James Lowder - Knight of the Black Rose

After the monotony of the mists, he was overwhelmed by the vista unfolding around him. The sound of small birds heralding the end of day, the pungent smell of nearby flowering bushes, and the brisk touch of the evening breeze now stirring the trees-all these prodded the undead knight’s slumbering senses. To one who had long tasted the world as only ashes, the sudden burst of sensory input was almost maddening.

Again Soth faced the tree at the hill’s crest. What the knight saw there momentarily blinded his glowing eyes to the wondrous sights and struck his ears deaf to the marvelous sounds. Beneath the gnarled tree thrust up from the rocky earth stood his seneschal, Caradoc.

The ghost was obviously dazed. He hovered beneath the black-barked tree, his head resting painfully on his shoulder. Blankly, through pupilless eyes, Caradoc stared at the world around him. The wisps of mist that clung to the seneschal’s clothes made them seem even more ragged than they were.

Soth smiled grimly. “The tanar’ri lord betrayed you,” he said, pointing the tip of his sword at Caradoc for emphasis.

The seneschal stood as if caught in a trance. His eyes remained rolled back in their sockets, his lips moved in rapid bursts. He didn’t raise his hands to defend himself. In fact, he acted as if he could not see Lord Soth at all.

“I will break each of your limbs before I send you back to Chemosh,” the death knight vowed as he approached the ghost. “You will beg for mercy, beg to reveal the hiding place of Kitiara’s soul.”

Soth took another step closer to the ghost, then paused. He was but an arm’s length away from Caradoc, and still the seneschal hovered mindlessly beneath the tree. Now, however, the death knight was close enough to hear the low utterances coming from the ghost’s lips.

“The void,” Caradoc muttered. “Death for the undead. White. Nothing. The void!”

Travel in the mists has unhinged the weakling, Soth decided scornfully. He looked to the lowering sun and addressed it. “Tanar’ri lord! This insect is broken. Any pact you forged with him is null.” He watched the sky and the earth for some sign of the monster. “Give me the medallion containing the human woman’s soul and transport me to my castle on Krynn, and I will consider this matter settled. If you do not, I will hunt you forever. I must have Kitiara’s soul!”

“Kitiara?” the ghost mumbled. “ ‘Retrieve her from the Abyss,’ he commanded, and so I did.”

Savagely the death knight grabbed the ghost’s arm and shook him. “Yes, Caradoc, you retrieved her. Which tanar’ri lord did you leave her with? Where is Kitiara?”

A spark of consciousness flickered in the ghostly seneschal’s blank eyes. “Tanar’ri lord?” he asked, confused. With a shudder, Caradoc pulled away from the death knight. A panicked look had replaced the vague one on his face, and he held his hands straight before him. “Enough, my lord. I have seen the white void that waits for the undead banished from the mortal world. You have tortured me enough.”

“Then tell me where Kitiara rests,” the death knight said. In anger he slashed at the tree, and the withered trunk oozed black pus. Before the death knight could press the seneschal further, a low moan split the air.

The sound was sepulchral, like Soth’s voice, but it rattled with the noise of wind blowing dead leaves. Both Soth and Caradoc stared at the gnarled tree. The oozing gash the death knight had caused by his blow had opened into a mouth. Thick black liquid still dribbled from the hole, but now it passed over twisted wooden fangs before seeping onto the trunk.

The moan grew louder, ringing with power over the hillock and shadowed forest. Soth lashed out at the tree to silence it. The sword opened another gash, which became a second drooling, moaning mouth. Now two hollow voices sent their mournful cries of pain into the gloaming.

“Only in the Abyss,” Soth growled quietly as he stepped back from the tree. “Creatures such as this reside only in the Abyss.”

The death knight let the hand holding his sword drop straight at his side. With a slow, stiff gesture, he held his other hand out before him. The incantation he spoke was brief, its effect instantaneous.

A small dot of blue light appeared on the moaning tree, near its two wounded mouths. Thin tracers of azure radiance burst forth from the dot, then wound around the trunk and even into the fanged maws. A delicate lace of sizzling power soon covered the entire tree, thickening into a blanket of light. It filled the mouths, choking off their cries. The black ooze froze in ridges down the trunk to the tree’s knotted roots.

With the same inexorable strength that had crushed Caradoc’s neck, Soth closed his outstretched hand into a tight fist. The blanket of radiance tightened with it. A high-pitched whine sounded as the first cracks snaked around the trunk, then the tree shattered into a thousand shards of black wood. A low stump marked where the tree had been. Dark liquid pulsed and bubbled from the stump for a moment, then stopped.

An instant of silence followed the destruction of the tree, then a throaty howl echoed in the forest to the east. The long, low cry mimicked the shattered tree’s mournful call. To the west, where the sun had almost dropped behind the mountains, creatures hidden in the twilight forest howled their replies.

Caradoc had not moved since the eerie mouths had first cried out. Fragments from the tree lay scattered on the stony ground at his feet. Some chunks were covered with blue light; others, from deeper inside the trunk, were coated with obsidian ooze.

When howls sounded to the south and north, closer to the hillock, the ghost looked up suddenly. “Master, return us to Dargaard Keep,” the ghost said. “I have seen enough of this place.”

“What? Afraid of your tanar’ri ally’s minions?” Soth said. “You shouldn’t feel threatened here, in his abode.”

A puzzled look crossed the ghost’s face. Tanar’ri ally? Caradoc thought. Soth still believes my story about the tanar’ri lord! Then another realization hit Caradoc like a bolt of lightning: the death knight had not transported them somewhere through magic. Soth, too, had been taken against his will. Soth, too, was lost.

A growl rumbled from the drooping firs at the base of the hill. In the darkness there, a pair of blood-red eyes stared intently at the knight and the seneschal. The orbs were all Caradoc saw, but Soth saw more.

With his unblinking gaze, the death knight saw a monstrous, shaggy wolf crouched behind a thin cover of brambles. The gray-furred creature was twice the size of any wolf Soth had ever seen on Krynn. Its gaze met the death knight’s, then the wolf drew back its lips in a snarl. To Soth the gesture showed contempt, not fury, and seemed almost motivated by a greater-than-animal intelligence.

A second beast moved stealthily through the forest and joined the first behind the brambles. As soon as it arrived, it threw back its head and yowled. From a dozen places nearby, on all sides of the hill, similar calls erupted.

The death knight crouched into a loose fighting stance, his sword held before him. He knew that, though the creatures appeared to be large wolves, they might actually be more dangerous monsters in a lupine guise. After all, the gnarled tree had seemed mundane at first.

“Come on, then,” Soth challenged. A dozen or more pairs of glowing eyes now shone in the trees all around the hill. “If your master has ordered you to attack, curs, get it over with.”

The wolves remained at the bottom of the hill. Some crouched in one spot. Others paced back and forth, crossing the ground in steady, loping strides. Occasionally one of the great beasts would howl into the night, and the cry would be answered from the distance. And after each such call, another wolf would join the pack ringing the hillock.