The knights pressed forward. By the time the tunnel’s slope began to level, six more of their number had fallen and more than half a hundred corpses lay in their wake, hacked and crushed, a few still twitching. Finally, the numbers of the dead began to thin, and the tunnel opened out into the enormous cavern that was the Chemoshans’ fane.
The cave was vast, fifty paces across. A great, dark pool filled half of it, fed by dripping stalactites above. Firelight painted the walls, leaping from copper braziers festooned with skulls—animal and human alike. The dreaded drums towered atop the broad stumps of two broken stalagmites, and more skins hung upon the walls, stretched on wooden frames and painted with unholy sigils. Skull-helmed Chemoshans, two score and more, filled the fane, and more ghouls lurked in the shadows. On a stony outcrop above the pool was the altar itself, the huge skull of a long-dead dragon, cut open so its brainpan formed a bowl for sacrifices. Beside it, clad in midnight robes and a bear-skull headdress encrusted with scarlet and black gems, was the head of the cult, the Deathmaster.
Seeing the knights from across the cave, the high priest raised a hand—dark with blood from whatever offering he’d been preparing in the altar—and roared for his men to attack.
They obeyed, charging at Cathan and his men with sickle swords and wavy-bladed knives.
The remaining ghouls lurched behind. The knights raised their shields to repulse the charge, and for a time the cavern filled with the crash of steel against steel. The wounded and dying shouted out the names of gods both light and dark.
The knights were outnumbered, but they fought hard, and again the cultists were no match. Men died on either side, but the Divine Hammer slew three for each of their own. In time, the Chemoshans’ lines faltered, then gave way entirely.
The battle broke up, the Chemoshans’ lines unraveling into small pockets that soon fell before the knights’ swords. They died howling curses at their killers, their eyes blazing with hate. Cathan and Damid pushed past, Tithian and a half-dozen other knights on their heels as they charged the altar. Another knot of priests awaited them there, and these diehards fought even more furiously than their brethren had, desperation and fury fueling their strength. Even so, they were no match for the Hammer.
The Deathmaster had stayed by the altar, no weapon in his hand, his long-bearded face twisted into a cold sneer. There was no fear in his eyes, though his own end was surely at hand. He had made his pact with Chemosh, Cathan knew. His only desire now was to take his foes into death with him as many as he could. Cathan led his men up the steps of the fane’s makeshift dais, Ebonbane flashing red in his hand.
Smiling, the Deathmaster raised a finger to point at him.
Cathan froze, feeling the death god’s presence surge through the fane. Seconds became centuries as he watched the high priest’s eyes flare blood red, and crimson light swell around the man’s fingertips. A strange, itching heat spread across his skin, swiftly gathering into pain….
Something hit him from behind, knocking him to the ground.
Damid.
Cathan felt the Deathmaster’s spell leave him, saw his fellow knight freeze, scimitar upraised. “No!” he shouted, reaching out. “Get—”
With a sound like claws scratching slate, the crimson light around the Deathmaster’s hand became a whip, a scarlet strand that lashed out and wrapped around and around Damid. The Seldjuki screamed, dropping his sword, then shuddered as his cry rose into agony, muffled by the magical cocoon. Cathan clutched at him, but the webs burned where he touched them, and he snatched his hand back with a hiss.
For an instant, everything was still. Then the magical fibers sprang loose, and tore Sir Damid Segorro apart.
Bits of flesh spattered the stones, splashing down into the pool below. Steel armor ripped apart like tin. Red mist filled the air. Amid it all, Damid’s ghastly skeletal remains collapsed in a ruin of bone and tendon.
A mocking laugh burst from the Deathmaster’s lips as the knights stared at what remained of their fellow. Eyes blazing with madness, he reached out toward Cathan again—
—and stopped, staring at the sword that had just buried itself in his stomach.
Cathan blinked, turned, and saw Tithian. His squire no longer held his blade.
Recklessly, he had hurled it at the Deathmaster, and somehow the throw had struck true, burying the blade halfway to its quillons in the Chemoshan’s gut. It was hard to say whether he or the cult’s leader looked more surprised.
The Deathmaster fell to his knees, still gaping at the weapon. Furious, Cathan got to his feet, reached down, and lifted Damid’s scimitar. Setting his own blade aside, he walked to the high priest, grabbed the bear’s skull, and wrenched it from the man’s head. The Deathmaster was old, his face scarred by some long-ago pox. There were finger-bones woven into his hair and beard. He looked up, his dark eyes shining with fanatical hatred.
When he opened his mouth to curse Cathan, though, only a dark rope of blood spilled out.
“By the Divine Hammer,” Cathan pronounced, raising his dead friend’s blade, “in the name of god and Kingpriest, I condemn thee. Du tas usam, porved.”
Go to thy god.
The blade fell.
CHAPTER 2
The Knights built two pyres the morning after the attack, on the cliff tops overlooking the Hullbreaker. The storm had broken, yielding to gray skies fringed with blue in, the south, and the sea had lost its rage. Gulls wheeled above, and crows as well, drawn by the smell of the dead. Far off, well beyond the stone spire, the dark speck of a lone caravel plied the waves.
The first pyre was a jumble of driftwood and scrub, thrown in a crude heap. Sprawled upon it, arms outflung and, often as not, eyes staring wide, were the Chemoshans and the stinking corpses who had served them. A few of the death cult’s ghouls still twitched, clinging to their horrible unlife. The knights had spent the better part of the night dragging them back from the Hullbreaker, The Church mandated that servants of evil be purified with flame, and so Cathan threw first torch onto the pyre as the company’s priests flicked oil upon the bodies. The conflagration leaped high, the trailing black smoke across the sky.
The second pyre, placed upwind of the first, was smaller—Paladine be blessed, Cathan thought as he looked upon it. It was carefully stacked, cut from a stand of goldleaf trees that stood inland. The bodies upon it were more orderly, each laid upon his shield, his hands grasping his weapon upon his breast. The dead knights’ eyes were closed, the more ghastly wounds covered with white linen. Here the priests took greater care with the rites of sanctification. They laid blocks of sweet incense among the dead, carefully daubed—each with oil, and recited the Ligibo, the ritual for those who died fighting in the god’s name.
“Porasom, usas farnas,” the clerics prayed, “e bonasom iudun donbulas, Palado fi.”
Go, children of the god, and dwell beyond the stars, at Paladine’s side forevermore.
As one, the surviving knights—twenty in all where thirty had stood the night before—drew blade and mace, and raised them high in salute. “Sifat,” they murmured.
Here, too, Cathan lit the first brand. He had lost count of how many men of the Divine Hammer—and boys, for that matter—he had burned over the years. Too many faces to remember, all of them martyrs in the Kingpriest’s name. Today, though, it was harder to light the fire. Damid, whose body lay shrouded to conceal how the Deathmaster had ruined him, had been more than just a comrade at arms. They had spent many good days together, drinking in wine shops and laughing at each other’s tales. They had journeyed from one end of the empire to the other. Now those days were done, and Cathan felt tired and old. It wasn’t like losing a brother, as some men said—Cathan’s own brother was twenty years gone, victim to a terrible plague, and that loss was still a thorn in his heart—but it hurt all the same.
“Farewell, my friend,” he said, as he set the pyre ablaze.
He walked away, not bothering to look back as the other knights added their own to
rches to the pile. He went to the cliffs edge, staring out at the caravel with his colorless eyes. The wind snapped at his white tabard, and fine rain began to fall. Sighing, he reached to his belt and pulled forth a talisman of bones and teeth, tipped with a rat’s skull. Black sapphires glittered in the empty sockets. He had pulled it from the Deathmaster’s neck, as proof the old man was dead. There was still blood on it. Now he stared at it, drawn into its ebon gaze.
Behind him, someone coughed. Cathan started, closing his fist around the talisman, and glanced over his shoulder. Tithian stood there, freckled, shaggy, and gangly.
Confronted with his master’s strange stare, he flushed deep red and looked down at his boots. The other knights and squires had taken to calling him Sword flinger after the battle.
Though Cathan had been only slightly older when he first became a knight, Tithian still looked little more than a boy.
“This war,” he said, scuffing the ground with his foot. “It never will end, will it, sir?”
Damid would have laughed at the question, in his infectious way. Just remembering it made Cathan chuckle. Seeing Tithian’s flush deepen, he laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“This is no war, lad,” he said. “We fight the battle every pious man fights, to rid himself of evil—only we fight it for the empire. Our task is to keep the darkness at bay, not to destroy it utterly.”
In its early days, the Divine Hammer had sought to eradicate all evil in Istar. It remained the knighthood’s stated policy, even now. The Kingpriest still spoke of his promised kingdom of eternal light, where the sun would burn so brightly there would be no need for shadow. After so many years, however—so many lives lost—Cathan had found that as weak as the servants of darkness grew, there were always more of them. Perhaps there always would be.
Tithian coughed again, still studying his toes.
“What is it?” Cathan asked.
The squire squirmed beneath his stare. “Well, sir. I mean. It …” He stopped, took a deep breath. “The men say I’m to be knighted for … for what happened.”
Cathan scowled. Those dolts, he thought. I’d been hoping to keep it a surprise.
“Of course,” he said reassuringly. “You don’t do what you did and just get a pat on the head, lad. When we get back to the Lordcity, Grand Marshal Tavarre will dub you himself.”
He paused, frowning as he studied the boy’s grimacing face. “You’re supposed to be happy about that news, Tithian.”
“I know, sir,” Tithian said. “And I’m glad. But…well, I’d hoped you would…”
Pride surged in Cathan’s breast. He’d had four squires before Tithian—all of them knights now, two already dead and burned—but none had asked such a thing of him.
Rightly so, too: the code of the Divine Hammer was clear that the only men who could confer knighthood were the order’s Grand Marshal and the Kingpriest himself. There was something different about Tithian, though. The boy doted on him. He’d been an orphan when the order first took him in, had never known his father, didn’t even have a family name. If Damid had been almost a brother to Cathan, Tithian was nearly his son —and as close as anyone would be, since as a holy order, the Divine Hammer demanded chastity of its members.
Cathan smiled. “Kneel, then.”
Grinning like a kender, Tithian obeyed. His mail rattled as he lowered himself to the rocky ground.
“You understand this isn’t the official ceremony,” Cathan said. “Tavarre will still take care of that. You’re not getting out of your vigil that easily.”
Tithian nodded, still beaming. Chuckling, Cathan reached across his body and drew Ebonbane. The rasp of metal drew the other knights’ attention, and they looked on in surprise as he raised the blade, then set it down on his squire’s shoulders in turns—left, then right, then left again.
“All right,” Cathan bade, sliding his sword home again. “Get up. You’re not a true knight yet, lad, but you’re one in my eyes.”
Any wider and Tithian’s smile would have split his head in two. Leaping to his feet, he clasped Cathan’s arms. “Thank you, sir,” he gushed. “Thank you!” He dashed off, back toward the other squires, who were eyeing him jealously.
Cathan shook his head, watching him go. Then his gaze drifted along the bluff, taking in the two pyres, and his smile faltered. He signed the triangle. Tucking the talisman back into his belt, he turned and stared out to sea once more.
*****
The sky was filled with jewels. Diamond and ruby stars sparkled on black velvet. The two moons, disks of chalcedony and sard, glided over constellations Cathan knew well: the Valiant Warrior, horned Kiri-Jolith, the five-headed Queen of Darkness, and still others, each the sign of a god of light or darkness. There, amid it all, was the greatest gem of all: a globe of turquoise, fringed with wisps of cloud. The world. Krynn.
Cathan winced in his sleep, groaning. He knew this dream. It had plagued his sleep since the night before his dubbing. Not a month went by when he didn’t find himself floating here, among the stars. Every time, it was the same.
Small wonder it’s happening tonight, he thought. Once the pyres guttered out, the cultists’ ashes scattered and the knights’ gathered into a golden urn to be brought back to the Lordcity, his company had ridden inland, away from the Hullbreaker and the fierce sea winds. When they camped at nightfall, in a copse of swaying birches, the men of the Divine Hammer had all but fallen from their saddles. Cathan had forced himself to stay awake until the fires were lit and the watch set, then had climbed into his bedroll and fallen asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.
Now in his dreams he looked upon Krynn from high above, marking the continent of Ansalon amid the ocean’s blue. He saw each of its realms: Ergoth, Solamnia, Kharolis…the woods of the elves and the mountain fastnesses of the dwarves…the meadows where the kender dwelt, and the frozen barrens of Icereach…and there, larger than any, Istar the Holy, the Kingpriest’s glorious Lordcity shining at its heart.
Now something else. Something behind him, coming closer.
He turned, knowing already what he would see. The burning hammer was as much a part of the dream as the stars and moons, a great flaming mass streaking across the night.
It had been there the first time the dream came, the eve of his dubbing. The Divine Hammer took its name from the vision. As Cathan watched, it grew larger and larger against the night. Closer, closer…then streaking past him in a silent rush, close enough that its heat seared him, its light made his eyes sting.
Still he watched it go, fire trailing in its wake, diving now toward the turquoise orb.
Toward Istar. It was the god’s justice, come down to crush evil from the world. He ground his teeth, tensing as he waited for it to strike, the terrible roar of noise as it fell upon the empire….
*****
“Sir? Sir, wake—”
Cathan’s eyes snapped open at once. A dark shadow loomed over him, a hand touched his arm. He sat up, reached for Ebonbane beside him, and had the sword halfway out of its scabbard before the shape resolved into Tithian. The boy straightened up, taking a step back, unafraid. This wasn’t the first time he’d woken his master from the throes of the dream.
It was dim out, and cool—it never got truly cold this far north. Fine rain, almost mist, dripped down through the boughs. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was trying, the sky and everything beneath it gray. The campfires had burned down to cinders, and most of the other knights were still asleep in their bedrolls. Off in the shadows, the horses whickered.
In the other direction, Ovinus’s low voice chanted. The Revered Son prepared to greet the dawn, such as it was.
Ebonbane hissed back into its sheath.
“Early,” Cathan muttered. ”What’s the matter?”
Tithian tugged at the collar of his tunic. “The lookouts spotted something.”
“Something?” Cathan raised an eyebrow.
“In the sky, sir.”
That was interesting. Th
rowing off his bedroll, Cathan rose to his feet. He ached worse than when he’d gone to sleep; but he put it from his mind. His squire handed him a horn of wine, warm from mulling over the fire, and he gulped it down as he slung his baldric over his shoulder. Ebonbane bumped against his thigh, reassuring. Tithian offered his helm next, but Cathan waved him off.
“Which way?” he asked.
The boy led him south from the camp, to where the wood gave way to hilly grasslands draped in cords of mist. Two of Cathan’s sharper-eyed knights stood just inside the tree line, staring at the clouds. One, an amiable hulk named Sir Marto, glanced back, then raised his hand in salute. He put a finger to his lips as Cathan and Tithian crunched through fallen leaves toward them. His partner, a lean, flame-haired fellow called Pellidas, continued to stare skyward.
“Strange thing, sir,” Marto whispered, his voice thick with the accent of the jungle province of Falthana. He tugged at his beard, forked in the style of his homeland. “Pell saw it not long ago. It’s been circling ever since. I think it’s looking for something.”
Pellidas nodded, saying nothing. He had been born mute.
Cathan frowned, looking up. His eyes were not as good as they’d once been. He couldn’t make anything out against the slate-colored pall. He muttered a curse. “Tithian, get my farglass,” he hissed.
The boy cleared his throat, Cathan glanced at him, and saw the boy already had the contraption he’d asked for—a brass tube with lenses of Micahi glass at both ends. He’d been thinking ahead, evidently. With a sheepish smile, Tithian held out the farglass.
Cathan took it, and held one end up to his eye, peering through it at whatever it was Marto and Pell had seen.
There weren’t many flying beasts left in Istar. The dragons were long gone, and such—wicked creatures as manticores and wyverns were few, all but unknown in the northern provinces. Perhaps it was a griffin, like the tame ones the elves in the Kingpriest’s court kept. Maybe even a winged horse. Legend said such creatures had once run wild on the empire’s grasslands and in the skies above. He’d never seen one, and the thought that one of the beasts might be above him now made him shiver. He tracked the farglass back and forth, searching, searching…
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