It had been that fact that accounted for so much of the sect’s recent success in recruitment and donation. In an age when the gods had abandoned Krynn, when the pseudo-doctrines of charlatans hailing the virtues of false gods could be heard on any of a dozen street corners in Haven, even the barest suggestion of a miracle was enough to bring people flocking to his door. And word of a sect presided over by a young man who had been a young man for fifty years was clear enough evidence that he was a wielder of supernatural power.
At first, Kelryn had been dependent upon the hypnotic power of the bloodstone to gather his faithful. Since that fateful encounter in the chilly night he had worn the gem on its chain around his neck, taking comfort in the sensation of the stone against his chest. There were times he could even imagine it pulsing in time with his own heart, though he could never be certain if it was his own body that was setting the cadence of the measured beats or if he was reacting to some abiding force within the bloodstone.
From the comfort of the temple throne, he spent a few pensive moments reflecting on the long-ago encounter in the cave and its immediate aftermath. As he had planned, he had reached the gates of Pax Tharkas before the worst of the winter snows. He had spent the cold season in the isolated fortress, though he had not been forced to work for his keep as he had originally feared. Instead, he found that the stone seemed to enhance his insight into men he had gambled with, and by the time he had departed for the north in the spring, he had earned a respectable purse and recruited a band of tough and ruthless men, the first of his Faithguards.
At the same time, Kelryn had shaped the plan that, he hoped, would see to the comfort and security of his future. Accompanied by his thugs, he had journeyed to Haven, where it seemed that one or another new religion was arising almost every other week. Due in part to the burly nature of his assistants and in part to the hypnotic powers of the stone, Kelryn quickly gathered a fiercely loyal group of followers.
Supported by hard-earned donations, they had purchased a ramshackle shack in the New Temple quarter of Haven. Within a year, the sagging building had been replaced by a sturdy chapel. Twenty years later that church had been razed to make way for the current temple as new recruits steadily flocked to the banner of a sect that offered power, prestige, and the prospects of plenty to eat.
As the years had passed, his original Faithguards had grown old and died, though the high priest had remained as a young man. Rumors spread through the city about a cleric who was living proof that his god bestowed actual power, and more and more people came to see, and many of them to join, the thriving church. Simultaneously other temples that occupied neighboring plots in the district had been afflicted by poor luck. Some of these churches had burned, while others had mysteriously lost all their members. Many of the disenfranchised turned to the Sect of the Black Robe, while others merely disappeared.
As each neighboring temple was abandoned, Kelryn and his followers had been quick to move in. Now, fifty years later, the sect occupied an entire city block. The black robe compound was surrounded by a high wall, diligently protected by the fierce and well-armed Faithguards. Within were gardens and dungeons, garrison buildings and hallowed halls of worship.
And Kelryn Darewind was master of it all.
Again the high priest’s mind turned to the new maiden, no doubt even now sipping strong red wine, waiting for his pleasure in the nearby garden, and with the thought, he resolved to dispense with the remaining business as quickly as possible.
“Where is the prisoner?” he asked of Warden Thilt, who stood by the door, patiently awaiting his master’s command.
“Bring in the traitor!” called Thilt.
A pair of Faithguards, their leggings splattered with mud, stalked into the temple. They supported a sagging, broken man between them. Half-dragging the wretch, they advanced to the front of the chapel, then tossed the captive, facedown, onto the floor before their high priest.
“You found him on the road south of the city?”
“Aye, Master—halfway to Kharolis,” growled one of the guards, giving the hapless prisoner a kick.
“You did well to catch him.” Kelryn remembered the hook-nosed female he had assigned to the Faithguards. “As a reward, you two shall have first use of the new supplicant. You are dismissed, with my gratitude.”
“Thank you, Master!” chorused the pair of guards, exchanging measured leers as they departed for the door. Kelryn knew they were sizing each other up, determining who would have the wench first.
“Ah, Fairman,” the high priest said with an elaborate sigh, walking a circle around the man who still lay, facedown and trembling, on the floor. Thilt had retired to just outside the front doors, so the two were alone in the high-ceilinged temple. “Why did you decide to leave us? Have you had a weakness, a question in your faith?”
The man on the floor drew a ragged breath and found the strength to rise to his knees. He dared a sidelong look at the priest, shaking his head wearily.
“Rise from the floor, my good son,” said Kelryn, indicating a nearby bench and using the comfortable honorific he reserved for those acolytes who had come to his church as young men. “Have a seat and clear your mind. I really do desire to hear your explanation.”
Fairman, who had been a long-standing enforcer in the Faithguards, looked helplessly at the high priest. He knows his life is forfeit, Kelryn thought with an agreeable thrill of pleasure. But he also knows that the difference between a quick and merciful execution or a slow, lingering death by torture would depend upon the answers he gives.
“It was the skull, Master. I had a dream, and I saw the skull.”
Kelryn froze, chilled more than he cared to admit by the words. “And where was it?” He tried, successfully, he thought, to keep the tension out of his voice.
“I don’t know. It was dark, but I could see it clearly. And I heard it calling, telling me to go.”
“And you chose to obey the voice of a dream rather than the doctrines and the commands of your high priest.”
Fairman looked at Kelryn with an unspoken plea in his eyes. He really wants me to understand, thought the priest, mystified by the sincerity of the doomed man.
“I—I had no choice,” Fairman said miserably. “Even when I awakened, I saw those eyeless sockets, heard a summons … calling me, making me move.”
“I see.” Kelryn did not, in fact, understand the strange compulsion. Still, he was worried. He had lost more than a dozen of his once faithful followers in the last decades. Though that wasn’t a terrible rate of attrition, those fugitives his Faithguards recaptured always reported a similar dream.
“You know, of course, that your treachery cannot be abided.”
“I know, Master,” declared Fairman miserably. He drew a breath, apparently trying to decide if he should say anything further.
“Speak, my good son,” the priest urged gently.
“There was something else in the dream—and in my thoughts, when I was awakened.”
“Something else …?”
“It was a kender, Master. The skull became a kender, and then it was the kender I was chasing. He was important. He was the skull, it seemed, though the bone was not of his own body.”
“A kender?” Kelryn mused, trying to keep his voice casual. But despite his bored facade, his alarm deepened. He himself had dreamed about a mysterious kender on more than one occasion, and fifty years ago Gantor Blacksword had ranted something about one of the diminutive wanderers as well. What could it mean?
“Yes … a kender who was afraid, lord. In my dream, he was afraid of me, afraid because I knew his name.”
Kelryn Darewind had little concern for kender as a rule. Though these portents were mildly disturbing, the high priest’s mind had turned inevitably toward other, more immediate, issues. Indeed, as Fairman babbled away his last minutes, the high priest’s thoughts wandered.
He vividly remembered the maiden waiting for him beyond the nearby door. Suddenly he wanted her
very badly. With a curt command, he summoned Warden Thilt.
“That is not important,” he declared with an abrupt, breathless determination. He turned to Warden Thilt. “Take him to the dungeons. Kill him with a single strike.”
“Thank you, Master!” cried Fairman pathetically, falling forward to wrap his arms around the high priest’s feet.
But Kelryn was already up and walking, taking long strides toward the white door. His mind was aflame, full of the mental image of the young woman. He was sure the reality would not be a disappointment. Behind him, he heard low sobs as Fairman was lifted to his feet and escorted without a great deal of force toward the stone-covered trapdoor that led into the temple’s nether reaches.
The woman was waiting, and she was even more beautiful and willing than Kelryn had dared to hope. He enjoyed her through the rest of the morning, and she seemed more than happy to devote her considerable skill to the advancement of her faith.
Only later, as he lay in languid half-consciousness, did Kelryn’s thoughts turn back to the hapless Fairman. The man had been dead for several hours when the priest sat up, cursing softly at his own thoughtlessness. He should have been more patient, more thorough as he questioned the traitor about his dream.
Specifically, he should have asked what the kender’s name was.
Chapter 12
New Dawn of the True Gods
351 AC
Second Bakukal, Gildember
“Stop them!” High Priest Kelryn Darewind cried, standing on the wall above the gates of his temple compound, commanding the Faithguards to steady the bar that held shut the wide portals.
But the force of the mob in the streets would not be denied. Though Kelryn quickly descended, joining his men to throw his own weight against the gates, the bar splintered like a toothpick, and slowly the massive barriers of the gates were forced inward.
As soon as there was a narrow opening, people began to stream into the courtyard of the Sect of the Black Robe. The force of the crowd swelled the gap, and Kelryn abandoned the lost effort, falling back as the gates swung wide and a great throng of terrified humans charged into the high-walled compound. Even worse, he saw several kender ambling along with the crowd, unaffected by the hysteria that gripped the humans.
The refugees scattered through all portions of the temple grounds, filling the chapel, spilling through the gardens and drill grounds, pouring into the barracks, even seeking refuge in the bloodstained dungeons beneath the temple floor.
“Try to fix the gates after the throng is through,” growled the high priest. “And by all that you value, get rid of the kender! Kill them if they won’t leave!”
Warden Horec, the most recent chief of the Faithguards, saluted and promised to do his best, though they both tacitly acknowledged that the force of the mob was a thing that no mere human could be expected to control. Still, he knew his master’s aversion to the small folk, and he would make certain that any kender within the compound was quickly discovered and tossed over the wall.
Furious, Kelryn pushed his way through the crowd into the temple, then climbed the spiral stairway to the blessed solitude offered by the high tower. Two strapping Faithguards stood at the foot of the steps, barring passage—at least, thus far—to any trespasser who tried to follow.
The view from above offered little consolation. Kelryn could see many places where Haven was burning, the fires ignited by the cruel red dragons under the command of the villainous highlord, Verminaard. As he watched, the priest saw one of the massive serpents glide between two towering pillars of smoke. Banking gracefully, the wyrm uttered a shriek in the air above a crowded avenue, sending people spilling in panic toward any shelter they could find.
It was just such a panic that had driven the throng into the Temple of Fistandantilus. For days the news had been clear and harsh: Armies were marching on Haven, and the city would inevitably fall. As to his sect, the high priest was determined to do what he could to make sure it survived.
Kelryn touched the comforting weight of the bloodstone and wished that he could pray to Fistandantilus for help—wished that there really was a god that would protect him, that would see to the safety of his faithful follower.
As if to mock his hopes, the gliding red dragon dipped low, jaws gaping as it belched a great cloud of flame along a row of buildings not far from the temple. The structures, mostly taverns, ignited immediately, and moments later panicked folk came diving out of the doorways. Many of the victims were aflame, and they rolled in the street, screaming in agony, only to be ignored by their fellow citizens who fled past, desperate for any suggestion of safety.
Haven had fallen, as Kelryn, and everyone else who had a grasp of reality, had known it would. The dragonarmies that had swept southward from Abanasinia were clearly unstoppable, a horde of flying serpents, cruel riders, and teeming hordes of men and monsters on the ground. There were even rumors that the elves of Qualinesti were withdrawing from their ancestral home, taking ships across the Straits of Algoni toward the imagined safety of Southern Ergoth.
Kelryn wondered, as he had wondered before, if he had been a fool to stay. Perhaps he should have abandoned the temple, left the faithful to fend for themselves as he sought a new place to begin. Much as he had done nine decades earlier, he reflected bitterly.
He had not remained in Haven out of any sense of loyalty to his followers. Rather, he had been unwilling to abandon the riches, the comforts, the women that had been his lot for so many years. The highlords would come, would claim this place and establish their rule, but Haven would remain a city. Kelryn merely hoped to maintain something like his old status when the new regime took power.
The dragon veered again, winging past the tower, and Kelryn grimaced at the sight of the rider sitting astride the crimson-scaled back. The man bore a long lance with a bloodstained tip and a shaft of black wood. His face was concealed behind a grotesque mask, and the high priest longed to tear that mask away, to punish this warrior for his insolence and to see the fear in his eyes as Kelryn Darewind delivered a blistering incantation of lethal violence.
Alas, it was not to be.
Hate flaring in his heart, Kelryn watched the dragon and its rider bank again, veering smoothly back to the north. There, some of the city’s garrison had been determined to make a stand against the advancing army, valiantly trying to hold the gate and low wall. That defense had lasted for a few minutes, until a trio of the red dragons had flown overhead. Those men with the courage to remain at their posts in the face of the inevitable wave of mind-numbing dragonawe had died there, seared by the killing flames or crushed by claw and rended by fang. The rest of the defenders, driven into flight by terror, had scattered into every corner of the city or fled into the wilds of the south.
By the time the enemy ground troops, the draconians and their human and goblin allies, had reached the city wall, the barrier had been scoured clean of defenders. Now those land-bound invaders were spreading through the city, burning, looting, and raping. It was these tactics that had driven the frenzied mob to the gates of the sect’s compound, though Kelryn wasn’t sure why the mindless folk felt they might be safe here. He was pragmatic enough to realize that the high stone walls and the sturdy gates would present no barrier at all to an army determined to sack the place.
However, as the day waned into evening and then blended into the following dawn, there came no attack against the compound. At sunrise, Kelryn resumed his place in the tower and saw that the fires in the northern districts of the city had, for the most part, burned themselves out. There was no sign that the destruction was continuing.
Throughout the day, a steady stream of injured people made their way into South Haven. Many of these were burned, while others had been wounded by weapons or the crush of the mob. They gathered in a miserable huddle outside the gates of the temple compound, pleading for entrance, but Kelryn was adamant that the gates remain shut.
Late that afternoon he sensed an ominous change as the
crowd outside grew still, an expectant silence that swiftly extended to those within the temple compound as well. From the height of his temple wall, Kelryn saw a masked and armored officer marching at the head of an escort of scaled, hissing draconians. The company advanced down the street toward the Sect of the Black Robe, the throng of refugees parting almost magically before the horrific visage of the officer’s leering mask. The awe-inspiring warrior confidently presented himself at the gates of the temple, sending his respects and a message that he wished to speak to the high priest.
Kelryn knew that the time had come to talk. He ordered the gates opened, and the dragonarmy officer, his stature and presence heightened by the grotesque mask, strode boldly into the courtyard. The draconians remained outside, but many more of the sick and wounded citizens of Haven took advantage of the opened gate to pour inside the compound, despite the presence of the sinister warrior.
Meeting the man in the middle of the courtyard, conscious of hundreds of eyes upon him, Kelryn bowed stiffly. “I am the high priest,” he declared. He guessed that this was the man he had watched in flight on the previous day—at least, the garish mask and armor were identical to that dragonrider’s. The priest felt a small shiver of gratitude that, for now, the great red dragon was nowhere to be seen.
Kelryn Darewind stared at the mask, hating the fanged maw portrayed there, reviling the tiny eyes that glittered at him from the narrow slits above the nose.
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