by Doug Niles
“Sirene, come here,” he ordered.
The albino woman came to him immediately, willingly. She was clean and perfumed following her bath, and he was pleased. She well knew that albino blood was rare and much treasured as a spell component, and once again she proudly held out a finger, ready for the prick of his lancet.
“Do you need another drop of my blood, my lord?” she asked, relishing the power of her special status, inwardly sneering at the jealously of the other women.
“You understand me too well,” he said with a smile. “But this is a very special potion with very special requisites.”
The magical knife was in his hand, but she was looking only at his eyes.
“I am sorry to tell you this, my dear,” he explained. “But this time, I need all of it.”
Selinda returned to the little inn at the end of the dark alcove the next night. Though there was no sign outside the place, she learned from other patrons that it was called the Hale and Farewell, in honor of the parties sailors had before their ships left port for long voyages. She learned the proprietor was the man who had spoken to her outside the alley the first night she stopped, and that his name was Hale. People referred to him as Lame Hale, and he seemed to take that reference to his gimpy leg with fine good humor.
The third night she teleported from her room directly to the alley, very much surprising Lame Hale as he leaned against the dirty wall and scouted the street for prospective customers. But he seemed glad to see her again, and she enjoyed his compliments. She was soon inside and being welcomed by a host of familiar customers. She didn’t lack for an invitation to sit at a table with a group of travelers or share some gossip with some of the lady merchants who held court in the corner room.
The sailors told stories of exotic ports and terrifying storms, and she relished their tales of adventure. There were old soldiers too, and—for a drink or two—they could be coaxed into recounting campaigns against the Dark Knights, surreptitious missions under the realm of Khellendros, or battles against Ankhar the Truth on the central plains. Selinda stayed late each time she visited the place—usually the sun was coming up by the time she went home—and she always departed on foot, waiting until she was out of sight of the Hale and Farewell’s front door before teleporting home.
She told no one her name, and no one asked. She was treated well, as befitted her beauty and the generous tips that she left following each visit. The exotic music, oily and smooth and a trifle atonal, appealed to her in ways that the flutes, lyres, and drums of other local musicians did not. On her second visit, she had learned the unusual musicians and their instruments came from so far away that they were unknown on most of the continent of Ansalon.
It also pleased her to go to a place where no one knew her as the wife of the emperor, where her legacy as the Princess of the Plains, the woman who would help unite Solamnia, was mere myth. She had grown up in the city, a daughter of privilege, and—when she was honest with herself—she admitted that she was spoiled by her rich father. If he hadn’t exactly been doting, Bakkard du Chagne had never allowed her to want for any material things, and she came to adulthood expecting that as her due. Her marriage to the most powerful man in her world had done nothing to lessen her sense of entitlement, but it had walled her off from life.
There in the dark inn, those walls were broken. She laughed at the sensation of complete freedom and relaxed among the jovial strangers. She even joined in the gossip about the emperor, which was surprisingly common. Everyone had an opinion of her husband, and most opinions were unfavorable—though a few of the veteran soldiers spoke up for the new discipline and pride of the Solamnic nation. Others mocked Jaymes as being afraid of his own shadow and paranoid to the point of lunacy with his edicts and restrictions. If the new edicts had put any fear of reprisal into her new friends, they certainly hid the fact very well!
On her fourth or fifth visit, Lame Hale came over to sit at her table. She nodded a greeting to him.
“I am delighted to see that the mistress finds my humble establishment to her liking,” he said with an easy smile.
“It’s a lovely place,” Selinda declared. “Everyone is so nice, and you have such a splendid mix of people from all over.”
“Ah, yes. And don’t forget the music!” He gestured to a slender, pale-skinned musician who was working with some kind of flute that was as tall as a long spear. The man was producing notes that seemed to transcend scale, just then playing in a mournful minor key that made Selinda feel achingly sad.
Hale cleared his throat. “Perhaps I could introduce the lady to something new?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”
Hale whistled loudly, and one of his serving maids hustled over to the table. Like all of the inn’s maids, the young woman wore a gown that dipped very low in the front and was braced with a knee-length skirt. She curtsied to her master.
“Bring the gracious lady a Red Lotus,” Hale said in his soft but curiously seductive voice. He turned back to Selinda. “It is another concoction that comes out of the east. I believe you will find it very pleasing.”
And indeed, Selinda did. The drink was tart, with a hint of some kind of berry that covered up stronger, unusual tastes. It felt soft yet prickly on her tongue, and when she sipped it, she found the sensation strikingly pleasurable. Before she knew it, her glass was empty, and Hale was motioning for another …
And another after that. It seemed the drink was focusing her thoughts, heightening her awareness, and she found herself laughing very loud at something—she couldn’t say what it was. The lights were suddenly very bright then seemed to fade almost to black. They flared up again with a sudden, wavering brilliance that she found absolutely hilarious. She wondered at the fact that no one else seemed to take notice of the distortion, but she didn’t wonder very much as the music started up again.
A fiddle player had joined the man with the exotic flute, and they picked up the tempo into a lively jig. Suddenly Selinda was up and dancing, and everyone was clapping in time to the music, cheering her on, and it was simply the most wonderful, exhilarating experience in all of her life. Laughing, she encouraged the musicians to play an extra song, and was terribly disappointed when, a long time later, they pleaded the need for rest.
She felt a little unsteady on her feet as she made her way back to the table, where the proprietor still sat, beaming happily at her. He was such a nice man!
“Perhaps the mistress would come with me now?” said Hale.
A glimmer of alarm tried to find its way through her fuzzy brain. But all she could think of were Hale’s eyes, so dark and mysterious and utterly, completely compelling. “Very well,” she said, realizing that she had to speak very slowly to make herself understood. “But where are we going?”
“This way,” he whispered, pointing to a dark hallway at the back of the inn.
“Why?” she tried to ask. It seemed like a very long way away, but she was terribly curious. Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet, surprised at how strong his hand was as he helped her up.
“Don’t worry, and don’t wonder,” he said softly. “I promise you that it will be a magnificent surprise.”
“The knights have an army in front of the city of Cleft Spires, and another army marches this way, across the plains,” reported Rib Chewer. “Many horses in the north. With knights. And long spears.”
Ankhar nodded. He was not surprised by any of the reports, and he knew better than to ask the rather stupid goblin for precise calculations. The City of Cleft Spires, he knew, was Solanthus, thusly called because of the twin blocks of stone that loomed high above the center of the place. He knew the city was cherished by the knights and that they would move to protect it from any threat.
But he had already made a different plan, and the scout’s reports only reinforced the course of action he had chosen. Solanthus lay over the horizon, only about twenty miles away, west and a little north of his position. The Garnet
range loomed directly to the west, with the tops of the peaks concealed behind a mass of dark clouds that promised heavy rains, possibly even snows, in the high country. Ankhar smiled at the thought.
He gathered his captains, as well as his stepmother, for a conference. The ogres were restive and grumpy, having marched farther and faster in the past fortnight than at any previous time in their lives. Still, they looked at him respectfully, and Ankhar took heart from the fact that they were still prepared to follow him.
“Up there!” he said, pointing into the mountains. “Knights are all before us, on plain, in city, north of city. But they are not up there.”
“We find treasure and booty in the mountains?” asked Bullhorn skeptically. “Or just cold and snow and hard rocks for beds?”
“We will not stay in the mountains,” Ankhar said. “We just go through them, and come out the other side. The knights look for us over here—and we are over there!”
He gestured in triumph to the lofty ridge, hoping that his plan was sinking in.
“Over there!” cried Laka, cackling shrilly. “Across the mountains—there we find treasures, and slaves, and war.”
For a moment the ogres looked skeptical. Finally, General Bloodgutter roared out a challenge. “We march! Who is afraid of the mountains?”
Bullhorn raised his face toward the heights, and bellowed his own challenge. “Mountains will not stop me! Go over mountains! Make war!”
“Over mountains! Make war!” The chant was soon picked up by the rest of Ankhar’s captains. A few moments later, the great horde turned from the flat plains into a valley that, Ankhar knew, would take them all the way to the summit of the range, and still remain north of the vexing mountain dwarf realm of Kayolin.
On the other side of the crest, he knew of a wide river valley that would lead them down to the plains. No one lived in that valley; he knew because he had marched through there only a few years before. No one was there to stop his plan.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TAKING THE TOWER
Hoarst returned to the Black Army with a small keg in his bag of holding. It contained perhaps two gallons of precious liquid—very precious in so many ways, he thought a little wistfully. Would he ever find another concubine quite like Sirene? He doubted he would. But like a passing breeze—or a teleporting wizard—that regret vanished when he beheld the neat rows of tents, arrayed at the southern end of the hidden valley in the Vingaard range.
It was time to get to work.
The companies of Blackgaard’s force, ten units of three hundred men each, had moved there. They would travel light, leaving their tents and baggage behind, because, after all, soon they would all be sleeping comfortably in the High Clerist’s Tower.
Hoarst found Blackgaard sharpening his sword in the predawn mists. The Gray Robe was interested to note the commander did that mundane chore himself, but he made no mention of it.
“The bridge was finished just yesterday,” the captain reported to his mage. “Your timing is impeccable.”
“Good.” Hoarst patted the bag of holding. “I have the means of attack right here. It all went as planned.”
The bulk of the keg had vanished within the magical confines of the container, but Blackgaard understood his companion’s gesture. “Excellent,” he replied. “It’s time to move out.”
The columns of companies quickly fell into line and started up the steep road, switching back and forth to ascend the sheer wall that was the valley’s southern barrier. Their goal was only fifteen miles away, and Blackgaard intended to have them in position by nightfall, so they could have some rest before making the attack after moonset, in the darkest hour just before dawn.
The Black Army marched with the ease of a veteran formation. The soldiers were mercenaries, true, instead of men who fought for colors, state, or oath, but they were the finest, toughest mercenaries in the world. They took pride in their reputation. No untoward click of metal against metal, no cursing or grumbling or even careless stumble would mar their advance.
Within an hour the leading company reached the crest of the ridge bordering the valley and led the column out of the sheltered vale and into the windswept wilderness of the high Vingaard range. As if crossing a line of demarcation, they left the fields, pastures, and groves of their own settlement behind and entered a realm of stark gray stone, white glaciers, deep chasms, and lofty peaks. There were no trees there and few stretches of level ground.
The captain’s engineers had done a splendid job on the road. It would not suffice as a trade caravan route—it was too steep—but it was wide enough for five men to march abreast, even where it was scored along the side of a sheer cliff. After crossing the first ridge, the route cut along the precipitous side of a mountain, staying a hundred feet below the crest for the sake of concealment. Descending gradually, it curled around the shoulder of the solid massif then dropped sharply to pass between a pair of conical summits.
Beyond, the route was confronted with the obstacle of a half-mile-deep chasm—the barrier that had prevented any previous attack against the tower from the north. But the bridge that had been erected for the attack was a true work of art, slender and graceful, spanning the narrowest part of the chasm on a single arch. The stone surface thrummed to the march of the Black Army and carried the whole force safely across by midafternoon.
There was one last ridgeline to crest, and there the companies narrowed into double, and finally single, file. That part of the route, scaling the highest summit, was of necessity rough and ill-prepared. Since it was close to the fortress, the diggers had worked only very cautiously there so as not to risk discovery.
Night was falling as they approached the summit. Blackgaard had previously scouted out a shallow swale near the top, and there he put the small army into an overnight bivouac. There were a few stubby cedars growing in the little valley, but Blackgaard would allow no fires. Even though the rising ridge blocked their line of sight to the fortress, the smell of smoke had been known to thwart a surprise attack.
Lying on the hard and rocky ground, the men slept as much as they could, which was not much at all. Mostly they watched the red moon, then the white, slowly traverse the night skies. Lunitari set behind the western slopes at about midnight. Solinari, closer to full and trailing behind his red cousin, did not set until past three. Only the stars, far more of them than a man could count, brightened the vast arch of the cosmos.
Then it was time to move out.
Hoarst went first, leading a single company of three hundred handpicked men. As they crossed the summit of the ridge, their target came into view. Even in the moonless night, the alabaster walls of the High Clerist’s Tower stood out against the black mountain range. Dominated by its tall, central spire, the fortress had stood in that spot since the Age of Might, a symbol of the Solamnics’ mastery of that corner of Krynn. Lesser towers, immense walls and gates, and the secondary fortress known as the Knights’ Spur, all stood as reminders that the place had held out against great armies many times in the past.
The lead company started down the bed of a narrow ravine, descending sharply. Occasionally the path twisted around to give them another glimpse of their destination, but mostly it was a deep, narrow trench and all they could see was a narrow sliver of sky overhead.
The Thorn Knight was the first to reach the base of the ravine. They were less than a mile from the north wall of the tower when Hoarst called a halt. His men gathered around as he reached into his bag of holding and pulled forth the cask that he had brought from the Dargaard range. The wizard produced a very tiny cup and opened the spigot. One by one, his three hundred men were given a sip of the potion that had been brewed at such cost.
When they were done, the wizard dropped the keg on the ground. It was no longer needed—like the drained corpse of Sirene, it was an empty shell that had to be unsentimentally discarded. Hoarst lifted his hands, outlining his gestures with the tiniest hint of light magic so that his men could observe him.
With one smooth gesture, he commanded them to move out.
Swiftly, silently, and magically, his company of soldiers began to fly.
General Markus was restless, unable to sleep. Always an early riser, on that morning it seemed as though he had not been able to close his eyes for more than a moment or two all night. Giving up sleep as a lost cause, he rose, dressed himself in his leather garrison tunic with the red rose emblazoned on the crest, and decided to walk the parapets of his mountain fortress.
He found the guards awake and alert, as he knew they would be. Most of the defensive positions of the High Clerist’s Tower overlooked the road through the pass. That was the highway Jaymes had ordered widened, the route where the emperor’s army had marched to and from Palanthas. Nothing stirred on the road that day.
Markus had been the commander of the tower garrison since shortly after the defeat of Ankhar’s army. Jaymes Markham had given the trusted, veteran captain the choice of going back to Caergoth, to command the Rose Army, or of taking command of one of the remote outposts in the outer empire. Markus had leaped at the chance to come to the tower and never regretted the choice.
There he was his own master, and the master of a place that was hallowed throughout the long history of his order. He trusted his men, and they all but worshiped him. There were no politics, no distractions—thankfully, no women!—and there he could live the austere soldier’s life that he loved. It was a life of duty and service, maintaining the security of a very important landmark.
He never forgot the fact that the High Clerist’s Tower was a bastion of the ages, the site of some of history’s greatest battles. It was the battlefield where Sturm Brightblade, the knight who restored honor to the Solamnic orders during the War of the Lance, had fallen. It was where the Heroes of the Lance had slain their first dragon. And it was the key trade route of the new Solamnic empire. Every night, no matter how ill he slept, Markus went to bed proud he did his job to the best of his abilities.
