Jeff Crook - The Rose and the Skull

"You have twenty-four hours," Liam said. "We cannot wait much longer than that, whether or not Tohr is right about Pyrothraxus. We must call a general council at Whitestone to announce the decision."

Everyone rose to leave. A door opened and a page entered, awaiting a command. "No decision has been made," said Tohr. "Sir Valian is to cast the last vote tomorrow at Whitestone Glade. Spread the word."

The page turned to go, but Liam stopped him with an additional order. "When Lady Jessica and her group arrive, have her brought immediately to my chambers. Allow the others to refresh themselves, and tell the grooms that a dog and two gully dwarves will need dinner tonight." The page nodded and scurried away.

The Knights prepared to leave. With a final look at Tohr, Valian stalked away. As he passed, Tohr whispered, "Don't be a fool." Valian said nothing in return.

In the dark of the Sancrist night Dalian Escu walked the battlements of Castle uth Wistan. He wasn't on watch, and a good thing too. An army of goblins could have stormed the wall without his even noticing. His mind was elsewhere, walking in the dreamland forests of his elven childhood. In Silvanesti he'd been born, and there he'd died, when they banished him from the light. From that moment forward, no elf on Krynn was allowed to speak to him or even acknowledge his existence. His parents spoke of him as though he were already dead.

In Storm's Keep, the birthplace of the Knights of Takhisis, he'd been reborn. With the Knights of Takhisis, he found the family to which he so desperately needed to belong. Even so, they'd never completely accepted him. Now it seemed all he'd worked toward had been a lie, a carefully concealed deception. Where was the vaunted honor of the Knights of Takhisis? It lay in some draconian dungeon, wrapped in the vestige of a gully dwarf.

What had first alerted him? Had it in fact been with the surprising willingness of the leadership of the Knights to attempt a union with the Knights of Solamnia, their most bitter enemies? Or had it come later, at Isherwood, when Alya displayed a strange stubbornness to accept the existence of draconians on Sancrist Isle? Or was it some strange coincidence, by which Pyrothraxus chose to attack Isherwood, breaking the uneasy and undeclared peace?

Then there was Lord Tohr, displaying the same incomprehensible unwillingness to accept the fact of the existence of the draconian stronghold, and his pressure to conclude the vote to determine the leadership of the combined Knighthood. Sir Liam had been right. There was no real threat from Pyrothraxus; the dragon had been sent to destroy Jessica, the priest, and himself.

While he pondered these matters, Valian circled the entirety of the battlements, crossing over the gate by its postern walk. He passed above the stable yard, where Uhoh had lived, and he passed the place where Gunthar and Liam met on the battlements that first night, so long ago it seemed. He continued, his head bowed, his hands clasped behind his back.

A familiar voice brought him up short. He found himself very near the rooms of Lord Tohr. By the torchlight from the courtyard, he saw that a window was open to the chill night air, but dark drapes prevented any light from escaping. He heard Tohr's voice.

"Are you certain it will work?" Tohr was asking someone.

Valian stepped closer to the window to better hear.

"Of course, my lord. The potion was created before the Chaos War. Rest assured, once its magic has surrounded you, no human on Krynn can resist your charms. They will wish only to please you," a voice that was Trevalyn's answered.

Without warning Valian pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the room. "And how does it work on elves?" he asked. The Thorn Knight almost fell over himself in his surprise, but Lord Tohr's face remained calm, almost as though he'd been expecting Valian. He held in his scarred hand a tiny glass phial filled with a red liquid.

"I am glad you are here, Valian," he said in a pleasant voice as he placed the phial on the desk before him. "I've been meaning to talk to you, to bring you up to date on our situation here."

"If I were planning to usurp the Solamnics in their own castle, I'd at least have the sense to shut the window," Valian sneered.

"An oversight," Tohr said. "Very careless. Trevalyn, please close the window, won't you, so we don't have any more unexpected guests."

The Thorn Knight stepped behind the curtain and closed the window with a snap. He returned to Tohr's side, his hands folded in the sleeves of his gray robe.

"This has been the plan all along," Valian said.

"Actually, no. We fully expected Liam to be elected Grand Master. That's why Lady Mirielle didn't come herself. We thought it would take years for all our plans to develop, when we could place the scepter into the hands of one of our own. But now?" he shrugged. "His own men were surprisingly easy to win over. All I can say is, he took his chances. He lost in a fair vote."

"You're leaving out Gunthar's murder," Valian snarled. "Now we take through assassination and duplicity what we could not win in battle. Why wasn't I told?"

"You know the answer to that question. This is a political world, my friend," Tohr said. "Heroes don't ride silver dragons to glory anymore. They wade through the trenches of words, taking what they can and counting every small victory no matter how it is won."

"Even victories without honor?" Valian asked.

"The honor will come later," Tohr explained. "Be realistic, Valian. The Knights of Solamnia are dying. They've never learned the great lesson Lord Ariakan recognized from the start. Warriors need to fight wars. In peace, the Solamnics have destroyed themselves. We could defeat them in battle, but at what cost? How many lives do we save, by defeating them in this manner?

"I hate to disappoint you, my lord, but you have not won yet," Valian said. "I know your secret now."

Tohr smiled threateningly. "If you really wanted to thwart our plans, you wouldn't make the mistake of announcing yourself here, tonight."

"I offer you a way out, an honorable way. Ask for another vote, and this time exclude Lady Mirielle's name from nomination. Gunthar was right. We'd be better off working together instead of against each other," Valian urged. "We'd be stronger, greater, nobler."

"And what about our queen? What about Takhisis?" Trevalyn hissed.

"Takhisis is dead," Valian snapped. "She died that day at the High Clerist's Tower, when Lord Ariakan called her name, to no avail."

"She didn't die. She only retreated from the fury of Chaos. She will return," Trevalyn said vehemently.

"It doesn't matter. We can't wait for her to return," Valian said. "The best thing we can do right now is unite both knighthoods."

"My friend, for an elf, you really are naive," Tohr laughed. "What was Gunthar's dream but a way to absorb us into the Knights of Solamnia without having to defeat us in battle. It was Gunthar who sent the letter to Lady Mirielle, Gunthar who proposed we join our two orders into one. Granted, we had already placed draconians on the island in the hopes of gaining a foothold here. We also sent them to negotiate with Pyrothraxus, or else we'd have had to fight him as well as the Solamnics. As we've learned with the sinking of Donkaren , treaties with the dragon are tenuous at best.

"Gunthar's letter came as a complete surprise to us. Haven't you realized that that is where Gunthar's genius lay? He'd have been the first Grand Master of the combined order and could have directed it as he wished. As an order, the Knights of Takhisis would have vanished, while the Knights of Solamnia lived on under a new name. All we did was turn the tables on his plan."

"Not yet," Valian countered. "It won't work. I shall expose you."