The Rose and the Skull

26

In the dark of the Sancrist night Dalian Escu walked the battlements of Castle uth Wistan. He wasn't on watch, and a good thing too. An army of goblins could have stormed the wall without his even noticing. His mind was elsewhere, walking in the dreamland forests of his elven childhood. In Silvanesti he'd been born, and there he'd died, when they banished him from the light. From that moment forward, no elf on Krynn was allowed to speak to him or even acknowledge his existence. His parents spoke of him as though he were already dead.

In Storm's Keep, the birthplace of the Knights of Takhisis, he'd been reborn. With the Knights of Takhisis, he found the family to which he so desperately needed to belong. Even so, they'd never completely accepted him. Now it seemed all he'd worked toward had been a lie, a carefully concealed deception. Where was the vaunted honor of the Knights of Takhisis? It lay in some draconian dungeon, wrapped in the vestige of a gully dwarf.

What had first alerted him? Had it in fact been with the surprising willingness of the leadership of the Knights to attempt a union with the Knights of Solamnia, their most bitter enemies? Or had it come later, at Isherwood, when Alya displayed a strange stubbornness to accept the existence of draconians on Sancrist Isle? Or was it some strange coincidence, by which Pyrothraxus chose to attack Isherwood, breaking the uneasy and undeclared peace?

Then there was Lord Tohr, displaying the same incomprehensible unwillingness to accept the fact of the existence of the draconian stronghold, and his pressure to conclude the vote to determine the leadership of the combined Knighthood. Sir Liam had been right. There was no real threat from Pyrothraxus; the dragon had been sent to destroy Jessica, the priest, and himself.

While he pondered these matters, Valian circled the entirety of the battlements, crossing over the gate by its postern walk. He passed above the stable yard, where Uhoh had lived, and he passed the place where Gunthar and Liam met on the battlements that first night, so long ago it seemed. He continued, his head bowed, his hands clasped behind his back.

A familiar voice brought him up short. He found himself very near the rooms of Lord Tohr. By the torchlight from the courtyard, he saw that a window was open to the chill night air, but dark drapes prevented any light from escaping. He heard Tohr's voice.

"Are you certain it will work?" Tohr was asking someone.

Valian stepped closer to the window to better hear.

"Of course, my lord. The potion was created before the Chaos War. Rest assured, once its magic has surrounded you, no human on Krynn can resist your charms. They will wish only to please you," a voice that was Trevalyn's answered.

Without warning Valian pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the room. "And how does it work on elves?" he asked. The Thorn Knight almost fell over himself in his surprise, but Lord Tohr's face remained calm, almost as though he'd been expecting Valian. He held in his scarred hand a tiny glass phial filled with a red liquid.

"I am glad you are here, Valian," he said in a pleasant voice as he placed the phial on the desk before him. "I've been meaning to talk to you, to bring you up to date on our situation here."

"If I were planning to usurp the Solamnics in their own castle, I'd at least have the sense to shut the window," Valian sneered.

"An oversight," Tohr said. "Very careless. Trevalyn, please close the window, won't you, so we don't have any more unexpected guests."

The Thorn Knight stepped behind the curtain and closed the window with a snap. He returned to Tohr's side, his hands folded in the sleeves of his gray robe.

"This has been the plan all along," Valian said.

"Actually, no. We fully expected Liam to be elected Grand Master. That's why Lady Mirielle didn't come herself. We thought it would take years for all our plans to develop, when we could place the scepter into the hands of one of our own. But now?" he shrugged. "His own men were surprisingly easy to win over. All I can say is, he took his chances. He lost in a fair vote."

"You're leaving out Gunthar's murder," Valian snarled. "Now we take through assassination and duplicity what we could not win in battle. Why wasn't I told?"

"You know the answer to that question. This is a political world, my friend," Tohr said. "Heroes don't ride silver dragons to glory anymore. They wade through the trenches of words, taking what they can and counting every small victory no matter how it is won."

"Even victories without honor?" Valian asked.

"The honor will come later," Tohr explained. "Be realistic, Valian. The Knights of Solamnia are dying. They've never learned the great lesson Lord Ariakan recognized from the start. Warriors need to fight wars. In peace, the Solamnics have destroyed themselves. We could defeat them in battle, but at what cost? How many lives do we save, by defeating them in this manner?

"I hate to disappoint you, my lord, but you have not won yet," Valian said. "I know your secret now."

Tohr smiled threateningly. "If you really wanted to thwart our plans, you wouldn't make the mistake of announcing yourself here, tonight."

"I offer you a way out, an honorable way. Ask for another vote, and this time exclude Lady Mirielle's name from nomination. Gunthar was right. We'd be better off working together instead of against each other," Valian urged. "We'd be stronger, greater, nobler."

"And what about our queen? What about Takhisis?" Trevalyn hissed.

"Takhisis is dead," Valian snapped. "She died that day at the High Clerist's Tower, when Lord Ariakan called her name, to no avail."

"She didn't die. She only retreated from the fury of Chaos. She will return," Trevalyn said vehemently.

"It doesn't matter. We can't wait for her to return," Valian said. "The best thing we can do right now is unite both knighthoods."

"My friend, for an elf, you really are naive," Tohr laughed. "What was Gunthar's dream but a way to absorb us into the Knights of Solamnia without having to defeat us in battle. It was Gunthar who sent the letter to Lady Mirielle, Gunthar who proposed we join our two orders into one. Granted, we had already placed draconians on the island in the hopes of gaining a foothold here. We also sent them to negotiate with Pyrothraxus, or else we'd have had to fight him as well as the Solamnics. As we've learned with the sinking of Donkaren, treaties with the dragon are tenuous at best.

"Gunthar's letter came as a complete surprise to us. Haven't you realized that that is where Gunthar's genius lay? He'd have been the first Grand Master of the combined order and could have directed it as he wished. As an order, the Knights of Takhisis would have vanished, while the Knights of Solamnia lived on under a new name. All we did was turn the tables on his plan."

"Not yet," Valian countered. "It won't work. I shall expose you."

"You don't realize the precariousness of your position," Tohr said.

"My position has always been precarious," Valian said.

"You fancy yourself a hero, going to save the Knighthood from itself, like Sturm Brightblade?" Tohr barked mockingly. His voice grew sinister as his features drew into a snarl. "Dead men make poor heroes."

Reacting suddenly and swiftly, Valian drew his sword before Tohr could call for help. He leveled it at his master's heart, ready to strike the death blow.

Tohr froze. Trevalyn stood at his side, trembling either with fear or anger. Tohr tried to calm himself to speak, but it did little good. When he spoke, his voice quavered with fear. "You'd not kill an unarmed man?" he asked.

"Where is your sword?" Valian growled through clenched teeth.

"I don't need a sword," Tohr answered. "I have a Thorn!"

With that, he seized Trevalyn by the sleeve and flung him at the dark elf. The gray-robed Knight shrieked in surprise as Valian's sword slid between his ribs.

"It is bad luck… to kill… a mage," Trevalyn gasped as he clung to the sword. Blood flecked his lips and poured from his breast, staining his gray robes to black.

Valian, momentarily thrown, yanked free his sword. Trevalyn fell at his feet. "You have no more magic," he said to the corpse, "and I never liked you anyway."

He turned to pursue Tohr but found the Knight of Skulls already outside the door, shouting for his guard. With a snarl of rage, Valian slashed aside the curtain and burst out the window, escaping to the battlement just as three Knights erupted into the room, swords drawn.

Liam's candle had burned down to a stub no bigger than his big toe. Gunthar's papers lay before him on the desk, and still he had not begun. Despite the Knighthood's pressing need for some kind of direction and order, he couldn't bring himself to begin the task. Was it fear of failure, his own failure, or was it fear of having to announce that Gunthar's Revised Measure was a failure? Could he bring himself to admit that possibility before everyone?

There were so many other things to consider right now. There was his failure at the vote of succession, and the news brought by Valian Escu of the draconian stronghold. During his interview later that evening with Jessica Vestianstone, she'd confirmed everything Valian said, even adding to what he'd been told. She'd expanded on the part of the tale concerning the priest, Nalvarre Ringbow. She told Liam of Nalvarre's encounter in the forest with a creature able to take the form of anyone it killed and of the attack on his house while he was away. She described the injuries to the hound Millisant. When she mentioned it, he seemed to remember some talk among the grooms that one of the hounds had not returned from the hunt, but at the time he'd paid it no mind. Jessica had broken down in tears when describing the destruction of Isherwood. She'd wept for it as though mourning the passing of an old and very dear friend.

Liam sympathized, though it was not in his nature to show sympathy. All the old ways and old places were passing away, without anything to take their place: the gods, the Knighthood, even magic. As much as he distrusted magic, Liam was forced to admit the world was a better place with it than without. There were no true heroes in the new age, and those left over from the last age were proving to be straw, powerless scarecrows of their former selves, gully dwarves living off the leavings of a glorious world destined never to return.

Liam took a deep breath and steeled himself. He lit a new candle from the old one and set it on the desk, then reached for the top sheet of the stack of manuscripts closest to him.

He went page by page, marking out with his pen the passages irrelevant to the whole of the work. Outside his room, darkwatch came and went, and his pen continued to scratch. Sometimes he laughed at what he read, sometimes he shook his head with sorrow, but on into the night he worked, forgetting his supper, forgetting sleep, forgetting everything but the work before him. Rising late, the new white moon shone through his window. He stopped briefly to open a new bottle of ink.

Liam reached for the next page and spread it on the desk, his pen poised above it, when a scrap of paper fluttered from the top of the stack and landed upside down before him. He flipped it over and read,

Abandon this foolish notion and leave this land, or you and all your Knights will suffer the consequences.

Liam sat back in his chair and read it again. He held the paper up to the candlelight and saw that it appeared torn from a book. The watermark was of Betterman's, a bindery in Kalaman.

Before he had a chance to ponder the note, there came a reluctant knock at his door. Still holding the note, he cautiously approached the door, listening for sounds. When he heard none, he asked through the door "What do you want?"

"Milord, forgive me, but there is a man here who demands to see you," answered the captain of the guard from the hall outside.

"At this hour?" Liam asked. His instincts were aroused since hearing the priest's tale of dopplegangers or sivak draconians murdering people and taking their shape. "Who is he?"

"He is the priest who arrived with Lady Jessica this afternoon," the captain said. "I told him you were very busy, but he insisted."

"Tell him I'll see him in the morning," Liam said.

Another voice answered, shouting, "I must see Sir Liam!"

"Sir Liam will see you in the morning. Now you must go!" the captain warned.

"I have news of Gunthar's death. I have been to the crypt!" the man said. Sounds of a struggle began.

Liam gasped and jumped to the door, angrily snatching it open. "Bring him here," he hissed. "And be quiet about it. You'll wake the entire castle."

The captain, a tall powerfully built Ergothian, dragged Nalvarre Ringbow into the room and unceremoniously dumped him on the floor. "You can go," Liam said, waving the warrior to the door. "Tell no one," he added.

With a baffled expression, the captain of the guard closed the door behind him. Nalvarre rose to his feet, brushed back his hair and turned to face Sir Liam.

"What is this about visiting the crypt?" Liam asked as he moved behind the heavy oaken desk, placing it between the wild man and himself. At the same time, he used the desk to conceal the dagger in his hand. "That is a holy place forbidden to all but the initiated."

Nalvarre cleared his throat. "You have been told that I spent some time with a gully dwarf named Uhoh Ragnap, and that he claimed to be present at the time of Gunthar's death," Nalvarre said.

Liam nodded impatiently.

Nalvarre continued, "Uhoh did a remarkable job of imitating the manner in which Lord Gunthar died. And he mentioned several other things, about the dog Garr for instance, that made me suspicious as to the cause of Lord Gunthar's death."

"The cause of Lord Gunthar's has already been determined by Trevalyn Kesper. He said that…" Liam's voice trailed off as he raised an eyebrow.

"Ah, now you begin to see why I was in the crypt," Nalvarre said. He stepped forward and reached into his pocket.

Reacting swiftly, Liam stepped back, his dagger poised to strike. Nalvarre halted, his hand half out of his pocket.

"I have no weapon," he said. "Look." He inched the scrap of paper between his fingers out enough for Liam to see. "It's only a bit of paper."

Liam lowered his weapon.

Nalvarre breathed a sigh of relief and carefully unfolded the paper. "I took these from the wound on Gunthar's thigh," he explained as he laid the paper on the desk.

"You did not desecrate the body!" Liam said in alarm.

"No, of course not,'" Nalvarre laughed nervously. "I found them right on the surface of the wound."

Cautiously, Liam leaned forward to look. Several tiny amber beads lay in a crease of the otherwise blank scrap of paper.

"Before I came to Sancrist, I learned from the elves of Qualinesti of a poison sometimes used by draconians to envenom their arrows," Nalvarre said.

"Poison?" Liam exclaimed.

"When dried, if hardens into amber-like nodules. It only dissolves in one substance-blood. No other liquids have an effect upon it," Nalvarre said.

"How can you prove what you are saying?" Liam asked.

"I have come here to test the poison," Nalvarre said, "so that you may see with your own eyes. If you will pass me that bottle of brandy, we can begin."

Warily Liam took a bottle from the table behind him and handed it to the priest. Nalvarre removed the cork and tipped the bottle until a little brandy spilled out into his cupped palm. Then, dipping his finger into the liquid, he shook a drop onto one of the amber beads. The drop splattered on the paper, staining it, but the bead remained unchanged.

"Now, if you would be so kind," Nalvarre said, holding out his hand.

Liam looked at it without understanding.

"With your dagger," the priest said as he wiggled his fingers.

Liam took Nalvarre's hand and held it firmly in his own. Reversing the dagger, he pricked the priest's thumb. Nalvarre jerked, and a drop of blood welled from the tiny wound.

Careful not to let the wound touch the bead, Nalvarre squeezed his thumb above the paper. A drop of blood swelled, dangling for what seemed an eternity, before finally falling. It splattered on the paper next to the brandy stain.

As the blood soaked into the paper, the amber beads began to shrink, then disappeared as they dissolved in the blood.

Liam's fist slammed on the desk, sending stacks of papers sliding to the floor. "They did poison him!" he snarled.

"That's why the draconians hunted the gully dwarf so relentlessly, because he knew Gunthar's secret," Nalvarre said.

"What secret?" Liam asked, the blood rising in his face.

"Something Gunthar whispered to the gully dwarf just before he died. As it was told me, 'the book… Kalaman… Liam… in bell room… tell him… tell no one else.' I think it might have something to do with the Revised Measure."

"Perhaps," Liam pondered this surprising information hopefully. If Gunthar had finished the Measure and hidden it somewhere, it would certainly be welcome news. But where? In the bell room? There wasn't a bell room in Castle uth Wistan.

Perhaps in Kalaman? Kalaman!

His eyes shot to the note in his hand, to the watermark on it, from Kalaman. The book he'd given Gunthar several years ago, a book which was kept not in the bell room, but in Belle's room, the former bedchamber of Gunthar's ladywife. The room now occupied by…

"I want Lord Tohr brought to me this instant!" Liam shouted as he stalked to the door. He jerked it open.

Liam stepped back from the open door, finding Lady Jessica already there, her arm raised as though about to knock. Her mouth gaped open.

"Lady Jessica!" Liam shouted. "What are you doing here?

Excuse me please. Guards!" he shouted, then stepped back again in surprise. "You!"

Valian, held firmly by two Knights of the Sword, struggled as though to escape.

"Sir Valian came to my room and asked me to be brought to you," Jessica tried to explain. "He said it was important."

"I'll say it is," Liam said as the captain of the guard appeared at the door. "Captain, hold this elf. Don't try to escape, Valian."

"I came here to warn you," Valian shouted as the captain entered the room with drawn sword, "not to… escape."

"Warn us of what?" Liam asked.

"That all along Lord Tohr has schemed to take control of the Knights of Sancrist Isle," Valian said, "and that he had Gunthar killed. I don't know how."

"It was poison," Nalvarre said.

"I suspected as much," Valian said.

The captain of the guard stood in the center of the room, looking in confusion from one person to the next.

"Lord Gunthar was poisoned?" the captain of the guard asked.

At that moment, a guard appeared at the open door. He glanced around the room for a moment, as though looking for someone in particular. His eyes lighted on the captain.

"Captain, Sir Liam, Trevalyn Kesper has been found dead in the chambers of Lord Tohr Malen," he said.

"That was my doing," Valian said.

"And what of Lord Tohr?" Liam asked.

"He is not in his room. All the other Knights of Takhisis are missing as well. The watch is having trouble finding many of our own Knights as well. Perhaps the others… "

They turned at the sound of horns from the courtyard. Footsteps pounded in the hall. Liam raced across the room and threw open the window. An arrow thudded into the heavy curtain beside his head.

Outside, men shouted Solamnic challenges, and metal clashed against metal. Axes rang like hammers on shields, and men cried out in pain. Fires flared up, lighting all the sky.

Liam turned, a tear in his eye. "Brother against brother," he groaned. "What have we come to?"