by James Lowder
With a curse Ambrose hurled the old man toward Ogier. Divelg tumbled over a chest, spilling the contents. To no one's surprise, a small fortune in gold and silver coins poured onto the cold stone landing.
"Think of all the bottles of Malaturno this could buy," Kern murmured, eyes as wide as the largest gold doubloon. He knelt down to examine the hoard. The coins came from every land surrounding Sithicus and a few places more distant. There were also currencies that Kern couldn't identify; they'd been struck with odd images and odder names, like Cormyr and luz.
The politskae surrounded Kern. "I wasn't going to take anything," the miner said, smiling up at them. The silver axes that appeared in the men's hands made it clear they didn't believe him or didn't really care.
"We're wasting time," Ambrose boomed. Even the stoic politskae jumped at the uncharacteristic fury in the man's voice. They parted for Ambrose, who pulled Kern up from the floor. "I should let them kill you," he rumbled, "but you won't get off that easily."
Kern and Ogier were herded to the back of the landing while the rest of the boxes were loaded. Ambrose ordered Divelg to gather up the money he'd spilled. The shopkeep and a tight ring of politskae encircled him, ensuring that every coin was returned to the cache. When the work was done and the lid was about to be hammered back into place, Ambrose plucked two coins from the hoard. He handed them to Divelg.
Kern craned his neck to see what was happening. "Did he just give Divelg some money?" he asked.
"Uh huh," Ogier replied, "but the old guy don't look so happy about it."
In fact, Divelg looked heartbroken. He stared at the small black coins in his hand, turning them over and over again. Finally he mouthed a short, silent prayer and faced Ambrose. "It's back there, isn't it? It really exists."
Ambrose wrapped an arm around Divelg's shoulder and led him away from the throng. It might have been the light from the guttering torches, but the shopkeep's expression appeared to flow manically between glee and sorrow. "Yes, it exists. In fact, that's where Ambrose had his little 'accident' all those years ago." With one pudgy hand, he closed the old man's fingers around the coins. "Keep a tight grip on these. You'll need them sooner than you might think."
When the last box was loaded onto the lift, Ambrose ordered the landing cleared. The miners, even the politskae, crowded onto the lift. Only Ambrose and his two friends were left behind as the elevator shuddered, then began its ascent.
Divelg had been one of the last onto the lift. He stood at the very edge of the press, politskae to either side of him. Just before the elevator passed above the shaft's ceiling, he crouched down. "You must've had the heart of a titan to keep control of it for so long," he said to Ambrose. A slight, sad smile on his face, he tossed the coins onto the landing. "Those two will need them more than me. I know Fm not coming back."
The last words echoed after the lift had carried the old man out of sight. Kern stomped on one of the coins, which was rolling crazily across the stone. Lifting his heel, he found a black Sithican penny. It had landed rose side up, a bad omen.
Ogier picked up the other penny. "I don't think I get it," the big man said.
A slither of dread shot up Kern's spine. He understood the pennies' significance perfectly. When a corpse was set upon its funeral pyre, a penny was placed upon each eye. Fired red-hot by the blaze, they would sear through the dead man's eyes. His ghost would be blind, unable to find his home should his spirit rise up from the grave.
The meaning of Ambrose's gesture, handing the two pennies to Divelg, was clear: The old man would soon be a corpse. That Divelg should think their need for the pennies was more urgent-Kern found that message even easier to read.
Fortunately, the coins' ominous meaning seemed lost on Ogier. "Don't worry about it," Kern said, patting him on the back. "Divelg probably meant us to have them for good luck."
"He sounded like something was wrong," Ogier said plaintively.
Such a large man and so little in the engine house, thought Kern. Out loud, he said, "What could be wrong? We have our friend Ambrose here, and he'd never let anything happen to us."
The shopkeep was standing far back on the landing, in the mouth of the abandoned tunnel. "I've already saved you from a nasty death on the battlefield."
At Ogier's puzzled look, Ambrose continued: "The rumors about the mine closing down are correct. Azrael is pressing everyone into the army. Well, almost everyone. A few choice individuals are being put into special service, away from the fighting."
Kern regarded his old friend coldly. "Which brings us to that 'special duty5 you've lined up for us."
"Exactly," Ambrose said. "If you'll come this way, we'll start your training."
Ogier happily clomped over to Ambrose. The big man peered into the darkened tunnel, then turned back to Kern. "Let's go," he chimed. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can relax."
"I couldn't have put it better myself," Ambrose noted. He held out an empty hand toward Kern, who shot him a look of utter disgust and went back to his search for a way off the landing.
Kern was not particularly surprised to find there wasn't one. All the emergency ladders had been removed, if any had ever reached the cross shaft. There wasn't even a way to call the lift back, not that he could see anyway. Ambrose had obviously planned this little ambush carefully.
"Come to think of it," Kern said, forcing a smile, "I've always wanted to see a big battle firsthand. You should too, Ogier. Broaden your perspective."
"It's far too late to change plans now," Ambrose said darkly. He moved behind Ogier and placed one hand conspicuously on the big man's shoulder. With the other he gripped a chunk of rock jutting from the wall. "We want to stay together, Kern," he noted. "This tunnel's a bit treacherous."
One squeeze, and the rock crumbled to dust.
Ogier spun around and whistled. "Hey, you're right. The walls are kind of quaky."
Scowling, Kern walked to the tunnel. "I think Ambrose had the better word for it," he said. " Treacherous.' "
Kern and Ogier went first, though Ambrose never let them get out of earshot. When the tunnel broadened into a smooth-floored hallway, he positioned himself between them, a falsely friendly hand on each man's back. Ogier trudged cheerfully along, oblivious to the danger that Kern had recognized long ago. If there was nothing to be done to save themselves, Kern hoped to keep his friend blissfully ignorant until the very end.
"This place is pretty," Ogier exclaimed, eyes wide with wonder at the statues lining both sides of the hall. He pointed up at the ceiling, carved to give the illusion of clouds and birds and open sky. "Why don't we ever come down here?"
Kern stopped just short of the arched doorway at the end of the hall. Torches had flickered to life in the room beyond, providing just enough light for him to glimpse the altar, the melted benches, the dark shapes flowing in a hideous, gleeful dance across the walls and floor. He'd never really believed the old miners' stories about the Black Chapel or the salt shadows that had been spawned in that unholy place. Kern realized now that he'd been wrong.
He realized, too, what Ambrose had planned for them.
The shopkeep stepped in front of Kern, blocking his view. "Down deep, I'm sure part of me is sorry for this," he said. An insane giggle bubbled from his lips. "But I'll be damned if I can find that part."
The shadows swarmed out of the chapel, flowing around and over Ambrose in a hissing torrent. Kern's scream finally drew Ogier's attention away from the hawks and butterflies on the ceiling. The big man wailed in horror. As that cry echoed through the hope-forsaken tunnels of Veidrava, it sounded for all the world like the bleat of a lost lamb.
* * * * *
It was known forever after as the Night of Skulls.
As the armies mustered at Veidrava and a half-dozen other places throughout Sithicus, Lord Soth and his thirteen skeletal warriors rode out from Nedragaard Keep. The hoofbeats of their undead mounts reverberated through the night, curdling dreams into nightmares. Their
passing kicked up clouds of choking dust so thick they blotted out the face of Solinari.
The raiding party was already in full retreat when Soth's patrol caught up to them. The mercenaries were scrambling north through a steep-sided canyon in the Arden Valley, back toward the Invidian border. They'd obviously heard the thunder of the patrol's approach and fled without a second thought of meeting the charge. So, at least, they wished it to appear.
In his days as a Rose Knight, highest order of the fabled Knights of Solamnia, Lord Soth had ridden down a hundred such knavish bands. Their tactics inevitably hinged upon the same simple notion: Given a fleeing enemy, a soldier will always pursue. Soth had seen talented warriors do just that, their bloodlust stirred by their enemy's apparent weakness. He'd even laid ambushes himself that depended upon that sort of short-sightedness in his adversary. But he had never, in his years of life or unlife, been taken in by such a ruse.
As Soth and his warriors entered the canyon, he raised his sword and waved it twice. He and three of his skeletal soldiers charged ahead, hard upon the heels of the fleeing ogres and human mercenaries. The remainder of the patrol split into two bands of five. Without breaking pace, without the slightest hesitation, they stormed up the steep canyon walls.
The Invidian archers hidden atop the canyon, perched behind boulders and scrub trees, raised their bows. Most never fired a shot. The sight of the dead riders ascending the sheer rock cliffs was too much for them. They dropped their weapons and fled, turning the staged rout into an actual one.
The swords of the skeletal warriors ran red with Invidian blood. The dead men offered no mercy, untouched by the screams of the dying. They went about this grisly work as they did everything- dispassionately, with a murderous mechanical efficiency. The victory, the battle, it all meant nothing. Yet every one of those former stalwarts knew that it should stir his heroic heart. Such was their curse.
Soth, too, left a trail of corpses in his wake. Like his companions, he felt no exhilaration from the conflict. These sell-swords were feeble adversaries, unworthy of his blade. If these were the best troops Malocchio could muster, the war would be a short one.
The master of Nedragaard and his thirteen loyal retainers pursued the remainder of the Invidians until they were within sight of the border. Too many remained, and they were too widely scattered, for Soth and the others to kill them all before they crossed back to their homeland. The death knight reined in his horse. Sheathing his gore-spattered sword, he began to sing in a voice as deep as a bottomless chasm. His mournful dirge of oaths betrayed, destinies abandoned, filled the Sithican night.
The skeletal warriors ceased their pursuit, threw back their heads, and joined in the chant. Their voices rattled like ancient paper as they added the catalogue of their sins to their master's. Lust, greed, pride-they confessed to these and more. The worst of their crimes, the one that bound them forever to the Knight of the Black Rose, was idolatry. In life, they had honored Lord Soth above all else. In death, they shared his awful fate, forever damned alongside the one they had mistaken for a god among men.
Throughout Sithicus, others added to the song. They were, like Soth himself, unconscious of the things they confessed, unable to hear the secret vices their neighbors admitted. The dirge gathered at the border. There, the accumulated sins blossomed into a wall of spectral roses that touched the heavens.
Then the flowers withered and vanished.
The few surviving soldiers from the raiding party raced across the border to safety. Soth, sitting dazed upon his decaying steed, watched them go. He'd felt the song's undoing. More disturbing still, he'd also heard the dirge clearly in the instant before it was silenced. The awful weight of those confessions, the indisputable truth of those countless dark deeds, pressed down upon him still.
Slowly, the death knight approached the border.
From a distance the boundary resembled a low stone wall. As the death knight drew closer, he recognized it as a barrier of bloody human skulls. They were lined along the border in both directions as far as the eye could see. Small and large, ancient and recent, the skulls faced Sithicus. Their empty eye sockets regarded the land and its lord with the utter detachment of the truly dead.
Soth dismounted and warily approached the barrier. He saw now that the skulls were not simply smeared with gore but covered with words penned in blood. The script was cramped, but delicate. He lifted one of the skulls and began to read.
The gods granted Soth enough self-knowledge to see how low he'd fallen. . . .
The death knight dashed the skull to pieces on the ground. He picked up another. It, too, held a fragment of his history.
For failing in his quest, for letting his own child burn to death before his eyes, Soth's elf maid bride called a curse down upon the once-noble knight. . . .
So it was with every one of the skulls. Someone had gathered Soth's history and turned it against him, even as the death knight himself grew confident that his past was once more under his control. This wasn't the work of Malocchio Aderre; the skulls were on Sithican soil, beyond his reach. That meant someone within the domain. The White Rose, then.
Soth paused. Such sorcery was far beyond Kitiara's abilities. But if not her, who? What other powers had set themselves against him?
A shadow of uncertainty darkened Soth's already desolate thoughts. With it came a sensation the death knight had all but forgotten. For the first time in centuries, Lord Soth felt the icy touch of fear.
Eleven
Ganelon awoke bathed in late afternoon sunlight, nestled in a bower strewn with white rose petals. Their heady perfume lay heavy upon his senses. He thought to sit up, but a lethargy inspired by the roses' bouquet overwhelmed him. With a sigh, he let himself sink deeper into the verdure.
He tried to recall how he'd come to this place. Bird song and distant laughter chased away the vague thoughts before they could coalesce into memories. It didn't matter. He was safe here.
"As it should be," said a cool, lovely voice. "You are only truly safe with someone who loathes you absolutely."
At the sound of Helain's voice the drowsiness lifted from Ganelon. Heart racing, the young man struggled from the sylvan bed. His leg brace foiled his attempt to stand quickly, and for just an instant, sunlight dazzled his eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw her.
She sat upon the green, her face aglow with madness. The smile upon her face was so wide that her dry lips cracked and bled. For all its prominence, though, that smile was empty. So, too, were her beautiful blue eyes, which stared blankly down at the thing cradled in her lap.
One of Helain's hands rested upon his scabrous cheek. The other stroked her own tangled red hair. "You freed me," she said as she bent to kiss the creature's chancred lips.
A cry of horror finally welled up from Ganelon's soul. "Helain!" he wailed.
Helain gasped and shrank bank. Chuckling, the creature raised its misshapen head from her lap. "Ah, roused at last," the thing said, glancing down at its own swollen crotch in case the double entendre had eluded Ganelon. It hadn't.
As he looked upon the creature's corrupt visage, the memories flooded back-poor lost Bratu, capture by the Vistani, Inza's magic and the torture she'd promised when that sorcery failed to make him break the oath he'd sworn to the Bloody Cobbler. This creature had rescued him, pulled him through the shadows even as the Vistana raised the red-hot poker to his face. The Whispering Beast. He and Helain were in the hands of the Whispering Beast.
"G-Get away from her," the young man stammered.
The Beast pushed himself to a crouch. Helain immediately threw her arms around his sunken chest. "What makes you think she wants to be left alone?" he asked. "I doubt she was ever this affectionate with you, little boy. If she was, it was wasted effort."
With one filthy hand, the Whispering Beast broke Helain's clinging embrace. He stood, revealing himself in all his hideousness.
He was starvation thin, taller than any man Ganelon had ever seen. Stringy hair
covered his entire frame, gray-white where dirt and excrement hadn't matted it. Arms that seemed to bend the wrong way hung down past his knees. The hands at the ends of those misshapen limbs were graced with slender fingers that constantly twitched and traced vulgar patterns in the air. Those agile digits hinted at the most horrible thing about the Beast. Underlying the corruption were the faint remnants of a beauty so profound it could not be hidden by any amount of grime.
A leer split the Beast's twisted visage-yet his face, too, held vestiges of magnificence. His simian skull, all but fleshless at the crown, had the high cheekbones of a noble-born elf. Weeping sores all but obscured that feature, just as an orange rheum dulled his bright, piercing eyes. The pus welled at the corners and filmed the orbs. From time to time, it drooled down his cheeks, tears of festering corruption.
The sight of this malignant creature so transfixed Ganelon that he did not notice the crowd gathering around him. The hillside was filled with lunatics. They crawled toward the Beast like supplicants, hands outstretched, eyes averted. The creature smirked at their reverence and spat upon those who got too close.
Finally, when the mob was ready to close in, the Beast lifted the grim necklace from the tangle of his hairy chest. Upon that chain of fire-blackened steel dangled thirteen human ears. He raised one of these gruesome ornaments to his lips and whispered into it. As one the madmen screamed. Whimpering and barking like whipped mongrels, they disappeared over the top of the hill.
Helain, too, fled. Ganelon turned to pursue, but found befouled fingers wrapped around his arm.
"The best part of the joke is the poor ninny didn't even hear what I said."
The slaughterhouse stench from the Beast made the gorge rise in Ganelon's throat. The young man pulled away, gagging. "She's not yours," he managed to gasp as he fell to the ground.
"Technically correct," the Beast replied. "No one properly condemned her for breaking her oath. In a more practical sense, however, she's been mine from the moment she vowed to love you forever."
