Fistandantilus Reborn

by Douglas Niles

  “And who is the god you serve?”

  “My faith is that of Fistandantilus,” Kelryn Darewind proclaimed. “Archmage of the black robes, he has joined the gods in the constellations of the heavens. I merely strive to see that his memory receives its proper due here upon Krynn.”

  “I see,” murmured the officer, though there was something in his voice that belied the statement. Again Kelryn wished to rip that mask away, to confront the human face underneath.

  Surprisingly, the officer suddenly obliged by lifting the heavy metal plate from his head and shoulders. He was astonishingly young, the priest thought, with a face masked by strains of sweat and grime, the sparse stubble of several days’ beard blue-black on his chin, cheeks, and neck.

  With a curt gesture, the man swept his arms outward to indicate the attentive gathered crowd. “If you are in fact a priest, then you should cure those who have been injured. It is not enough that you merely offer them the security of your compound.”

  Kelryn laughed, a sharp and bitter sound. “Surely you know that no priest, not since the Cataclysm, can heal the hurts of mortal flesh. I merely strive to instruct my flock—”

  “No priest?” The officer was mocking, and Kelryn flushed, sensing the tension among his faithful like a lute string pulled taut through the air. He feared suddenly that he was being drawn into a trap.

  The dragonrider spun on his heel, turning his back to Kelryn and addressing the gathered populace. “I come to you with a warning and with a promise of hope. For years has Haven been filled with charlatans and pretenders.” He spat over his shoulder, and the high priest was forced to sidestep quickly to avoid the spittle.

  “You should know that Fistandantilus is not a god, no more so than any of the Seeker deities. These are make-believe faiths, created by fakers such as this man to gather you into his power, to rob and abuse you.”

  “Liar!” shouted Kelryn, terrified of his own audacity, yet knowing that he could not allow the verbal onslaught to continue. He didn’t want to fight, not here, not under these circumstances. Still, he wished that he were wearing his sword, and he resolved to defend himself with the small dagger he wore under his robe if the officer’s affronts became even more direct.

  Instead of attacking, however, the officer half turned, a sardonic smile upon his lips. He gestured to one of the refugees nearby, a child whose right arm dangled limply in a bloodstained sling. “Come here, lad. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

  Wonderingly the boy came forward. Kelryn could not tear his eyes away as the warrior knelt, pulled off his gauntlets, and extended a gentle hand toward the gory cloth. “Know, my son, that there is a goddess who is real and who cares for you.”

  The man’s voice rose as he swept his gaze over the whole throng. “Hear me, all! The Queen of Darkness, Takhisis herself, commands your obedience. But know that she offers rewards, riches, and power in return!”

  The warrior touched the injured arm. The boy stood still, trembling, as the man ducked his head. “Listen to my prayers, Dark Lady who is my mistress and soon shall be queen of all the world. This child is innocent; he has done you no wrong. I beseech you, grant me the power to heal his flesh, to make him well that he may serve us, might bring further glory to your name.”

  “It—it doesn’t hurt anymore,” stammered the youth, looking with wonder at his arm.

  “Take off the bandage.” The officer’s voice remained gentle, soothing.

  Quickly the boy tore at the filthy cloth, casting it aside and raising his arm in the air. A joyful voice cried from the crowd and a woman rushed forward, sweeping the boy into her arms. “He is healed! Yesterday he was certain to lose his arm, and now the wound is gone!”

  A gasp rose from the throng, and people, awestruck and wondering, shuffled forward to see this proof of godhood.

  “I tell you today of our queen’s might and her mercy,” proclaimed the officer, rising to his feet, speaking in a voice that resounded from the high temple walls. “There are more priests waiting to soothe your hurts, to teach you the rightness of our new faith. All who would open your ears to the truth, go to the great square of Haven, and there you will learn the ways of the true gods!”

  Those people closest to the gate were already leaving at a run. With a restive murmur, a sound that grew into a low cheer, the rest of the crowd seemed to understand the command, embrace the hope it offered. Kelryn stood still, seething, watching the sardonic smile play across the dragonrider’s face as the congregation, the refugees, even many of the Faithguards fled the temple in the face of this miracle. Only when the last of the once loyal followers had departed the gates did the man turn back, regarding Kelryn as if the high priest were a mere afterthought.

  “You are an affront to true faith,” barked the officer. “You deserve only death!”

  Kelryn Darewind felt the hot pulse against his chest and pulled the bloodstone of Fistandantilus forth with a sudden, instinctive gesture. The officer stared at the stone a moment, blinking as his stern expression grew soft and vague.

  “Lord Verminaard will use your temple compound as his headquarters.” The man shook his head, visibly struggling to gain control of his thoughts and words. “You have one hour to gather your belongings and leave. If the highlord finds you here upon his arrival, you may expect to die—very slowly.”

  Kelryn made no reply. He saw the few of his Faithguards who still remained, those who had been the most loyal of his followers, watching him questioningly. Unconsciously he touched the bloodstone, once again secure under his robe.

  “I carry all my needs with me,” he said grimly. With a curt gesture, he summoned his remaining men—no more than a dozen—to his side. They fell into step behind him as he stalked through the gates, past the company of leering draconians, to march along Haven’s suddenly foreign street.

  Chapter 13

  An Historical Analysis

  To his Honor, Patriarch Grimbriar

  High Priest of Gilean

  Inscribed this year of Krynn, 372 AC

  Your Eminence, I have been surprised to discover, during the course of my research, references of interest in the dragonarmy records pertaining to the fall of Haven and the subsequent occupation by the minions of the Highlord Verminaard. Specifically, there is some reason to believe that one of the great artifacts of Fistandantilus may have found its way to that chaotic city at some time following the creation of Skullcap and preceding the arrival of the dragonarmies.

  Of course, the fall of Haven and the occupation of Abanasinia, Qualinesti, and the Plains of Dust have been well documented in the official histories, not to mention the detailed military accounts available in the rolls of Solamnia and the Highlord Ariakas. It would be presumptuous, and wasteful, of me to attempt to improve upon that body of work.

  Rather, my patriarch, I shall strive to clarify several pertinent facts.

  It is known, for example, that most of the Seeker priests were thrown down by the arrival of Verminaard’s army. Some (the weakest and least influential, it seems) were allowed to maintain their holdings and congregations. Most were incorporated into the ranks of the dragonarmies, and a few—the most powerful, those who were perceived as a threat to Takhisis—were cruelly executed, their cults violently disbanded.

  There is a strange tale regarding a red dragon rider, one Blaric Hoyle. The officer was sent to destroy a sect created for the worship of a false god, a faith dedicated to the archmage Fistandantilus. This temple was one of the more successful of the false faiths, reputedly because the high priest had demonstrated some small measure of immortality. At least, many witnesses claimed that he had lived in the city for perhaps a century, but during all this time had remained a very young man.

  The hapless dragonrider apparently did not fully grasp the lethal intent of the order. He confronted the Seeker priest and closed the temple as he had been instructed. However, he then allowed the false cleric to leave the city of Haven before the executioner arrived.

&
nbsp; Blaric Hoyle was tried by a military tribunal presided over by Highlord Verminaard himself. Apparently the officer was unable to offer a very good defense of his actions; the notes indicate that he seemed confused, even forgetful, about the circumstances of his confrontation with the false high priest. However, he made several references to a “sparking stone,” and once claimed that he saw “sparks within the gemstone.” These were vague perceptions, related without specificity, but they aroused my suspicions.

  Hoyle did not know why he allowed the false priest to leave, but his responses to the question imply that the mysterious stone had at least something to do with his disobedient choice.

  Alas, we hear no more from him. (As usual, he who failed to please his ruthless highlord master was granted only a very short appearance on history’s stage.) However, it seems at least possible to me that the stone referred to could have been the bloodstone of Fistandantilus.

  I know that all previous reports have indicated that the stone was destroyed during the convulsion that created Skullcap. However, Haven is not terribly distant from that place, and there was a strong belief that the “priest” of this faith came from the south (the direction of Skullcap) when he arrived in the city to establish his sect. And, too, there is the previously mentioned business about the man’s strange propensity to resist the effects of aging.

  The fugitive Seeker and his few remaining followers are believed to have made their way into the Kharolis borderlands. There it is reported that he established a camp as rude as any bandit’s. They survived by preying upon weakness, plundering from the local citizenry, even stealing from the dragonarmies when they could find a detachment or supply center that was weakly defended.

  The arrival of the dragonarmies in Haven and the closing of the Temple of Fistandantilus began to draw the threads of history closer together. Another occurrence, pertinent to future events, also happened during this interval:

  The Heroes of the Lance, on their epic journey toward Thorbardin, visited the mountain of Skullcap, where it is rumored they discovered an artifact, the skull of Fistandantilus, which had lain untouched in the depths of that place for more than a century. It is possible that they brought it near to the surface, though certainly they did not take it with them.

  In any event, while I have been unable to confirm everything that has happened in regard to this story, it can be deduced from subsequent events that the skull was no longer languishing in the deepest depths of that horrid fortress.

  As Always,

  Your faithful servant,

  Foryth Teel

  Chapter 14

  Dragon Reign

  356 AC

  Mid-Yurthgreen

  Time is a highly subjective reality. Hours, days, weeks, and years all mean different things, are held to different values by the many versions of mortality. For example, two days might encompass the entire lifetime of a certain bug, and for that creature, the ticking of a minute is an interval for great feasting, or for traveling a long distance. To a human, a minute is a more compact space—time, perhaps, for a sip of wine, a bite of bread, a phrase or two of conversation.

  Yet to a truly long-lived being—an elf, for example, or a dragon—minutes can pass tenfold, a hundredfold, without arousing interest or concern. A single such interval is space for a slow inhalation, or an idle thought. It is certainly not time enough for serious cogitation, never enough for the making of an important decision.

  And, by extension, the counting of months and years by such entities can also assume insignificant proportions. When compared to the more frantic pace of humanity’s existence, very long times may pass in nothing more than a haze of quiet reflection.

  Or in the case of a dragon, an extended nap.

  It was thus for Flayzeranyx, who awakened in the cool depths of his cave with no awareness of the season, nor even of the number of years that might have passed since he had commenced his hibernation. Even the red dragon’s return to consciousness was a gradual thing, an event spread over the span of several weeks.

  Only after he had lifted the crimson, heavy lids that completely concealed his eyes did the great serpent notice the gradual increase and decrease of light from the direction leading toward the mouth of his cave. Through the gauzy inner lids that still cloaked the slitted yellow pupils, Flayze realized that these shifts in brightness represented the cycles of day passing into night, and then merging into the following dawn.

  Idly he counted the cycling of five such periods of dark and brightness. By then he began to notice a nagging thirst, a dry rasp that cracked around the base of his tongue and made his mouth feel as though it were full of dust. And then, very vaguely, he noticed the first traces of hunger rumbling in the vast depths of his belly. There was still no real sense of urgency to his awareness, but he realized that it was time for him to move.

  Slowly Flayze rose, pressing with his four powerful legs to lift his serpentine body, supple neck, and sinuous tail from the floor. A few old scales snapped free, chips of scarlet floating to the floor. The dragon wriggled, a violent shiver that rippled the length of his body, and many more scales broke loose. Those that remained, at last bared by the sloughing of the ancient plates, gleamed with a bright slickness suggestive of fresh blood.

  Climbing toward the dimly recalled cavern entrance, Flayze ascended a rock-strewn floor, slinking with oily ease over steep obstacles, relishing the grace of movement, the power incumbent in his massive body. He sniffed the air, smelling water and greenery, and he was glad that he had not emerged during winter, when the hunting—and even the quenching of his thirst—could be rendered much more problematic by the presence of snow and ice. The odors from outside became more rich, and he smelled the mud, the scent of migrating geese, and he knew that it was spring.

  And then the sun was there, shining into the mouth of the cave as it crested the eastern horizon. Flayze lowered his inner eyelids and hooded his vision with the thick outer membranes as he squinted into the brightness. He ignored the momentary discomfort, feeling the hunger surge anew, fired by the tangy spoor of a great flock of the waterfowl he had earlier scented.

  A stream flowed, as he had remembered it would, just past the mouth of the deep cave. Lowering his massive muzzle into the deepest pool he could reach, Flayze drank, sucking the water out of the natural bowl in a long slurp. Downstream, the creek momentarily halted its flow, as if startled by the sudden absence of its source. The red dragon lifted his head, allowing rivulets to drain from his crocodilian jaws. In moments the pool was refilled and once more drained.

  Now Flayze sniffed the breeze in earnest, anxious to eat. Again he was tantalized by the scent of the geese. He tried to recollect his surroundings, remembering a vast wetland, a flat expanse of marsh that lay at the downstream terminus of this very brook. The dragon extended his blood-red wings, stretching them up and down, working out the kinks of his long hibernation. The exercise felt good, but he was too impatient to limber himself fully; instead, he leapt into the air, pressed down with the vast sails of his wings, gliding just a short distance off the ground. He followed the grade of the descending streambed, hoping to surprise the flock by his sudden appearance over the marsh.

  Flying felt good, as always. He didn’t mind the cool air stinging, feeling strangely vital in his flaring nostrils. Then he was there, and the expanse of shallow water below him was choked with plump birds, thousands of them, cackling and murmuring in a great mass. With a roar of exultation, Flayze dipped his head, opened his mouth, and expelled a huge cloud of searing fire. The flame boiled into the waters of the marsh and killed a hundred geese in the first instant of its explosion. Banking steeply back, Flayze settled into the sticky mud, ignoring the thousands of other birds, the vast flock that took wing in a honking cacophony on all sides.

  He used his dexterous foreclaws to lift the charred birds to his mouth, one or two at a time. He crunched and swallowed with sheer pleasure, relishing the hot juices running over his tongue. He didn’t parti
cularly like the sensation of mud against his beautiful scales, and by the time he had gulped down the last of the geese, he had sunk to his belly in the sticky stuff. Still, his stomach was full and his mood benign as he wriggled to the shore and flopped into the cool stream, allowing the brisk current to wash his body.

  Finally he was ready to investigate his surroundings. The bulk of the High Kharolis rose to the south, purple against the horizon as the sun settled toward evening. To the north, he knew, lay Pax Tharkas, and beyond that the forested elven realm of Qualinesti.

  The last Flayzeranyx remembered of that sylvan reach, he had been flying above the seemingly eternal canopy of trees on a routine patrol. He had still been getting used to the fact that he bore no rider; his knight, a man called Blaric Hoyle, had recently been executed by the Highlord Verminaard for some failure that had occurred during the sack of Haven.

  As Flayze had flown, riderless, over the treetops, a pair of dragons had swept from the clouds, plunging toward him. Since every dragon he had ever seen had been allied in the Dark Queen’s cause, he had at first been unconcerned, until he was startled by the brilliant reflection of the sun off silver wings.

  Thus had the dragons of Paladine entered Flayze’s war, and in the next moments, they summarily ended the red dragon’s participation in that campaign. The scales on Flayze’s back were cruelly shattered by a blast of frost, and a vicious silver lance had pierced his wing. It had only been his good fortune to dive away from the silvers and to be abandoned by his foe in favor of some more pressing concern.

  After that fight, Flayzeranyx had returned to Sanction to meet with Emperor Ariakas himself. The mighty serpent had been ordered to return to the Red Wing, which was occupying much of Southern Solamnia at the time. There he was to be assigned a new rider, and he would return to the war to avenge the losses brought about by the sudden and unwelcome involvement of the metallic dragons.