They departed the village—none of them had ever discovered its name—just as the first sunlight spilled over the horizon. Kaz had little hope that they would actually have a sunlit day. Beyond a certain point in the morning, the orb would find itself hidden behind a thick mass of clouds. This weather was not right, the minotaur knew. It reminded him too much of the war and of the lands about to fall to the servants of Takhisis. Where evil ruled, the sun rarely shone, it was said, and evil could not prevail in Solamnia. Not in the homeland of Paladine’s earthly champions.
Could it?
Kaz buried the thought deep in his mind as they traveled. Vingaard Keep would be visible before day’s end. He would have his answers soon enough.
The trek was hardest on Darius, though not because of his injuries. Those the power of Mishakal had healed completely. Rather, it was the land itself that seemed to affect the knight. Like so many others, he had expected Solamnia to be well on its way to recovery by now. This—this was a wasteland.
“How do so many survive here?” he asked Kaz in horror. “How do they survive?”
“The land’s not completely dead, human, but I agree it must be near impossible.”
No goblins harried them; no dragon or other beast swooped down to throw them about like toys. The day would have actually been pleasant, if not for the specter of the land itself. Kaz noted that Tesela constantly fingered her medallion. Thinking of Delbin, Kaz glanced at the small figure perched atop the pony next to him. Delbin was growing very moody, an odd reaction for one of his kind. Kender were habitually cheerful. Kaz thought of asking his companion what was worrying him. The thought of a kender trying to explain such a complicated emotion made him hesitate, however, and the matter slipped away.
With the early evening came a distant, mist-enshrouded surprise.
Darius was the first to recognize it as more than just another indistinct speck on the horizon. Only he made the connection between where they were and the relative size of the thing.
The one word he uttered was barely more than a whisper. “Vingaard!”
Kaz narrowed his eyes and tried to make out anything more than a blur. “Are you certain?”
“What else could it be?”
“True.” Even though they had made far better time than Kaz would have thought possible, the citadel of the Knights of Solamnia was still a goal they would not reach until tomorrow. Kaz hated the thought of stopping when they were so close, but reminded himself that this land had both goblins and some great unnamed beast wandering about. Let the enemy come to them. Better that than walking into an ambush. Besides, although they had not as yet seen any Solamnic patrols, who was to say there was not one nearby even now?
It was an uneasy group that made camp that night. Both Kaz and Darius searched the skies continuously. Delbin, as moody as before, fell asleep almost immediately after finishing his meal. Tesela, having slept the least the night before, soon joined him.
Darius offered to take first watch. Kaz argued with him briefly, but gave in. It turned out not to matter very much. Neither one could sleep well that night, and each spent the other’s watch period waiting impatiently for the dawn.
The night was so uneventful that Kaz had to wonder if he, too, should carry a blank book, much like Delbin’s, to record such rare nights. Yet despite the calm of the evening, the minotaur rose at dawn with such anxiety that his hands were quivering in anticipation of … what? He could not say for certain. It was the same feeling that had been growing inside him for days. He both needed and loathed the impending confrontation with Lord Oswal.
They passed a few more poor settlements where ragged people lived phantom existences. One or two hardy souls cursed at them, but no one attempted to do them any harm. Kaz could not say what disturbed them more, his presence or that of the knight, Darius. It was apparently evident to Darius as well that some of the folk were glaring at him. He gave Kaz an agonized look. For one who had decided to devote his existence to the glory of Paladine, this was a slap in the face. The Knights of Solamnia were supposed to be the benefactors of the people, not their cursed enemies.
Vingaard Keep grew ever larger on the horizon, seeming to take on a slightly different form as they neared. There was something ominous about its appearance, not to mention the fact that they still had not been intercepted by a single patrol. Such a thing was unheard of. Kaz began to fiddle with his axe, eventually pulling it out of the harness completely. He noted that Darius had his hand on his sword, and even Delbin stroked one of the daggers he wore. Tesela, weaponless, was muttering prayers under her breath.
“The banners are missing,” Darius pointed out.
Kaz shrugged. “Perhaps they only lie limp because of the lack of wind.”
It was true. There was no wind, no sound. Even the chatter of the carrion crows would have been preferable to the oppressive silence overhanging the land.
They passed more buildings, some of which showed signs of needing repair, but all were empty. It was as if the people had simply abandoned them.
“No one wants to live too near Vingaard Keep, it seems,” Kaz grumbled.
In some places, attempts at farming caught their eyes. Sad-looking cornstalks, no higher than Delbin, and wild patches of oats dotted the landscape. Being so close to the knighthood, this area had gone the farthest toward recuperation. Had something not occurred to bring that revitalization to a halt, there might have been tall fields by now.
“Will we have any trouble gaining entrance at the gates?” Tesela asked Darius.
Kaz, who had been wondering the same thing, stared at the gates. He blinked, thinking that his eyes played tricks. The vision did not change. He snorted in puzzlement. “I don’t think we need worry about being barred from entering.”
“Why is that?”
They were now close enough that Vingaard could be given more scrutiny. Kaz pointed at the gates. “Unless I miss my guess, the gates are already partially open.”
Darius froze in his tracks and squinted. It was true; even from here, it was possible to tell that the gates stood wide open.
“Impossible!” the knight muttered. “This is a dereliction of duty!”
“It may be more than that,” Kaz grunted. “It may be much more than that.”
Their pace had been as swift as possible, considering that two of their members had to walk. Now, however, the group slowed, uneasy about the odd signs. Tesela brought up another observation, one that they had all noticed, but feared to mention.
“Where are the sentries, Darius? Where are all the knights? Shouldn’t this place be brimming with activity?”
The knight nodded uneasily. “It should, but it may be that they are in a war situation somewhere, or perhaps they are at prayer.”
Neither of his suggestions satisfied anyone in the least. Vingaard continued to loom. Its walls seemed impossibly high and long. There were slits for archers, but little else marked the walls. The two massive doors, more than twice the height of Kaz, were the only decorated parts that they could see. They were each emblazoned with the symbol of the knighthood, the majestic kingfisher that stood, wings outstretched, holding a sword in its talons. A rose was centered on the sword, and a great crown seemed to float above the kingfisher’s head.
“I see someone!” Delbin suddenly cried, lifting himself up and down in his saddle and pointing in the direction of the battlements of the keep, much to the annoyance of his tired pony.
The other three all looked up but saw no one. Kaz turned and glared at the kender. Delbin shook his head in protest. “I did see someone, Kaz. I think it was a knight; that is, he wore armor, and who else but a knight would be in Vingaard Keep?”
Kaz waved him silent. “Don’t explain. If you think you saw someone, then you saw someone.”
“Then the keep is not abandoned,” Darius said with some relief.
“Which doesn’t mean it’s the knighthood that now controls it,” Kaz added darkly.
“True.”
Gazing down at the ground, Darius studied the tracks of the many animals that had traveled to and from the keep. There was something amiss with the prints in the dust, and he asked Kaz about them. The minotaur stared at them briefly, recognizing what was disturbing the knight.
Kaz kicked at some of the prints. The dust scattered, obliterating several prints. He put one foot down so that his toe touched the front of one of the unburied hoof-marks. “This horse—all these horses—are riding from Vingaard Keep. With this dust, these prints should not have lasted if they had returned. We should see signs of horses entering. I only see a couple.”
“And there are so many departing.” Darius said nothing more, but his eyes swept across the plain before them. It was covered with tracks, nearly all leading away from the keep. Kaz could see that the knight was trying to convince himself that his fellows had entered from some other direction, or that the tracks meant nothing whatsoever. That was always possible.
When at last they stood at the gate, they were somewhat confused as to what to do. No one had hailed them, and there was an open gate. The space was wide enough for the horses to pass through with ease.
“We will announce ourselves,” Darius said stiffly. He stepped in front of the others and looked upward.
“Darius of Trebbel, Knight of the Crown, assigned to the keep in lower Wystia, requests entrance into Vingaard Keep, most noble home of the fighting arm of Paladine and residence of the Grand Master—”
Kaz snorted in frustration, leaned his battle-axe on his shoulder, and stalked toward the open gate. After a moment’s hesitation, Delbin urged his pony after the minotaur. Behind them, they heard Darius break off as he realized what the two were doing.
Feeling somewhat like an offering to a quiet, cold god, Kaz led the way through the gates and into the keep itself.
* * * * *
South of Vingaard Keep, near where Kaz had rescued Darius, a group of riders paused while one of them climbed off his horse to investigate something on the ground. After several moments, he looked back toward the others.
“Two sets of footprints … this way, milord.”
A visored figure clad in the armor of a Knight of the Rose joined the ranger. The ranger, a man preferring the woodland regions to the southwest, shivered. Like many, he had come to distrust any who followed the Solamnic Order, especially here in the war-torn north. Worse yet, the knight kneeling beside him was a lord of the Order of the Rose, and at his beck and call were nearly two hundred other knights—two hundred knights and one nervous ranger.
“A survivor of the massacre and his rescuer.” The knight’s helm gave his voice an echoing quality. “At least, that seems likely, considering someone went to the trouble of destroying this filth.” He indicated what remained of the goblin whose arm Kaz had completely severed. The goblin had crawled away and eventually died.
The knight rose and the ranger quickly followed suit. Gauntleted hands removed the helmet, revealing a handsome, somewhat arrogant man with fine, hawklike features. As was the custom of the knighthood, he wore a tremendous mustache. Dark hair flowed loosely now that the helm was gone. Despite an air of command and experience, he was young for one in his position.
“Young but getting older by the second,” Bennett, Lord Knight of the Order of the Rose, would have replied. He noted that the pair of tracks moved northward, the same direction his band was even now headed. Vingaard Keep lay that way. Vingaard Keep, home to the knighthood itself. A place where he had virtually grown up, being the son of one Grand Master and the nephew of another.
He shivered at the thought of returning to that place now that the curse had been lifted from his mind.
“Two days,” he muttered. The ranger looked at him blankly. Bennett explained. “In two days, I want us in sight of the keep. Not there, but in sight of it.” What is the range of that … whatever it was? he wondered. Will we fall prey to it immediately? Will it strike us in stages, one by one, until we are mad once more?
The memory of one knight, a good knight, turning mad without warning and running himself through with his own sword made Bennett almost reconsider. They could not turn back now, however. Not while Vingaard Keep was becoming warped and twisted, a mockery of its own tradition.
Not while his uncle, the Grand Master, a victim of the spell of madness that seemed to linger over Vingaard, sat in his chambers and fought a war against enemies who likely existed only in his own mind.
Great Paladine, is this a test of our faith? Of mine?
A flash of white in the distance caught his attention. He wiped the dust of a long journey from his eyes and looked again. Has the madness returned so soon?
“What is it, milord? Did you see something?”
“No.” Bennett disliked the lie, but he liked the truth even less. An albino wolf? Am I seeing memories?
He quickly replaced the helm, the better to hide his uncertainties, and turned toward those who had put their lives in his hands. Not all were of the Order of the Rose, but all were his to command as senior knight in this crisis situation. Six years ago, he would have accepted that fact with no anxieties. Likely, he would have also led these men to their deaths—if indeed they were that fortunate. Times changed. Outlooks changed.
May I have your strength, Huma of the Lance.
At Bennett’s signal, they mounted up. Nearly all of them had suffered through the same madness as he had. There was the elf, too. He wondered what had become of him.
Mounted, he turned to the ranger, who was staring uneasily around them. “What ails you?”
“The goblins did not attack the party from the southern keeps, milord. Whatever it was, it was huge.”
“The days of dragons are long past us, man, and I know of no creature so large and vicious in this part of the country. Rest assured, our danger lies in Vingaard Keep, not in the skies or in this desolation around us.” Bennett believed that wholeheartedly. Goblins and raiders were incidental compared to what lay in—under?—Vingaard Keep.
As the column began to move, his thoughts drifted to the two who had taken the time to give the dead knights a decent pyre. At least one, he was certain, was a knight. The other? The footprints looked inhuman, more like an ogre or goblin, but neither of those races would have any respect for human dead. It was not an elf, either. Could it be … Hardly. Only a fool would dare journey into the heart of a land that had named him villain. Even a minotaur was not that simpleminded.
Whoever they were, Bennett hoped they would somehow have the good sense to avoid Vingaard Keep.
CHAPTER 10
Stepping into Vingaard Keep reminded Kaz of stepping into one of own his nightmares. There was an unreal quality to the place, encouraged by the lengthening shadows as the day slowly died. Every second, Kaz expected some ghastly figure to leap out from a hiding place.
“Where is everyone?” Tesela whispered. There was no real need to whisper. Darius’s shouts should have alerted any within these walls that the party was there. On the other hand, it still seemed somehow proper to whisper.
“Paladine preserve us,” the knight muttered. He was staring at the refuse scattered about the courtyard. Several great piles, taller than Kaz, were spread about the open areas of the keep. They appeared to be lined up in some sort of pattern, but for what purpose no one could say. Everything seemed to have been included: chairs, armor, tools, and much more.
Kaz narrowed his eyes as he scanned the interior of the keep. Lack of maintenance had taken its toll on the buildings. Moss and ivy grew unchecked. Everything had a thin layer of grime and dirt.
Darius took the reins of Tesela’s mount—and Delbin’s, as an afterthought—and led both animals to the stable. After peering inside, he tied the horses to a post rather than leading them into the sta
ble itself. When he returned to the others, he explained. “As near as I can see, no one has cleaned that place in months. There are no horses in there, and I would never forgive myself if I put ours in that sty. It’s a breeding ground for disease.”
“Evidently it’s seen recent use, then,” Kaz commented.
“A month, perhaps two months ago. The cleaning stopped long before that, though.”
The minotaur leaned lightly on his battle-axe. “Delbin saw someone—or something—while we were riding up to the gate. A knight, possibly? I say we continue to look around.”
“I don’t think I’d like to separate, if it’s all the same to you,” Tesela said quietly. Her right hand had not left her medallion. No matter the powers bequeathed to her as a cleric of Mishakal, Kaz knew that she was no trained fighter. Bravery counted only so much against what they might find lurking in the keep.
“We’ll stay together.”
“It will take longer to search,” Darius pointed out.
“And if one of us falls into trouble, it’ll take forever to find that one. Better to stay together. Vingaard Keep is no longer what I would consider a safe haven. Goblins might have very well set up camp in some part of it.”
“Perhaps you would rather we depart.”
Kaz shook his head. “I’ve come all the way here to confront the Grand Master, and I won’t leave until I know for certain whether he’s here or not. If he is, I have business with him.” He looked at Delbin and Tesela. “You two might be better off waiting for us outside.”
He already knew Delbin’s answer and was not surprised when the cleric also refused. “You yourself said we should stay together.”
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