keep. The first to enter was Wersten Kern, most loyal of his men in life. He was the most loyal, too, in death-if loyalty was a trait these shuffling skeletons could possess. The shadow of that quality lingered in them at the very least. For Soth, that was enough.

Farold, Valcic, and Vingus, the inseparable Knights of the Sword, arrived together. Meyer Seril took up his usual station beside the main doors. As if pulled away from some other, more important task, Derik Grimscribe straggled in last. Once, the Sword Knight had been a master of words. His explanations for his tardiness would have amused the gathered knights no end. Now his jaws moved soundlessly, his tale trapped on the remnants of his rotted tongue.

The thirteen gathered warriors turned their eyeless skulls to their liege. Before Soth could speak, though, another voice sounded in the hall.

"How goes the siege, mighty lord?"

The skeletal knights looked to the shadow-shrouded dais. They hesitated, then dropped to one knee. Soth leaned over the gallery's rail. He had to look straight down the wall to see the Vistani girl perched upon a heavy wooden box set next to his throne. Long ago, another chair had been positioned there, the one belonging to the mistress of the keep, Soth's wife.

"My knights mistake you for someone else," Soth said coldly. "You mistake yourself for someone other than a guest." The death knight's harsh tone made it clear that he did not readily dismiss such improprieties.

"No insult was intended," Inza replied. "I thought it best to speak to you of my concerns before you sent your troops anywhere."

"You have nothing to fear. I will keep my word to your mother. You are safe in my-"

The crash of stone against stone resounded through Nedragaard as the bombardment, which had stopped for nearly half an hour, finally resumed. The missile had not struck the keep itself, though; it had crashed into the rocky ledge to the north. The aim of the engineers directing the catapults had not improved in the five hours they'd been directing sporadic fire against the keep. Far from offering Soth relief, their ineptitude only infuriated him.

The death knight gestured in the general direction of the besieging army. "You would have nothing to fear from them were you alone in this place. This is no assault. It is an annoyance-one I intend to silence before another moment passes." Inza stood and walked toward the center of the hall. As she stepped from the shadows, the skeletal warriors rose from their deferential stances. " Annoyance,' " she mused aloud. "Perhaps. This assault most definitely offers no threat to you. Unless…"

"Out with it, woman," Soth rumbled. "You do not play coy well."

'This hopeless siege provides a distraction from the deeds of some great power," she replied bluntly, "an enemy more worthy of your attention."

Soth began to descend the curved stair from the gallery to the hall. "I do not lack in enemies," he said as he came. "I see all of their hands in this- Aderre, the White Rose, that treacherous cur Azrael."

"Azrael. He must be the one who set your own people against you," Inza said. The clatter of a missile finally striking the castle underscored the comment.

"He is the one who foolishly heaped gold on Aderre's raiders, paying them to join in this inept siege," Soth added. "He is no 'great power,' just a traitor with an inflated estimation of his own cunning."

The death knight had reached the hall now, and Inza bowed to him respectfully as he approached. "There is the White Rose to consider, mighty lord," the Vistana said. "When I read your fortune in the tarroka cards, her presence loomed large. Come, let me show you."

She led Lord Soth to the dais. There, upon the seat of the throne itself, lay nine cards arranged in a cross. They were large and crammed to the borders with intricate drawings. Soth could see the red tinge to the ink, even in the gloom shrouding the platform. This deck had been crafted with pigments mixed with blood.

The card at the center of the cross was a knight outfitted in plate armor, roses and kingfishers graven upon the breastplate. There could be no mistaking the figure for anyone but Soth, though the rendering depicted him before his damnation. "It was my mother's deck," Inza explained. "Who else would she portray upon the master card of swords? It is the suit of warriors."

The Vistana pointed to the two cards arrayed below the Warrior. The first depicted a ghost rising from a crypt. "This is your near past," Inza said. "A force arises to collect an old debt, to remind you of old obligations you have forgotten. The card below it is your distant past: the Innocent."

"There are no innocents in my past," Soth said.

"The card can signify someone who was powerless to defend herself at a particular moment in time, someone you might have taken advantage of," Inza noted. "She might have been quite formidable otherwise. Both these cards depict the Rose, I think. From what my mother told me, you think she is some warrior from your past, someone with a score to settle."

"Kitiara," Soth said.

While no innocent, Kitiara had been helpless, dying, when the death knight took her body from the Tower of High Sorcery. She feared him then, feared that he would raise her from the grave as his eternal consort. That had been his intent, of course. Had he not been dragged from Krynn into this nether-realm, it was an intent he would have fulfilled.

"Perhaps," Soth murmured. "Perhaps."

"Your adversaries are easier to identify," Inza said. She gestured to the first card on the Warrior's right. "The Traitor. It can be only Azrael. Behind him is the Charlatan. This woman is your real foe. See the picture-she hides behind a mask, a false identity like this White Rose of yours."

Soth indicated the rest of the cards with a sweep of his hand. "Do these tell me what they plan or how I may stop them?" he asked.

Inza suppressed a smile. She had arranged the cards with just that purpose in mind, to direct Lord Soth as she required. But when she looked down at the remaining four-the cards revealing Soth's allies and his future-a wave of fear washed over her. They were not the ones she had so carefully chosen.

"Well?" Soth said impatiently.

"These cards to the Warrior's left are the forces that fight on your side," she said, desperately trying to forge a suitable meaning for them in her thoughts. "Though you may not recognize their actions, they are important to you."

She lifted the first card, the two of coins. "The Philanthropist. Someone who gives unselfishly, seeking no return but the act itself." Another card, stuck to the first, dropped onto the ground. It was the eight of glyphs, the Bishop. "This person is bound by some rigid code. Or perhaps there are two allies who are connected somehow, one who gives, the other who enforces a code."

The next card, the one that revealed Soth's most important ally, was supposed to have been the four of stars, the Abjurer. The connection of the card's image-a raven-haired woman with a crystal ball-to Inza herself would have been obvious, even to Soth. But the card laid out was the Myrmidon. The unarmed, unarmored figure faced three men shrouded in mist, uncertain of their identity as friend or foe.

"Your other ally seems to be me," she lied. "The figure is helpless, surrounded by threatening figures: my situation in the forest before you came to my aid."

The remaining two cards foretold events to come. The near future was dominated by the Beast, symbolizing anger and fury. The Donjon, with its lone figure trapped within a moonlit tower ^resembling Nedragaard Keep, indicated the distant future. Were Inza trying to interpret the fortune correctly, she would have suggested that anger might continue Soth's imprisonment. Instead, she told him just the opposite. "If you give in to your fury and slay the Beast," she announced solemnly, "you will break free from your prison."

"Then your cards confirm the course upon which I have already decided." Soth turned and strode from the dais. "I want them slaughtered to the last man," the death knight told his skeletal minions. "The banshees will ride alongside us. Let them ready their chariots of bone."

The skeletal warriors shuffled out to the undead horses already milling in the courtyard. Inza called out to Soth as he was about to follow them. "Surely a coward such as Azrael would not place himself in harm's way."

"Of course not. He is hiding somewhere, probably at the Lake of Sounds, eavesdropping on the fight he should be leading."

"The Lake of Sounds!" Inza exclaimed. "If he and the Rose know about that place then the battle is already lost!"

"What are you saying?"

"The salt shadows that killed my mother are spawned from that place," Inza explained frantically, "but they are the least of its dangers. There are rituals using the lake's water that could grant someone control over all the shadows in Sithicus."

Soth did not reply. Instead he drew his sword and stepped into the darkness near the throne. An instant later he returned. His orange eyes blazed in fury. The cold radiating from him made Inza gasp at its intensity. "The way is blocked. He has sealed the area around the mine to me."

"They have begun!" Inza moaned. "You only have a few hours. They'll try to complete the rite late in the afternoon, when the day's shadows are longest."

"They cannot bar me from the mine for long," Soth rumbled, already heading back to the shadows.

"There is some small magic I can perform," Inza shouted after him. "It will help shield the keep from whatever dark sorcery Azrael and the Rose conjure."

"Protect yourself however you see fit," Soth replied, even as he vanished once more into the darkness.

The death knight did not see Inza throw open her wooden trunk, did not glimpse the large black bottle, swaddled like an infant, that rested within. However, he felt a shiver of apprehension as he emerged from the shadow of a massive outcropping on the road just outside Veidrava.

The death knight strode boldly into the open. As he marched toward the mine, his own shadow ranged beside him. He could not help but glance now and then at the wavering image. There was power in such things as shadows, he knew, as there was in the true names of plants and animals. Though a thing of fell sorcery himself, Soth disliked such magic. It seemed cowardly somehow, the stuff of assassins, not warriors.

He mused upon that subject even as he passed through the abandoned mining camp, which already looked as if it had been that way for a decade. Rats scurried incautiously between the hovels. Insects clustered on the window sills. Carrion crows searched for scraps on two corpses hanging at the camp's crossroads. They eyed Soth warily as he passed, trying to decide if he was a rival for the few bits of gristle left on the well-picked bodies.

The anger that had hurried the death knight from Nedragaard had diminished somewhat by the time he passed Ambrose's store. Rage had resolved into a cold determination. The mine's towers lay ahead, their shadows reaching down the hill to beckon him. If Inza was correct, his enemies would attempt the rite soon, before the shadows began to merge. Soth did not hurry his stride. He was lord of this domain. They could not escape him.

Even when he encountered the invisible wall, the same barrier that had barred him from entering the mine directly from Nedragaard, he maintained his grim calm. With his ancient sword he battered the unseen shield. Blow after blow fell upon the wall. Each slash produced a shower of sparks and left a blue-white scar in the air. The rifts healed swiftly, but Soth followed each strike with another and another. Soon the hillside trembled with a chest-rattling thrum, the sound of the mystic wards buckling before Soth's onslaught.

Another, more terrible sound rang out before the wall collapsed-the triple-toned shriek of Nedragaard's banshees. Their keening split the air over Veidrava as they materialized beside Lord Soth. Their once-beautiful elven faces were contorted with an awful mixture of anguish and glee.

"Betrayed!" the trio of the unquiet spirits howled.

"Deceived," Leedara screamed.

Marantha interposed herself between Soth and the unseen wall. "Plundered." she added.

A wide grin full of obscene mirth curled Gisela's phantasmal lips. "Lord Loren Soth," she said at last. "Lord Cuckold of Nedragaard Keep."

The words were familiar, almost identical to those the elf maids had used all those years ago to alert Soth to the infidelity of his wife, Isolde. The death knight paused in his assault on the barrier only long enough to say, "Begone. This is no time to replay scenes long grown stale. I have no mistress to cuckold me."

"This outrage is new," said Leedara, "but it is as old as your damnation."

"You have let a viper into your home," Marantha whispered. "She has warded the place against your servants."

– "What?" Soth rumbled.

"While your knights and our sisters sallied against the besiegers, the gypsy witch erected wards that bar us from our home," Gisela said. She wove a pattern around the death knight, taunting him. "She barred you from your home, too, no doubt, but she will not be lonely."

"The halls of the keep will be filled with life," noted Leedara.

"She has thrown open the doors to the enemy," Marantha explained, "even as she bars us from entering. The keep is in their hands."

The fire that blazed to life within Soth's breast was as old as it was familiar. The fury consumed all, conquered all. Reason and logic collapsed before it. Whatever fragile shreds of mercy remained in his unbeating heart scorched and withered. "By my honor I kept her alive," the death knight said. "By my honor I will see Inza Magdova dead a thousand times for each affront she has heaped upon me."

Lord Soth turned away from the mine. He did not doubt that Azrael lurked there or that the dwarf intended some malefic rite. He did not even doubt that the ritual could grant the traitor power over all the shadows in Sithicus. Soth himself had seen the Lake of Sounds and felt the potency of its waters. None of that mattered. Vengeance was all.

As the death knight vanished into the shadows, the banshees trailing in his wake, Ganelon crept from his hiding place behind a crowd of discarded barrels. He had spotted Lord Soth from Ambrose's store, where he had gone to look for some sign of his old friends. For a time, as he watched the death knight hammer at the unseen barrier, his heart had soared. Here, perhaps, was an ally, someone more worthy to stand against Azrael. But it was not to be. This task was to be his alone.

The soft clatter of his leg brace seemed as loud as the banshees' keening as Ganelon made his way up the now-silent hill. He reached the spot in the road where Soth had stood. The air still smelled of heated steel and something else, a salt tang far stronger than the usual fetor that hung over the mine. Ganelon reached forward with one hand. He expected to encounter whatever invisible wall had barred Soth's way. Instead he found a minor resistance, as if the air had been transmuted to cold, still water. He closed his eyes and stepped through.

As he crossed the barrier, a line appeared on the ground below him. It was the uneven, dark splash made by water spilled onto dry earth, and it encircled the entire hilltop. When Ganelon reached down to touch the dark line, it retreated from his fingers. The thin black band squirmed like a serpent, the ripples flowing along its length in both directions until they disappeared. Finally, when it could retreat no farther, the line broke. It flared blue-white for an instant before dissipating.

"A fine trick," someone called from up the hill. "You must teach it to me."

Ganelon recognized that melodious voice and hurried to find the speaker. In the shadow of the Engine House, in a small circle cleared amongst the debris of the shattered wall, he found him.

The Bloody Cobbler struggled in vain to push himself up from the dirt. Gore spattered his ripped and tattered clothes. Most of it now was from his own wounds. His fingers had been broken, the flesh stripped from his chest. Clumps of his fair hair lay upon the ground alongside the blood-soaked tools of his trade. The silver snips and needles and knives had all been bent or broken.

As the Cobbler looked up at Ganelon, it appeared for an instant as if he had no face, only a mass of pulped flesh.

Tm here to stop him," Ganelon said simply.

"I know the path you walk," the Cobbler replied through swollen lips.

"Of course you do," Ganelon said. He reached out to help the Cobbler to his feet and felt that same sensation of cold, still water. There were wards here, too, tight around the Cobbler to keep him from escaping. When the line appeared in the dirt, he reached down and broke it.

" 'No one who has died may cross it,' " the Cobbler repeated in a singsong voice. " 'No one who is merely alive may break it,' Azrael used to taunt me with that during our little… chats. He set up the wards so not even he could break them." He wiped the gore from his face with his cloak. The damage was not as great as it had seemed. "I'm certain he never imagined there was someone who could."

Ganelon looked down at his feet. The dead man's soles made him more than "merely" alive but not truly dead.

The Cobbler sat up. "I'd stitch myself up if I had time," he said absently. He lifted one of his needles from the ground, frowned at its sorry state. "There's little of that left for any of us, though."

"Then, it's over," Ganelon said.

The Cobbler gestured toward the late afternoon sky, just beginning to dim with the first hints of twilight. "No," he said. "We are finally ready to begin."

Ganelon followed the Cobbler's crooked finger with his eyes. There, marring the boundless blue overhead, hung a small crimson smudge. A red moon, Ganelon realized after a moment.

"They made it back to the Rose," the Cobbler offered. "Helain and the others."

"Is she-?"

"The Beast kept his word." The Cobbler laughed brightly. "As if he could even imagine breaking it! No, Helain's madness has been lifted."

As the Cobbler stood, it was clear to Ganelon that his wounds were already healing. Even his clothes seemed to be mending themselves. The pale-clad man extended a hand to Ganelon. In it he held a silver knife, the least damaged of his tools. "Take it," he said. "I would stay to help you, but-"

"Your path leads elsewhere," Ganelon concluded. He gratefully took the blade and tucked it into the small duffel he carried slung over one shoulder. "After all," the young man added cryptically, "he needs you."

The comment baffled the Cobbler for an instant. Then he nodded gravely; the Invidian spy had asked him his identity just before he died. Ganelon share that knowledge.

With a smile and a flourish of his broad-brimmed hat, the Bloody Cobbler disappeared into the Engine House's lengthening shadow.

As he made his way to the mine entrance, Ganelon thought about the reunion that awaited the Cobbler, about the reunion he imagined for himself and Helain. It seemed unlikely, but then, so many impossibilities had come true in the past few weeks he could not let the hope die. Even now, a second new moon struggled to be seen in the sky overhead, one as red as the rose Helain had given him when last they parted.

Ganelon carefully dug the bloom from his duffel. He'd armored it in a tin cup to keep it safe, but he saw now that the effort was wasted. The crimson petals had, like all others of their kind kept too long on Sithican soil, turned black.

He let the wilted rose slip from his grasp. After a moment, he followed it into the pit.