Tina Daniell - The Companions

"We must return by nightfall," Cloudreaver advised Bird-Spirit, who was chief among the scouts, "or by morning at the latest. Tomorrow, whatever the strategy, we must mount an attack."

Kirsig, Yuril, and the sailors started setting up the camp. Flint, Sturm, Tanis, and Caramon, watching the others dutifully go to work, looked at each other sheepishly. Trying to forget their worries about Raistlin, the companions pitched in.

Several miles off the eastern tip of Karthay, in the sea near Beakwere, hundreds of orughi had begun to gather. Their gray, thickly muscled shoulders stuck out of the water, while their webbed feet flapped below the surface. Their upturned faces showed high foreheads, blunt noses, pointy ears, beady eyes, and stringy golden hair slick with wetness. Some carried battle-axes and daggers, while others bore the iron boomerangs with long metallic cords called tonkks.

The orughi looked to the west. Because they were an amphibious species, they could swim for days on end without tiring. Now the orughi treaded water, waiting to see some manifestation of Sargonnas.

Some miles away, on the other side of the point and farther out into the Land Ho Straits, beneath a blanket of haze waited a fleet of warships manned by ogres sent to seal the alliance with the minotaurs. There were only dozens, not hundreds, of ships, but each was there as a representative of an ogre tribe, each answerable to a chieftain of that despised race. At a signal, they would mobilize. Now their warships rocked in the waters almost peacefully, awaiting the time.

The ogres kept their distance from their watery cousins, the orughi. They held the thick-witted, web-footed orughi in contempt and would not join with the water-bred ogres unless Sargonnas decreed it.

Even now the appointed commander of the ogre fleet, Oolong of the Xak clan, watched the distant orughi horde through his eyescope. Oolong Xak sighed with disgruntlement, scratching his lice-ridden scalp and running his grimy fingers through long, matted hair. Any upstanding ogre would be embarrassed to be allies with the orughi in a war, yet the minotaurs had almost talked the ogres into it-lured them with promises and trinkets. But Oolong Xak was not the only one among them whose doubts would not be allayed except by the final proof of Sargonnas himself.

Scores of miles away, in the palace in the city of Lacynos on the island of Mithas, the eight minotaurs of the Supreme Circle and their king awaited the great spell with varying degrees of enthusiasm, impatience, and skepticism.

The king of the minotaurs sorely desired the conquest of Ansalon as a means to impress his subjects with the scope and vision of his power. The king had invested troops and money in the careful plans of the Nightmaster; success would be a validation of his wisdom.

His only wholehearted supporter was Atra Cura, the bloodthirsty representative of the minotaur pirates. Any war was a good war for Atra Cura and his confederation of followers, who stood to gain much from the chaos that would inevitably occur along the lanes of the Blood Sea.

Dozens of war galleys stood at the ready in the harbor of Lacynos, and many dozens more were in various stages of completion across the bays and harbors of Mithas. Akz, leader of the minotaur navy, had driven his slaves ruthlessly to meet the deadlines, although he was of a mixed mind, more or less indifferent, to the grand intentions of the Nightmaster. Akz was not an overly religious minotaur, and he had been around long enough as a member of the Supreme Circle to see war plans come and go.

Still, no one had ever dared try to summon Sargonnas into the world before. That took boldness and ambition, Akz admitted to himself. But if the spell did not attain its end, then so what? The galleys could be used for another future enterprise. Akz was in no hurry to sacrifice his ships and trained forces on a wild-eyed, long-range war unless it could be said that the gods themselves approved of it. Therefore Akz would not lift a finger to act unless Sargonnas decreed it.

Although Inultus, the commander of the minotaur military, hated Akz, they always agreed on questions of war. Inultus, too, was happy to commit his legions of trained soldiers… if Sargonnas decreed it. Otherwise, Inultus did not see any reason to enter into an historic and highly distasteful pact with the ogres and orughi in order to launch the most significant attack on the continent of Ansalon in the annals of the minotaur race.

Two other members of the Supreme Circle had unquestioned loyalty to the king and backed his policies despite personal qualms about allegiances with the ogres and orughi. Victri, chosen leader of the rural minotaurs, would gladly fight in any war decreed by the king, yet he nurtured misgivings about this one and secretly hoped the Nightmaster would fail. The great scholar and historian, Juvabit, also voted with the king, whom he had known through family ties dating back to his youth. But the rational Juvabit distrusted the mystical Nightmaster and his obsessive cult. So Juvabit, too, privately wished the Nightmaster would be unsuccessful.

Groppis, keeper of the treasury, held no opinion other than that he wished the whole thing hadn't cost so much money to this point-almost as much as he wished the mapped-out campaign for the future conquest of Ansalon was budgeted at less.

That left the sole female, Kharis-O, leader of the nomadic minotaurs, and Bartill, head of the architectural and construction guilds.

There was nothing duplicitous about their expressed views. Both were on record against the alliance, the planned war, and the grandiose schemes of the Nightmaster: Bartill, because he was always preoccupied with his own projects and need for money; Kharis-O, because she represented separatist clans and was herself exceedingly contrary. Regularly she voted against the majority, and regularly she lost.

However, like Bartill, Kharis-O was fully prepared to go to war. A minotaur was loyal unto death, and honor required that both act in accordance with all the decisions of the Supreme Circle.

The eight members of the Supreme Circle had been summoned by the king to await the coming of Sargonnas.

The eight waited in the main hall of the palace. Some drummed fingers on the large oaken table. Some paced the room, snorting with irritation when they brushed shoulders with each other. Some lay their horned bull heads down on the oaken table, snoring gutturally.

Tomorrow night would be the time.

The sanctum of the Nightmaster was perfectly fascinating, Tasslehoff Burrfoot had to admit.

Crumbling walls dotted the dry, broken land. Here and there a few columns, all that was left of the temples of the fabled city, slanted toward the sky. Tumbled masonry lay everywhere. A broken statuette or two stood among the rubble.

Fissures, the result of earthquakes that had rocked the once-great city, zigzagged across the ground, contributing to the eerie landscape. Gray and black ash, some hardened into a brittle crust, blanketed everything.

The Nightmaster watched Tasslehoff as the kender picked his way across part of the dead city, plucking up an occasional ash-covered object and stuffing it in his backpack. Tas turned, saw the Nightmaster observing him, and waved, bounding back in his direction.

'Isn't the kender… interesting?" asked Fesz, for lack of a better word. The shaman was standing at the Nightmaster's elbow. "I trust you agree that it was a good idea to bring him here. Tasslehoff has been very helpful with information about all of his former friends, and he begged to accompany me."

"You're certain that he is evil?" rumbled the Nightmaster, tilting his head to peer at the approaching kender with his big bull eyes.