Besides, Tas realized suddenly, Sir Gerard is counting on me to go with him! I can’t let a Knight down. And then there’s Caramon. I can’t let him down either, even if he did hit his head one too many times on the stairs on the way down.
“I’ll go with you, Sir Gerard,” Tas announced magnanimously. “I’ve thought it over quite seriously, and it doesn’t seem to me to be gallivanting. It seems to me to be a quest. And I’m sure Fizban won’t mind if I went on a little quest.”
“I will think of something to tell your father to placate him,”
Lord Warren was saying. “Is there any thing I can provide you for this mission? How will you travel? You know that according to the Measure you may not disguise your true identity.”
“I will travel as a Knight, my lord,” Gerard replied with a slight quirk of his eyebrow. “I give you my word on that.”
Lord Warren eyed him speculatively. “You’re up to something. No, don’t tell me. The less I know about this the better.” He glanced down at the device, glittering on the table, and heaved a sigh. “Magic and kender. It seems to me to be a fatal combination. My blessing go with you.”
Gerard wrapped the device carefully in the bundle. Lord Warren left his desk to accompany Gerard to the door of the office, collecting Tasslehoff on the way. Gerard removed several of the smaller maps that had just happened to find their way down the front of the kender’s shirt.
“I was taking them to be fixed,” said Tas, looking at Lord Warren accusingly. “You really hire very poor mapmakers. They’ve made several serious mistakes. The Dark Knights aren’t in Palanthas any more. We drove them out two years after the Chaos War. And why’s that funny little circle like a bubble drawn around Silvanesti?”
The Knights were deep in a private discussion of their own, a discussion that had something to do with Gerard’s mission, and they paid no attention. Tas pulled out another map that he had managed somehow to stuff itself down his trousers and that was at the moment pinching a sensitive portion of his anatomy. He transferred the map from his pants to his pouch and, while doing so, his knuckles brushed across something hard and sharp and egg-shaped.
The Device of Time Journeying. The device that would take him back to his own time. The device had come back to him, as it was bound to do. It was once more in his possession. Fizban’s stem command seemed to ring loudly in his ears.
Tas looked at the device, thought about Fizban, and considered the promise he’d made to the old wizard. There was obviously only one thing to be done.
Taking firm hold of the device, careful not to accidentally activate it, Tasslehoff crept up behind Gerard, who was engrossed in his conversation with Lord Warren, and by dint of working loose a comer of the bundle, working nimbly and quietly as only a kender can work, Tasslehoff slipped the device back inside.
“ And stay there!” he told it firmly.
Chapter Seven
Beckard’s Cut
Located on the shore of New Sea, Sanction was the major port city for the northeastern part of Ansalon.
The city was an ancient one, established long before the Cataclysm. Nothing much is known for certain about its history except that prior to the Cataclysm, Sanction had been a pleasant place to live.
Many have wondered how it came by its odd name. Legend has it that there was once in the small village a human woman of advanced years whose opinions were well-known and respected far and wide. Disputes and disagreements over everything from ownership of boats to marriage contracts were brought before the old woman. She listened to all parties and then rendered her verdict, verdicts noted for being fair and impartial, wise and judicious. “The old ’un sanctioned it,” was the response to her judgments, and thus the small village in which she resided became known as a place of authority and law.
When the gods in their wrath hurled the fiery mountain at the world, the mountain struck the continent of Ansalon and broke it asunder. The water of the Sirrion Ocean poured into the newly formed cracks and crevices creating a new sea, aptly named, by the pragmatic, New Sea. The volcanoes of the Doom Range flared into furious life, sending rivers of lava flowing into Sanction.
Mankind being ever resilient, quick to turn disaster to advantage, those who had once tilled the soil harvesting crops of beans and barley turned from the plow to the net, harvested the fruit of the sea. Small fishing villages sprang up along the coast of New Sea.
The people of Sanction moved to the beaches, where the offshore breeze blew away the fumes of the volcanoes. The town prospered, but it did not grow significantly until the tall ships arrived. Adventurous sailors out of Palanthas took their ships into New Sea, hoping to find quick and easy passage to the other side of the continent, avoiding the long and treacherous journey through the Sirrion Sea to the north. The explorers’ hopes were dashed. No such passage existed. What they did discover, however, was a natural port in Sanction, an overland passage that was not too difficult, and markets waiting for their goods on the other side of the Khalkhist Mountains.
The town began to thrive, to expand, and, like any growing child, to dream. Sanction saw itself another Palanthas: famous, staid, stolid, and wealthy. Those dreams did not materialize, however. Solamnic Knights watched over Palanthas, guarded the city, ruled it with the Oath and the Measure. Sanction belonged to whoever had the might and the power to hold onto it. The city grew up headstrong and spoiled, with no codes, no laws, and plenty of money.
Sanction was not choosy about its companions. The city welcomed the greedy, the rapacious, the unscrupulous. Thieves and brigands, con men and whores, sell-swords and assassins called Sanction home.
The time came when Takhisis, Queen of Darkness, tried to return to the world. She raised up armies to conquer Ansalon in her name. Ariakas, general of these armies, recognized the strategic value of Sanction to the Queen’s holy city of Neraka and the military outpost of Khur. Lord Ariakas marched his troops into Sanction, conquered the city, which put up little resistance. He built temples to his Queen in Sanction and made his headquarters there.
The Lords of Doom, the volcanoes that ringed Sanction, felt the heat of the Queen’s ambition stirring beneath them and came again to life. Streams of lava flowed from the volcanoes, lighting Sanction with a lurid glow by night. The ground shook and shivered from tremors. The inns of Sanction lost a fortune in broken crockery and began to serve food on tin plates and drink in wooden mugs. The air was poisonous, thick with sulphurous fumes. Black-robed wizards worked constantly to keep the city fit for habitation.
Takhisis set out to conquer the world, but in the end she could not overcome herself. Her generals quarreled, turned on each other. Love and self-sacrifice, loyalty and honor won the day. The stones of Neraka lay blasted and cursed in the shadowed valley leading to Sanction.
The Solamnic Knights marched on Sanction. They seized the city after a pitched battle with its inhabitants. Recognizing Sanction’s strategic as well as financial importance to this part of Ansalon, the Knights established a strong garrison in the city.
They tore down the temples of evil, set fire to the slave markets, razed the brothels. The Conclave of Wizards sent mages to continue to cleanse the poisonous air.
When the Knights of Takhisis began to accumulate power, some twenty years later, Sanction was high on the list of priorities. The Knights might well have captured it. Years of peace had made the Solamnic Knights sleepy and bored. They dozed at their posts. But before the Dark Knights could attack Sanction, the Chaos War diverted the attention of the Dark Knights and woke up the Solamnics.