James Lowder - Knight of the Black Rose

“Perhaps Chemosh will resurrect you once again, traitor, but this time as something more mindless-rather like Sir Mikel and the other knights who are condemned to serve me.”

A loud snap sounded from Caradoc’s neck. His head lolled to one side, unsupported by his broken spine. Yet even that did not end the seneschal’s life, so the death knight continued to exert pressure. “Or you may end up as a mane, caught in the army of some monstrous general. I think-”

Abruptly the death knight stopped speaking, his grip faltering. Around him a bank of mist had risen high off the floor, obscuring the throne room, muffling the shrieks and taunts of the banshees. “Is this some kind of trick, Caradoc?”

The ghost, nearly senseless, grunted a reply, but Soth did not comprehend it. Caradoc would tell the death knight where the medallion was if only he would deign to stop the torture. Perhaps if Soth knew that Kitiara’s soul really lay within Dargaard’s walls…

Swirling mist closed in on the death knight and his seneschal. The ivory fog swelled in every corner of Dargaard’s throne room, permeated every stone. The wailing of the banshees faded in Soth’s ears and then stopped.

The mist streamed out the hall’s shattered door into the night as if it had been summoned away. It flowed like water over the cracked stone of the floor, around the charred, worm-eaten throne that was the hall’s only furniture, past the still form of Kitiara Uth Matar, and beneath the thirteen banshees hovering near the ceiling.

Sisters! one of the unquiet spirits cried in astonishment, pointing to the spot where Soth had been standing but a moment earlier.

The death knight and the ghost were gone.

The sheer whiteness of his surroundings caused Lord Soth’s unblinking eyes to smart. The mist pressed thickly in from all sides. It crept through the gaps in Soth’s armor and rubbed against him like a monstrous cat. Tendrils of the milky stuff ventured into his ears and mouth and nose, but soon retreated from the corrupt being of the death knight.

“Caradoc,” Soth uttered as he scanned the brightness around him.

The mist swallowed the word, leaving him to wonder if he’d actually said it. Perhaps he’d only imagined calling his seneschal. He repeated the name more loudly. “Caradoc!” No reply.

Soth did not know how, but he had lost hold of the ghost when the mists had flooded the throne room. He felt certain the cowardly seneschal had fled. No doubt he’s cowering in some corner of the keep, Soth decided. Or he’s floating around the study, trying to pretty up his shattered skeleton.

After listening for a moment, Soth cursed with frustration. The fog was even damping the banshees’ wailing. Yet that seemed incredible to the death knight; the high keening of the unquiet spirits could be heard from the keep’s highest tower, even through floor after floor of stone. Soth listened again. Nothing. The banshees were silent.

“This is some ploy on their part,” he rumbled. “Or perhaps they fled when I attacked Caradoc.”

But Soth knew that the banshees would not have missed out on the entertainment of Caradoc’s punishment. The elven spirits were spiteful creatures, and the seneschal’s pain would be nectar to them. Recalling that his throne had been just behind him when the mists had obscured everything, the death knight turned slowly. Step after careful step he took, but more than three dozen paces brought him to neither throne nor wall.

Two things became obvious to Soth: he was no longer in Dargaard Keep’s throne room and the fog that had engulfed him was born of magic, not nature. “This is far beyond your power, Caradoc,” he hissed. “But there are others…”

The death knight let the sentence trail off as he considered the source of his predicament. Perhaps it was Takhisis. Had he angered the Dark Queen by plotting the death of Kitiara, one of her favorites? No. In-fighting and murder were common amongst the inner circle of her faithful. She would not punish a minion for acting upon the evil urges she herself championed.

This sort of indirect torture was unlike Paladine as well. The Father of Good preferred to torment his enemies with more blatant hells. The same was true of the self-appointed Heroes of the Lance, Tanis Half-Elven and the motley group of mortals who fought against Takhisis’s forces on Krynn. Like Paladine, they eschewed subtlety in favor of direct confrontations with their foes.

“Ah!” Soth exclaimed at last. “Caradoc’s tanar’ri ally!” He looked into the mist, searching for some sign of the evil creature. “Show yourself, dark one.”

The mist curled before Soth’s glowing orange eyes, but no creature appeared. The death knight frowned beneath his heavy helmet. Again he listened intently. No sound penetrated the fog.

“Have you brought me to the Abyss, then?” Soth asked of his unseen tormenter. “If so, this is a place I have not yet visited.”

Soth expected no answer, but he was no longer speaking in hopes that someone might reply; he was talking for his own sake. Mortal terrors held no sway over the death knight, yet absolute silence was as frightening to him as the grave to most living men on Krynn. It was in silence that Soth felt himself slipping into oblivion, losing memory, losing the pain that reminded him he still existed. For the last three hundred fifty years the banshees had filled Dargaard Keep with their screams. Now Soth found himself surrounded by silence, utterly alone, absolutely adrift from Krynn.

The death knight momentarily considered using magic to escape from the fog. He had a few spells at his command and many supernatural powers granted him by his unlife-he could journey from one shadow to any other of his choosing, for example. But there were no shadows in this mist, and Soth was wise enough to know that attempting any other incantation when he was still unsure of his surroundings would tempt disaster.

“If you will not show yourself, I will explore your domain and find my own way out.”

This said, the death knight marched off at a steady pace. To keep his mind occupied, he concentrated on moving in a straight line and counting his steps. Such a tedious task could not make up for the lack of sound, lack of smells, lack of sights in the mist. Soon a numbness washed over Soth, sapping his will to proceed.

When he ceased his march, the death knight drew his ancient sword from its scabbard. What should have been a sharp hiss, metal scraping against metal, came to Soth’s ears as a dull, flat sound. “You will not break me!” he said, raising his sword high into the air. “I defy you, whoever you are!”

With a start, the fallen knight realized that he could see the sword he held in front of himself, its blade sharp but stained dark with old blood. The mist had ebbed at least that much. Looking from left to right, Soth saw that other things were revealing themselves as well.

It appeared as a looming shadow at first, but soon a large, barren tree became visible. Its withered branches were twisted and gnarled, reaching into the mist like an old miser’s hand clutching after a pile of gold coins. Soth held his sword before him and studied the tree for a moment.

The small hill upon which the death knight stood revealed itself next. Patches of weeds struggled for purchase in the rocky soil. Small bushes and stunted plants huddled away from the tree at the hill’s crest. Near those tangled, white-flowered privets and scrawny belladonna, swirls of mist still covered the stony ground. Most of the fog was rolling steadily downhill toward vast stands of drooping firs and barren oak.

“I am far from Dargaard,” Soth whispered.

The rest of the scene became clear to Soth as the mist retreated completely. The death knight stood on a low hillock, which was itself surrounded by a dense forest. To the south a turgid river, swollen with spring runoff, meandered through the trees. Distant mountains stood in almost all directions, their snowcapped peaks pushing high into the air. As Soth watched, the sun touched the range to the west, setting the horizon alight with subtle shades of crimson, gold, and purple.