Shuddering, Andras rose and followed the robed figure into the night.
He emerged from the oaks at the edge of a cliff, above a narrow ravine. In the distance, on another ridge, was the farm-villa, lights now blazing in all its windows. And below, near the creek that snaked through the ravine’s heart, were the knights.
There were thirty of them and three clerics whom he could see-the Revered Son of Paladine in his white vestments, a Mishakite healer in pale blue, and a war-priest of Kiri-Jolith in gold. They were all singing a hymn in the church tongue. He couldn’t quite make out the words. Many of the knights had doffed their helms and held the hilts of their swords to their lips as they stared past the clerics toward a bonfire that burned beside the stream.
It was a high blaze, flames snapping and popping ten feet tall, cinders billowing to soar away on the night wind. Andras frowned, wondering why the knights would build such a fire-but only for a moment. Then he saw the form amid the flames and knew.
Little remained of Nusendran but a charred husk hanging from manacles affixed to a stake. His hair and robes had burned away, his flesh peeled and bubbled as the fire caressed it. The wind was wrong for the stink to reach him, but Andras’s mind fooled him into smelling the stench of death anyway. Groaning, he bent forward and vomited over the cliffs edge. When that was done, he leaned against a tree, gasping.
Fistandantilus was right beside him, cold coming off him in waves. His voice held no sympathy whatsoever.
“Poor Nusendran, the old fool. He died cursing them, you know.”
Andras didn’t look at the archmage. Instead, he stared at the flames, his eyes shimmering with their light. He clenched his fists, fighting down his rage. If he didn’t, he knew, he would charge at the knights now. Perhaps he would be able kill one or two before they brought him down, but bring him down they would.
He took a deep breath. “I have to tell the Conclave.”
“The Conclave are useless,” Fistandantilus replied. “Do you think this is the first time this has happened? The White Robes and the Red Robes have heard this tale many times, and still they do nothing to help those who wear the Black.”
It was true, Andras knew. Nusendran had known several mages who died at the hands of the Kingpriest’s men. Even one of the wizards who had administered the Test for Andras had perished thus. The Black Robes who served on the Conclave demanded that the orders take action, but the White and the Red held them in check, too leery of the Kingpriest’s power to act. They would do nothing for Nusendran.
“You want vengeance,” Fistandantilus murmured, “and well you should. Not just for Nusendran. For all our brethren who have died in the Kingpriest’s pogrom. I can give you that power. Come with me, Andras, and if you are patient, one day you can show the Knights of the Divine Hammer the meaning of grief. Or deny me, and-”
He pointed down into the ravine, then turned and strode away. Atop the cliff, Andras stared at the flames, the charred form of his former master drooping as the Revered Son quenched the fire with holy water-and saw something else. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now the sight of it lodged a dagger of ice in his heart.
A second stake.
Andras stood rigid, his stomach twisting. The stake had been put up for him. If Fistandantilus had not cast the teleport spell that brought him here, his withered form would be hanging beside his master’s, even now. He wore the Black, so they wanted him dead. His rage crystallized within him, turning diamond-hard.
His blasted face dark with hate, he turned and strode after the Dark One.
CHAPTER 1
Eleventhmonth, 942 I.A.
Folk called the rock the Hullbreaker, and as he squinted through the lashing rain, Cathan MarSevrin could see why. It was a sea captain’s nightmare, a great spire of dark stone half a mile from shore, jabbing up from the angry sea like the talon of some ungodly beast. The stub of an old lighthouse jutted from its peak, but it was dark as a skull, abandoned to weeds and the gales. Any mariner who plied the seas off Istar’s northern coast knew well enough to give it a wide berth, but if the fisherfolk were to be believed, the sea floor about the rock ran thick with ancient shipwrecks. The young and foolhardy, craving riches and adventure, sometimes went diving out by the Hullbreaker, seeking treasures lost for centuries. Few returned with any booty of value. Some didn’t return at all.
Cathan hadn’t come to the Hullbreaker for wealth. The rock held other promises for him. He ran a hand up his face, pushing water into his dark hair-thinning now as he neared his fortieth year, and graying at his temples to match the frost in his beard-and reached down to touch his sword, Ebonbane. Its hilt, gold encrusted with shards of white ceramic had seldom been far from his reach in the twenty years since he’d first buckled it on. A Knight of the Divine Hammer seldom went anywhere without blade or bludgeon at hand.
Lightning forked across the sky, pink and jagged. Thunder followed an eye blink later, loud enough to set Cathan’s ears ringing. He didn’t flinch, though some of the other knights standing nearby did. There were better places to be during such a violent storm than standing on the edge of a high sea cliff, particularly clad in heavy armor.
“Abysmal night,” said Sir Damid Segorro. He was a small, wiry man whose nut-brown skin and beaded hair marked him as hailing from the province of Seldjuk. He wore glistening scale mail in place of the other knights’ plate, and his sword was short and curved. He scowled at the clouds, which seethed with flashes of light.
“Dragon weather. I’d sooner do this when we’re less apt to get smashed to flotsam.”
Cathan didn’t glance at his second in command. He’d fought beside the little easterner for more than a year-long enough to know Damid was no coward, only cautious. He may have a point, Cathan thought, glancing over the cliffs edge at the rocks below. Surf exploded against them and about the Hullbreaker in great white blossoms. Beyond, the sea heaved and chopped like a living thing. Audo conib, mariners called it, from the safety of harbor taverns. Hungry water. Those who sailed it called it worse.
Cathan shook his head, a smile curling his lips. “Where is your faith, friend?” he asked.
“The god will protect us.”
Damid met his gaze, but only for a second, then looked out to sea. Despite all the months they had served together, the Seldjuki still couldn’t look into Cathan’s eyes for long. Few men could. Cathan’s were no ordinary eyes, but were dead white, empty. In the storm’s coruscating light they seemed to flash with their own inner fire. They had been so for more than half his life, and Cathan had long since gotten used to men and women averting their gaze. No other man on Krynn had eyes like his.
But then, no other man on Krynn had died and lived to tell the tale.
He looked past Damid to his fellow knights. They were all mailed and armed, white surcoats plastered to their breastplates by the rain, golden hammers burning upon them. A few had donned their helms, closing the visors against the weather, while others let the storm’s fury buffet them. They were thirty in all, a smaller force than Cathan was used to commanding. A senior marshal in Istar’s holy knighthood, he usually led regiments of a thousand men or more, both knights and Scatas, the common footmen of the imperial army.
Tonight, though, a thousand men would not do. He only needed these few to bring down the Skull Brethren.
Cathan had been hunting the Brethren for more than a season now, following one clue to the next. They were followers of Chemosh, among the last of the death god’s cultists left in the empire. They practiced their foul rites in secret, stealing corpses from beneath the earth and live folk from above it to sacrifice to their unholy deity. Week after week, month upon month, Cathan and his men had searched in vain, finding only a few abandoned fanes with altars rusty with old blood. Finally, however, their quest had led them to the Hullbreaker. The Chemoshans’ main temple was there, far from the eyes of common folk, where they could practice their foul rituals in safety.