Margaret Weis - Dragons of the Highlord Skies

Warmth potent as dwarf spirits surged through her, easing her fears. Her racing heart slowed, her stomach stopped twisting, her bowels quit cramping. She could breathe again. She started to clamp the marvelous bracelet over her wrist.

A woman’s song sounded from within the keep. The woman sang a single note, beautiful and awful, piercing, wailing, keening. The note struck Kitiara like a steel bolt. She gasped and flinched. Her hand jerked. She dropped the bracelet and it fell, clattering, to the cobblestones.

The fear surged back, crashing over her, crushing her. Panic-stricken and desperate, she dropped to her hands and knees. She couldn’t find the bracelet in the darkness, and that was maddening because she could see clearly because of the roaring fire. She groped about for it with her bare hands. The cobblestones were covered with black, greasy soot and ash. Water ran in rivulets among the cracks and crevices. Kit drew back her wet hand and saw in horror that it wasn’t water. Her palm was smeared with blood.

The light of the fire grew brighter, and she saw her bracelet lying just out of reach. Kitiara made a frantic lunge for it. She was just about to grab the bracelet when two polished black boots stepped over it, standing on either side of it. A long, ragged-edged cape fell around the boots. A gloved hand reached down and picked up the bracelet.

Kit raised terror-stricken eyes.

A knight stood over her. Eyes of fire glowed behind the eyeslits of a bucket helm. The blaze of the burning keep reflected off steel armor. A rose emblazoned on the breastplate was cracked, charred black, and smeared with blood.

Lord Soth held the bracelet in his gloved hand. The fire in the eyeslits seemed to flicker in amusement. He lifted the bracelet up for her to see, then, as she watched, he slowly closed his hand over it. There was a snapping sound, rending metal. Soth opened his fist. Silver and onyx dust trickled from between his fingers, sparkled briefly in the firelight, and dissolved into mud on the blood-wet cobblestones.

“That’s cheating,” said Lord Soth.

He turned on his booted heel. His cape flowed around him like a ripple in the fabric of darkness. He flung wide his hands.

“You are my guest this night,” Soth added. The gates to Dargaard Keep opened.

Kitiara crouched on her knees in the blood and stared into the open gates. Before her was a grand entry hall, dark, empty, and bright with candlelight flaring from a wrought-iron chandelier that hung from the ceiling and lay, broken and twisted, on the floor. If Kit did not stand up and walk into that hall, she would be just one more corpse lying in the courtyard. Skie would fly over Dargaard Keep tomorrow morning and see on the cobblestones her bones and her rotting flesh encased in the blue armor and horned helm of a Dragon Highlord. Skie would mourn her—he would be the only one to mourn her, yet he would find another rider. Ariakas would laugh when he heard and term her a fool who deserved her fate. Takhisis would despise her. Lord Soth would pick up her horned helm and add it to his trophies and that would be the end. Kitiara uth Matar would be forever a nobody. She would fade into obscurity and be forgotten.

“A little fear is healthy,” Gregor uth Matar had once told his daughter. “Too much fear makes you worthless in a fight. When you start to feel the terror beat in your throat, you’re hanging on to life too tight, daughter. Let go of what may come and live for what is—because that may be all you have…”

A soldier walked forth from the entry hall. He was clad in armor adorned with the rose, one of Soth’s men-at-arms. Flames consumed him as he walked, blackening his armor, blistering his skin. The flesh melted from his face, leaving a bloody skull. He held a sword in his smoldering hand. His eyes saw nothing but death… and her. He meant to slay her, if she did not kill him first, except that he himself was already dead.

Let go of what may come and live for what is …

Kitiara let go of her ambition, her hopes and dreams and plans. She let go of love and hate, and, when she had nothing left inside her, she realized that fear had let go of her.

Rising to her feet, Kit drew her sword and walked forth boldly to meet the undead warrior. Her dragon armor protected her against the heat of the flames. She yelled in defiance and struck the corpse’s blade a testing blow, judging his strength, his skill. The corpse’s strength was daunting; his counter strike almost shattered her arm. She broke off, fell back, and waited for him to attack her.

But death seemed to have robbed the dead man of his brains as well as his skill. He raised his sword over his head and brought it down on her as though he were chopping wood. Kitiara dodged, then leaped and spun, slamming her foot into his chest, knocking him over backward.

He lay floundering on his back. Kit put her foot on his chest and drove her blade into his throat between his armor and his helm. The flames disappeared. The warrior lay still. He wasn’t finished, though. She couldn’t kill what was already dead.

Hearing clanging and rattling behind her, she turned around, but not fast enough. A sword struck her on the left shoulder. Her armor saved her from a broken collarbone, but the blow was powerful enough to dent the armor the Dark Queen herself had blessed. While the undead warrior recovered from his swing, Kitiara swept her blade into his neck, severing his head. That second corpse was still falling when another came lunging at her, and she heard, behind her, the first attacker clambering to his feet.

Kitiara glanced behind her and saw the first attacker aim a thrust at her back. The one in front was surging forward. She dropped to the ground. The warrior behind her stabbed the warrior in front and both fell. Kitiara crawled out from beneath the bodies to find another warrior waiting for her, jabbing at her with a spear.

Kit rolled frantically from to one side to the other. He hit a glancing blow, and Kit gasped in pain as the spearhead sliced open a gash in her thigh. Seeing an opening, she smashed both feet into his legs, kicked them out from under him. She hacked the point off the spear, but she didn’t waste her energy “killing” him. It wouldn’t make any difference. He couldn’t die.

More undead troops came at her, so many she couldn’t begin to count them. They were jumping off the battlements, running down the stairs, trailing fire that glowed in the blades of their swords and blazed in their eyes that were empty of life but not of hatred.

Kit was wounded and exhausted. Her fear had been costly, draining her of strength, and she had to keep fighting. She risked another glance behind. The gates to Dargaard Keep stood wide open. The great hall, lit by candlelight, was empty. No warriors were inside the keep, not since the one had come forth to do battle. The undead soldiers were massing in front of her. If she could win her way inside the keep, make it through the gates alive…

Drawing her boot knife, she stabbed one warrior in the midriff, below his breastplate, and took a step backward. She drove her sword through the eyeslits of another’s helm and kept moving backward.

She had to keep the warriors from flanking her, crowding around behind her, coming between her and the open gate. She thrust her sword between the legs of a warrior and brought it upward, tearing into his crotch. He toppled forward, and Kitiara moved another step closer to the gate.

A blow knocked off one of her bracers. Blood oozed from a deep wound in her left forearm and more blood trailed down her thigh. Another blow struck her on the head and the flames wavered and swam in her vision. But she fought against the bursting pain and blinked her eyes until they focused and kept fighting. And she kept moving backward.