by Tina Daniel
“Three days!” repeated Tas loudly, clearly enunciating and emphasizing every word. “So why can’t we stick old Sturm in the Pit of Doom tomorrow morning and set sail by midday?”
“I don’t see any reason why not,” agreed Fesz, “but we must hasten to make arrangements.”
“Good,” said the kender. “I would consider it a personal privilege to watch Sturm get his just deserts. Also, I have an abiding curiosity about all pits, whether of doom or just plain—”
Fesz was already in motion.
With a pitying backward glance at the kyrie and a hasty look up at the ceiling, Tas hurried after the shaman minotaur.
The broken man twitched.
Dogz snorted.
As Tas passed the minotaur guard, he paused and gave him a hard kick in the shins.
The next morning one hundred bull-folk crowded the small semicircular gallery that rose along one side of the Pit of Doom.
Snorting and stomping, the minotaur audience made its impatience known as they awaited the arrival of the officials, without whom the duel to the death—between the local champion, a merciless bull-man named Tossak, and the human prisoner, the Solamnic, Sturm Brightblade—could not begin.
In ceremonial procession, a dozen functionaries and prison authorities accompanied Dogz, Tasslehoff, and Fesz as they entered the arena and took their seats in a privileged section of the gallery. The spectators craned their necks to gawk at the unusual sight of a kender sitting next to an emissary of the Nightmaster. As befit the occasion, Tas sat up straight, scowling as fiercely as he could.
At the suggestion of the evil kender Tasslehoff Burrfoot, Sturm had been told the night before that he would be thrust into a deadly competition the following day. He took the announcement impassively.
On the bright side, his bonds were untied and he was given the very best food and a pallet to sleep on. The minotaurs promised he could fight with the weapon of his choice. After considering the options they showed him, Sturm chose a long, thin, double-edged blade with a chiseled hilt. Whatever happened in the fight to come, Sturm vowed that he would give a good account of himself.
Battered and weary from his torture and imprisonment, the young Solamnic tried to make sense of the situation. He tried to fathom why Tas would be cooperating with these minotaurs. Could it be possible that the kender truly was allied with them? As weak as he was, Sturm lay awake half the night thinking without coming to any definite conclusion.
In the morning, his hand drifted, in its customary fashion, up to his mustache to tug on it thoughtfully. The Solamnic felt only thin air. Ruefully Sturm rubbed his cheek, remembering the kender’s glee as he snipped off half the young man’s moustache. Sturm flushed, suddenly very angry, his determination to fight and fight well strengthened.
Within the hour, Sturm stood at one end of a tunnel, gripping his sword tightly. At a signal from a minotaur keeper, he started down the narrow passage. As he moved toward the entrance to the pit, he felt the first rush of warm air.
Entering the staging area, Sturm saw what his keeper had described as the Pit of Doom. It was actually a large bowl, superheated by some kind of subterranean geothermal source. The underground source had broken through to the surface in the base of the bowl, which consisted of molten lava that bubbled and seethed, occasionally belching out great bursts of searing gases. Islands of black rock jutted up from the fiery red liquid, connected by bridges that arched high over the lava pit. A fall from them would mean certain death.
Rising from the lava, the heat scalded Sturm’s skin. As he looked around the pit, he had to shield his eyes from the brightness and intense heat.
Scanning the crowd in the gallery on the other side of the pit, the Solamnic saw no sign of Tasslehoff amidst the rows of seated minotaurs. Shouting and jeering assaulted his ears, even as the aggregate smell of the minotaur crowd overwhelmed his nostrils.
Directly opposite from Sturm, another tunnel opened into the arena, its entrance shrouded in shadow. As Sturm watched, a horned figure loomed in the darkness, filled the opening, then emerged into view.
Sturm guessed his opponent to be at least seven and a half feet tall. His horns, which added another two feet to his height, were waxed and shiny.
White-blond hair streamed down to his shoulders, and thick fur covered the exposed parts of his hide. Two large rings pierced one ear, while his massive chest rippled with muscle.
On one hand, he wore a mandoll—an iron gauntlet, of the unique type prized by minotaur champions, with spikes on the knuckles and a dagger blade along the back of the thumb. The other hand gripped a heavy clabbard with a sharp, saw-toothed edge.
“Tos-sak! Tos-sak! Tos-sak!” chanted the crowd.
“Sturm! Sturm! Sturm!” squeaked one voice, its high pitch distinguishing it from the minotaur crowd. Sturm recognized it as belonging to Tasslehoff.
Tossak acknowledged the crowd with an arrogant nod. Then the huge minotaur glared in Sturm’s direction, flared his bestial snout, and emitted a fierce bellow of challenge.
With a speed and agility that took the Solamnic by surprise, Tossak charged toward him, nimbly leaping from island to island of black rock until he arrived at the bridge that led across to Sturm.
Again the minotaur champion bellowed his challenge, waving and stabbing his clabbard in the air for emphasis.
“Tos-sak! Tos-sak! Tos-sak!” chanted the crowd.
Dizziness swept over Sturm. The blasting heat, the thundering crowd, and the bellowing minotaur warrior all combined to throw him off balance. Sturm shook his head to clear it. Then the Solamnic surprised everyone by how quickly he moved—away from Tossak.
Vaulting across an island of black rock, Sturm planted himself on another bridge that gave him a clear view of Tossak yet kept him safe from immediate attack. Knightly tenets included prudence, Sturm rationalized, and in this instance, that meant buying some time while he figured out the best way to fight the huge beast-man.
Watching the human’s retreat, Tossak snorted angrily, pawing the ground with his cleft hooves.
“Sturm! Sturm! Sturm!” chanted Tasslehoff.
Sturm risked a glance into the crowd. There, near the crowd’s center, sat the kender, wedged between two minotaurs, one of them the same one he had seen Tas with yesterday, the furred and feathered shaman.
Tas waved gaily at Sturm.
Before Sturm returned his attention to the arena, Tossak made his move, once again leaping across the dark islands of rock, seemingly oblivious to the heat that engulfed the pit and burned Sturm’s eyes.
Again the bull-man came to a stop just short of Sturm, on the far side of the bridge from Sturm. Again he thundered his challenge.
Once again the Solamnic turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, hopping over rock islands and sprinting across bridges until he was as far away from Tossak as he could get and still be in the arena.
The heat was sapping Sturm’s energy. Drenched in sweat, the Solamnic fought to stay alert. Below him, the hot lava bubbled and belched at the bottom of the pit.
“Tos-sak! Tos-sak! Tos-sak!”
“Sturm! Sturm! Sturm!”
By now, Tossak felt certain that his opponent was a coward. The minotaur champion rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders, drawing another cheer from the crowd. He turned and sauntered in Sturm’s direction, taking his time traversing the rock islands and bridges, until he came within striking distance of the Solamnic, just across a short rock bridge.
Again Tossak brandished his weapon in the air, shouting and gesticulating.
The crowd erupted in a thunderous cheer …
… at which point Sturm charged across the bridge, his sword leveled before him, pointed straight at the minotaur.
All Sturm could think about was how slowly his legs seemed to be moving, how heavy the sword felt in his hands, how soon nothing would matter anymore because he would be dead. The Solamnic was hardly in the best of condition to be fighting a minotaur to the death. After
days of hanging on to life at sea and more days of harsh treatment in the Atossa prison, Sturm felt as if he were wading through a lake choked with weeds.
For the moment, he had the advantage, though. Not expecting the charge, distracted by the din of the crowd, and not quite believing what Sturm was doing after his previous apparent cowardice, Tossak failed to react to his opponent’s charge until the last possible instant.
Then, almost as if by reflex, the minotaur swung his gauntleted hand and caught Sturm’s blow. The sound of Sturm’s blade striking the iron gauntlet rang throughout the arena. The knight’s weapon was knocked to the ground and went skittering across the bridge, teetering on the edge.
Sturm dove after it as Tossak, in earnest now, pursued him. Sturm reached the sword just in time to twist around and swing it upward, slashing one of Tossak’s thighs.
The minotaur screamed with rage and backed up slightly, but only for a moment. Then Tossak lunged forward and, with his gauntleted hand, grabbed the sword from Sturm, wresting it from the Solamnic’s grip and flinging it over the side of the bridge into the pit, where it sank into the fiery liquid.
The crowd roared its approval.
Tossak wiped blood from his leg, tasting it as he eyed Sturm. Advancing on the Solamnic, he swung his heavy clabbard. Sturm scrambled away from the edge of the bridge as he desperately sought an opening.
The minotaur champion swung his clabbard hard in a half-circle, coming just inches from Sturm’s forehead. When Tossak swung once more, Sturm ducked under the blow, then came up in a low tackle that dropped Tossak to the bridge, knocking his clabbard down. Before Tossak, more astonished than hurt, could react, the Solamnic had managed to kick the weapon to the side of the bridge where it slid off into the fiery pit.
The crowd rumbled with excitement.
Springing to his feet, Tossak howled in fury and humiliation as he stomped toward Sturm, who was half-stumbling backward.
A heavy blow swatted the Solamnic across the face, knocking him down. A kick sent him rolling. He caught himself at the edge of the bridge just in time. Sturm tried to regain his footing but Tossak was right beside him. The minotaur clamped a heavy hand on one of Sturm’s ankles and lifted him up, dangling the young Solamnic over the edge of the liquid fire pit.
Squirming, windmilling his arms futilely, Sturm looked down and saw nothing but heaving, molten lava.
Intense heat washed over Sturm.
Tossak raised his head triumphantly, showing off his dangling prize to the crowd. His bestial countenance cracked open in a leering grin. He filled his lungs and let loose an ear-splitting bellow.
The crowd roared back.
The minotaur fighter lifted his gauntleted hand and triggered the dagger concealed along the back of his thumb. The sharp, curved blade flicked open. Tossak cocked his arm and moved to deliver the piercing blow that would end the life of his impotent opponent.
Tasslehoff had been watching the duel with enormous fascination. But something was missing from the event, he felt, something that would even the odds, as it were. The kender squirmed in his seat, impatiently awaiting some unexpected turn of events.
Tossak held Sturm aloft with one massive hand, dangling him over the edge of the bridge, ready to drop him into the Pit of Doom. As the huge minotaur opened the deadly piercing blade on the thumb of his mandoll gauntlet and gestured to the crowd that Sturm was going to meet his demise, Tas noticed a flock of shadows flying across the arena.
The rest of the crowd noticed at the same time.
So did Tossak.
A curved club, expertly aimed, struck Tossak in the arm that held Sturm, while another, this one spiked with thorns, smashed into his face.
Clawing at his fresh wounds, Tossak dropped Sturm.
Sturm fell, hurtling towards the fiery lava. But a figure swooped under him and caught him. The dazed Solamnic felt himself borne upward.
All was chaos and outraged shouts.
Standing agape, Fesz was profoundly shaken. It could only be seen as a bad omen, this second escape by a human, and this one so close to the time chosen by the Nightmaster for the coming of Sargonnas.
Tas hopped around, his eyes popping at the spectacle. “There he is!” he shouted to Dogz and Fesz, pointing to a muscular figure with long brown hair who was clutched in the talons of one of the kyrie. “That’s the guy I was telling you about—that’s Caramon!”
A minotaur guard dashed toward the raiding party and brandished a forepann, swinging the two-handed trident in a wide circle, hoping to hit one of the despised bird-people.
Two spiked clubs struck him simultaneously. The minotaur toppled over and, with a horrible scream, sank into the lava pit as the bird-people rose into the sky and soared out of the arena.
Blood streaming from the wounds that would leave his visage forever carved with scars, Tossak stood on the bridge, shaking his gauntleted fist at the sky.
On Karthay, the Nightmaster was growing concerned about the increasing number of bad omens.
He had already discerned that it was a waste of time to torture the human female. Furthermore, he wasn’t particularly interested in torturing her.
He had far more significant plans for her. She would serve as bait for the other humans reported to be in the area. Failing that, she would be useful in the spell that would bring Sargonnas into the world, useful as a sacrificial victim.
The young female had proved to be a handful ever since she had been spotted skulking around the perimeter of the Nightmaster’s camp in the volcanic ruins of the once fabled city of Karthay.
Somehow, though she was barely half the size of an average minotaur, the human female had held her own against them, running one of the minotaurs through the neck with her sword and cutting off the hand of another before being captured. Dragged into camp shouting insults, the slender, dark-haired female had refused to tell the Nightmaster anything about herself or her mission.
It was only through his excellent network of spies and assassins that the Nightmaster discovered she was the half-sister of the young mage Raistlin of Solace—Kitiara Uth Matar. And if Kitiara was on Karthay, Raistlin Majere wouldn’t be far behind.
Kitiara was being held within sight of the Nightmaster’s camp in a makeshift cell, a large cage of slatted wood brought from Lacynos to hold animals. At first, she was a raging nuisance, continually hissing and spitting at the minotaurs who stood guard over her. The Nightmaster hadn’t fed Kitiara for several days now, and she was beginning to quiet down somewhat.
It was not Kitiara Uth Matar who worried the Nightmaster.
It was the feeling, like a stone in his heart, that something was going terribly wrong. First there was the kender and his two human companions who had bought the crushed jalopwort from the renegade Argotz. Argotz had been dealt with, and the kender was captured and turned into an evil partner. Fesz vouched for the allegiance of Tasslehoff Burrfoot and was on his way to Karthay with him.
The two human companions were supposed to have drowned in the Blood Sea, yet somehow they had survived and turned up in the prison in Atossa. Unfortunately the Nightmaster had found out about that too late. By some method so mysterious that the prison officials still hadn’t figured it out, one of the humans had managed to escape. This was Raistlin’s twin brother, Caramon. That was bad enough.
Now came the news that the other human had escaped, too—by a startling method. Condemned to die in the Pit of Doom, the other human, a would-be Solamnic Knight named Sturm Brightblade, had been rescued at the last moment by an airborne assault of kyrie. Despite the best efforts of the minotaur soldiers, the kyrie had escaped to the north, to their hidden stronghold in the mountains.
According to the message sent by Fesz, the evil kender Tasslehoff Burrfoot swore he had seen Caramon Majere directing the audacious daylight rescue operation.
The two humans, Caramon and Sturm, must have forged some kind of alliance with the bird-people, dedicated enemies of the minotaurs.
That, the
Nightmaster reflected, was truly disturbing.
Reports of these developments had made the Supreme Circle uneasy. The orughi were proving skittish about committing large numbers of troops to the command of the minotaurs. The ogre tribes had said outright that they would not participate in the drive to enslave the world until they had seen evidence of the existence of Sargonnas.
Other promised allegiances were also shaky.
The Nightmaster stooped to the ground and sifted gray volcanic ash through his fingers. He was surrounded by a petrified city, with steps that led nowhere, columns that supported nothing. A long table and a chair stood near a flickering fire. A shelf held books as well as beakers of spell ingredients. The room was more an arrangement of furniture than a room, with no walls, doors, or ceiling. It stood in the middle of the ruins, open to the black, forbidding sky.
This part of the anicent city had once been the entrance to the great library. Now it was nothing but cold volcanic rock.
The night wind stirred the Nightmaster’s feathers and bells. He looked over at the human female in her wooden cage. Even without having eaten for several days, Kitiara was fueled by energy and restlessly paced her cell.
The Nightmaster looked over at his two highest-ranking acolytes, the two members of the High Three who had remained behind when Fesz journeyed to Mithas. They huddled together, sleeping sitting up, draped by one blanket.
Minotaur soldiers patrolled the perimeter of the camp.
Sighing, the Nightmaster looked up at the sky, the two moons, and the stars.
Three more days, two more nights.
Only a few hours remained before dawn. A couple more hours of numbing cold, and then, after sunrise, the merciless heat would return. The Nightmaster was worried, but he retained his faith in Sargonnas. Wrapping himself in his cloak, the Nightmaster lay down on the cold ground and slept soundly.
CHAPTER 13
THE ISLE OF KARTHAY
———
THE DAMAGED CASTOR HAD LIMPED BACK TO THE MOUTH OF THE BAY and was about to enter the open sea. Watching the boat from shore, Tanis adjusted the sack slung across his back, a small store of provisions provided by Captain Nugetre. Nearby stood Flint, shifting his weight from foot to foot, trying to stretch out the soreness in his leg without anyone noticing. But Kirsig watched the dwarf solicitously.
