by Tina Daniel
Bird-Spirit handed the sea dragon back to Cloudreaver, who passed it on to the next kyrie, and so on around the circle until Cloudreaver brought the huge creature to Caramon. The others watched him intently. Close up, the sea animal was revolting. It shrieked and thrashed, lashing out with its jaws. Fearful, Caramon hesitated for just a moment, then reached out and took the sea dragon from Cloudreaver.
Following the example of the others, Caramon held the sea dragon above his head, keeping silent while the other kyrie chanted for him. The Majere twin held the creature aloft until his arms ached, then lowered it, returning the sea dragon to Cloudreaver.
Cloudreaver met Caramon’s eyes and passed the sea dragon on to the next kyrie.
After the sea dragon had gone around the circle, the chanting rose as Cloudreaver held the creature down in the center. He pulled out a long, sharp knife, and as the creature flopped around, trying to escape, Cloudreaver plunged the knife into the animal’s back again and again, penetrating the shell.
Bird-Spirit rushed forward with a bowl, collecting the sea animal’s spew of blood and body juices.
After some time, the creature lay still. One of the kyrie lifted its body back into the box and dragged the box off to one side.
Again Cloudreaver turned to Bird-Spirit first, this time offering the knife to his friend. Bird-Spirit took the knife and cut himself across the top of the forearm, a gash that dripped blood. Cloudreaver caught some of the blood in the bowl, then took the bowl from Bird-Spirit and passed it around the circle.
One by one the others cut themselves and dripped their own blood into the bowl containing the vital juices of the rare sea dragon.
When the knife came to Caramon, he looked up and met Cloudreaver’s eyes once more. Without knowing why, but trusting the rituals of this good and honorable race of bird-people, Caramon cut himself on the forearm. Inexperienced, he cut himself rather deeply, and after blood spurted into the bowl, he had to grip his arm to stem the flow.
Cloudreaver was the last to cut himself.
Everyone kept silent now. The chanting had stopped. Nobody moved.
Kneeling in the center of the circle, Cloudreaver was the first to drink from the bowl. He started forward to hand it to Bird-Spirit, then had a second thought. The son of Sun Feather, the brother of Morning Sky, the heir to leadership of the kyrie turned and brought the bowl to Caramon Majere.
If the truth were known, Caramon was sickened at the thought of drinking the mixture, but he had come this far. He would do what was asked of him. Gripping the bowl with both hands, he put the slightly warm liquid to his lips and gulped some down.
Glancing up, he saw approval in Cloudreaver’s eyes. Around the circle, he saw nodding faces.
Around the circle the bowl went.
Caramon was not the only warrior to be sickened that night by the sea dragon ritual. Within minutes of drinking the mixture of blood and sea dragon juices, he had rushed outside to vomit repeatedly in the darkness.
Afterward, with a wry grin, Cloudreaver told Caramon that that was no dishonor. Caramon had purified himself, and now he would be considered one of them, an honorary—for he was not a kyrie—member of their Warrior Society.
CHAPTER 12
THE PIT OF DOOM
———
EARLY IN THE MORNING, BEFORE LEAPING FOR ATOSSA, TASSLEHOFF drank a double dose of the evil potion. He said he was beginning to like the taste of it—milky, a tad sweet—and it was not a problem for Fesz to coax it all down.
Because of his familiarity with the kender, Dogz was assigned to go along on the journey from Lacynos to Atossa, and from there to Karthay. His mission: to guard Tas.
“Well, let’s call it safeguarding,” Fesz was overheard by Tas to say to Dogz.
Dogz was disgusted with how Tasslehoff was behaving lately, which was less like a kender and more like a just plain evil person. The huge minotaur tried to beg off the assignment, but Fesz insisted that Dogz accompany them.
“He thinks you’re his friend,” said Fesz wisely, adding, “Besides, I command it.”
In half a day, the three of them covered the distance to Atossa, riding in a royal coach drawn by a team of sleek black horses. As much for display as for protection, a troop of fully armored minotaur soldiers thundered alongside, stirring up clouds of dust. The road was rocky and full of bumps, and both minotaurs and the kender were tossed up and down repeatedly in their seats.
Outside the windows of the coach, Tasslehoff glimpsed barren desert. Between the noise and the dust and the sweltering heat and the boring scenery, it really wasn’t a very agreeable journey, Tasslehoff thought. Although he did enjoy being bounced up and down in his seat more than Fesz and Dogz did.
They arrived at midday, to be greeted with much pomp and circumstance. The delegation saluted Fesz in the manner to which a high dignitary was entitled. The welcoming minotaurs observed Tas with obvious curiosity. Dogz stood scowling in the background.
A minotaur with showy insignia, attended by a human slave, made a big show of fawning over Fesz and inviting him to a lunch in his honor. But Fesz, already in a foul mood because of the hot, noisy, thoroughly unpleasant journey, brushed past the other minotaur, insisting upon seeing the human prisoner—the one who had not escaped—right away.
“Yes, right away! Or heads will roll!” added Tasslehoff in a voice that brooked no argument.
“That’s him,” rumbled Dogz. “He’s one of the humans from the ship.” He added, almost guiltily, “I guess we should have killed him right off, instead of throwing him overboard.”
“Of course you should have,” said Tas, somewhat sulkily. “Now look at all the bother he’s caused. If you had asked me, I would have said, ‘Kill him and be done with it.’ Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today—especially when it comes to killing, I always say. Of course, I wasn’t really evil at the time, so maybe I wouldn’t have said ‘Kill him and be done with it’ exactly, but in retrospect, Dogz, you’re absolutely right.”
“What’s his name again?” asked Fesz, cocking his head and observing the human.
They were standing in front of Sturm Brightblade’s prison cell. Sturm sat on a chair facing them, his hands tied with rope behind the chair. The Solamnic was somewhat bruised and bloody, probably signs of recent beatings. But the minotaur guards had obviously tried to freshen him up to make him look presentable for the unusual visit from this high emisarry of the Nightmaster.
Sturm glowered at them. He was surprised and initially relieved to see Tasslehoff, but the kender hadn’t greeted him, maintaining an aloof demeanor. Sturm watched, puzzled, as Tas whispered in conspiratorial conversation with the minotaurs. The kender was certainly acting peculiarly. The young Solamnic couldn’t catch Tas’s eye.
What was he up to?
One of the minotaurs, Sturm noted, was the oddest specimen he had laid eyes on yet. Hulking and large-horned, this one was obviously some dignitary or high priest. The bull creature was dressed in feathers and furs and moved with solemn, dignified purpose.
Sturm had the distinct impression Tas was acting as the minotaur’s sidekick or aide.
“Sturm Brightblade,” said Tas, spitting contemptuously the way he had seen some of the minotaurs do. “He thinks he’s a Solamnic Knight, but he’s not really—just another sad case of misguided ambition, if you ask me. It’s a long story, and I’m not sure you want to go into it, but as far as I can figure it out, it all started with his father—”
“Let me see him more closely,” growled Fesz, interrupting.
Behind them, the minotaur guard hurried to oblige. The door slid open, and Tas and Fesz stepped inside the cell.
Dogz waited outside the cell, feeling indifferent to the whole situation.
Fesz approached Sturm, studying him with a frown on his face. Tas did likewise, hoping that Fesz noticed how well he imitated the minotaur’s every movement. The kender stuck his face right up next to Sturm’s, cocking his head just as the minotaur shaman did.
Having already learned that it was a mistake to react impulsively in this prison, Sturm decided to remain silent, assess this latest development, and watch for some inkling of what game the unpredictable kender was playing.
“A big mistake,” said Tasslehoff scornfully. “Obviously they’ve been torturing this fellow, which is a monumental waste of time. He’d die rather than break his code of honor. The same goes for Kitiara, if I haven’t mentioned it before. Waste of time to torture her. Only in her case, it has nothing to do with honor. It’s just plain pigheadedness. When we get to Karthay, we can tell the Nightmaster, if he hasn’t figured it out for himself. Which he probably has, being the Nightmaster and all.”
Sturm listened carefully. What was this kender babble about Kitiara, Karthay, and someone called the Nightmaster?
“It’s especially a waste of time to torture Sturm if all you’re going to do is punch and kick and occasionally cut him up a little. Sturm comes from a long line of Solamnic traditional nonsense, and he doesn’t respond to ordinary physical torture the way some humans might. Now, if it was up to me, I’d do something a little more imaginative.”
Fesz had moved past Sturm to pace the cell behind the prisoner. The shaman minotaur inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring. He tilted his horned head. Fesz had already forgotten Sturm. He was memorizing the still-lingering scent of the other human, the one called Caramon, the brother of Raistlin.
Tasslehoff reached into his pouch, rummaging for something. He pulled out a small pair of scissors. With the other hand, he grabbed one end of Sturm’s long, drooping mustache.
“This is what I’d do,” he cried triumphantly, slicing off the end of Sturm’s mustache. Sturm winced but said nothing, glaring furiously at the kender.
“Yes!” Tas held the tuft of brown hair in the air, proudly displaying it to Fesz. “Now, that’s what I call torture! These Solamnics are very proud of their mustaches. Oh, very proud indeed!”
He leaned back toward Sturm with an exuberant grin. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” the kender taunted the young Solamnic. “Yes, a very, very long time! You think you’re so high and mighty just because you can grow a long, droopy mustache. Well, I could, too, if I wanted to. I could grow a mustache longer than a topknot. I—”
“I would like to see where the kyrie is held,” rumbled Fesz, cutting Tas off, “and where the other human was last seen before he disappeared.”
“Yes, your excellency!” said the guard, hurrying to escort them. Grabbing the kender by the shoulders, the guard steered Tas out of the cell. The evil kender twisted under the minotaur’s grip, shrieking over his shoulder at the tight-lipped Sturm.
“And I suppose you think we came all this way just to see you, Mr. Droopy Mustache! Hah! It just so happens that we are on our way to Karthay, where we are going to rendezvous with the Nightmaster and do a great, big, important magic spell that will bring Sargonnas into this world. And did I mention that none other than Kitiara Uth Matar is there already, being held prisoner, so we’ve got more important people on our schedule to torture than you.…”
The minotaur guard led the way down a corridor. Fesz followed, prodding Tas in front of him.
It was Dogz who paused to gaze at Sturm. The minotaur rubbed his chin ruefully, thinking he really ought to have killed the two humans the first time he encountered them. Next time he would know better. Now he was up to his thick, bull neck in things he didn’t understand. With a sigh, Dogz trailed after Fesz, Tas, and the minotaur guard.
Sturm was left with half a mustache to ponder what was going on.
The three minotaurs and Tas headed toward the far end of one of the dim corridors, where a sole prisoner was kept behind bars, manacled to a side wall.
This prisoner, Fesz explained to Tasslehoff on the way, was a kyrie, one of the fabled bird-people who lived in remote, mountainous areas of Mithas. The kyrie were sworn enemies of the race of minotaurs, rarely seen in captivity.
“Your former friend, Caramon, was a trustee who brought food and water to the other prisoners,” noted Fesz. “He was last spotted outside the kyrie’s cell. Then he vanished without a trace—like magic.”
If he was talking about Raistlin, Caramon’s twin brother, Tasslehoff said sagely, then they’d have to take into account all sorts of possibilities—invisibility spells, time travel, even escape disguised as a scurrying centipede. But since it was Caramon, the kender was certain that magic had had nothing to do with it.
“This Raistlin must be a very powerful mage,” rumbled Fesz, impressed.
“Yes, very powerful,” agreed Tas, adding mentally to himself, although he isn’t really a mage—yet. Aloud he added, “As powerful as they come. I wouldn’t even dare to guess how powerful, because even while I was taking the time to guess, Raistlin would probably be learning a new spell or two and becoming even more powerful!”
When they arrived at the cell of the kyrie, Tas was chagrined and disappointed. Except for his legs, which were decidedly birdlike, the prisoner didn’t look much like a bird-man. The kyrie had been beaten severely, and his arms hung limp at his sides. A pathetic sight.
A slight twitch told Tas that the kyrie was alive, but just barely. From the looks of him, he might as well have been dead.
When Dogz leaned over and whispered to Tas that the ugly-looking, infected scars on the kyrie’s back were where his wings had been ripped off, the kender exploded.
“What?” Tasselhoff exclaimed, turning on the dungeon guard and aiming several sharp kicks at the bull-man’s knobby kneecaps. “I get one of the only chances of my life to sneak a peek at a kyrie, and you have to bully the man practically to death and tear his wings off! Why, without his wings, he’s practically human-looking—hardly worth the trip to Atossa! You could at least have waited until—”
Fesz pulled Tas away from the astonished guard, whose first impulse was to bash the kender over the head until he thought better of it.
The guard retreated up the corridor. Dogz followed him, calmly explaining in a low voice that the kender had been taking an evil potion at the behest of the shaman and such behavior was to be expected, even sanctioned.
After Fesz soothed Tas, the shaman slowly paced the width of the corridor. He peered at the abject kyrie, then studied the inside and outside of the cell, his eyes roving slowly over the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. He knelt, and with his huge, muscular hands, he felt the solidity of the stone floor. He ran his fingers along the cracks in the side wall. He cocked his head, closed his eyes, and listened for unaccustomed sounds. Then he opened them again, a frown creasing his bull face.
“We did all that, too,” said the minotaur guard to Dogz sourly, from where he stood farther up the corridor. “We didn’t turn up anything either.”
The shaman jerked up his horns, which barely cleared the ceiling. Fesz shot the guard a withering glance. Realizing that he had been overheard, the guard lowered his eyes and stared at his feet.
Fesz stepped back, inviting Tas to take a look.
The kender was eager to prove himself. He had been watching Fesz carefully. First Tas stared at the kyrie. Then he examined the inside of the cell, his eyes darting around suspiciously. It was hard to see much in the dim light. Then he looked around the corridor outside the cell. He knelt down on the stone floor and felt for anything unusual. He ran his fingers along the walls. Like Fesz, he cocked his head, closed and opened his eyes, strained to listen.
He thought he heard a rustling sound somewhere.
“Did Caramon leave anything behind … even the slightest hint of a clue?” asked Tasslehoff.
“Nothing,” mumbled the minotaur guard from farther up the corridor. “Just the two buckets of food and water that he had been carrying. They were overturned, almost empty.”
Fesz watched the kender carefully.
Tas paced around in a circle, coming back to a position in front of the cell. He glanced at Fesz. He looked at the kyrie again. Slowly he raised his eyes to the ceilin
g, which was even higher than Caramon Majere was tall—but not by much.
About two buckets and an armspan higher, Tas guessed.
“I think—” began Tas.
“Yes?” Fesz asked eagerly.
“I think,” the kender declared in a loud voice, “that the thing we ought to do is punish Sturm Brightblade!”
“Punish Sturm Brightblade?” Fesz repeated. The emissary of the Nightmaster sounded puzzled.
“It’s a matter of principle,” explained Tasslehoff, even louder. “The principle being that Sturm must have known that Caramon was going to try to escape, and since he refuses to give us the slightest cooperation—”
“We’ve already done our best to torture it out of him,” offered the dungeon guard from up the corridor.
“Your best!” the kender exploded. “You have the temerity to tell me you’ve done your best?”
Dogz snorted but held his tongue. Although the minotaur guard wasn’t a very fast learner, he realized that he ought not to say anything else.
Turning to Fesz, Tasslehoff asked, with great solemnity, “Are there any minotaur methods of execution that are truly special?”
Fesz pondered the question, delighted that Tas had turned his imagination to such worthwhile pursuits. “Well,” answered the shaman minotaur slowly, “the Pit of Doom is a particularly cruel spectacle, one that I myself—before spending my time on Karthay, in devotion to the Nightmaster—always enjoyed watching.”
“The Pit of Doom?” mused the kender. Tas liked the sound of it.
“A dance of death around hellish holes of fiery liquid,” the shaman minotaur explained briefly. “A demise made all the more humiliating by the fact that it is staged for the entertainment of hordes of spectators who watch from a gallery.”
Tas’s eyes widened. “The Pit of Doom!” he exclaimed with glee, practically shouting, “That’s it! That’s the punishment that I would like to see meted out to that snooty Solamnic!”
“The only difficulty,” rumbled Fesz, “is that we must get to Karthay in three days.”
