Sara passed the pedestals carefully and moved deeper toward the center of the room. Something large and black loomed out of the darkness, a larger catafalque crafted from black marble. A knight clad in black armor rested on the stone, his father's antique sword in his lifeless hands.
Steel.
His face was as pale as granite and hollowed where the skin had sunk around the bones, and yet even after three years of death, Sara could still marvel at the look of peace on his face. The internal battle between his mother's evil and his father's good had finally come to an end and left their son in peace.
Just beyond Steel's bier, at the edge of her light, Sara saw a second large catafalque, this one made of white marble. On it, she recognized the noble form of Tanis Half-Elven. His body was clad in green leather, and a blue crystal staff lay by his side, a gift from the children of his friends, Goldmoon and Riverwind.
Sara bowed her head to the grief that welled up within her. Her arm holding the lamp faltered and dropped to her side. She was stepping closer to Steel's catafalque when the edge of her cloak caught on the stone corner of another man's bier. The cloak wrenched her off-balance, then slipped loose from the stone, sending her stumbling up against the black marble. She fell to her knees at its base. Her hands reached out to stop her fall into the stone table, and her fingers inadvertently touched Steel's gloved hand. The light crashed to the floor, flickered once, and went out.
Everything stilled.
Out of the intense darkness, a light began to glow, as if at a great distance. Tiny as a firefly, it pulsed with life and color, and with each pulse, it grew larger while the darkness coalesced around it, like the walls of a deep well. Sara stared down the well, marveling as the light and color filled her vision with a panorama of brilliant forms and hues that blurred and ran together like watercolors.
All at once the colors and forms took shape and became a recognizable portrait of a swamp-or rather the edge of a swamp, where the land met the water and gradually vanished into a world of dark fens and peatcolored meres. Sara choked on a cry. She knew that dismal-looking swamp was the one surrounding Xak Tsaroth.
As soon as she made the recognition, the vision before her began to move. Wind swayed the rushes and the scrub willows, water birds soared above the trees, and something black slithered out of the shadows of a clump of swamp grass into the dark, noisome waters.
The time could have been that day or the next, for the land was locked in winter's grip, its water edged in ice and its rushes browned by frost. Daylight filtered down through a slate roof of clouds. A few lonely snow flurries drifted on the wind.
Unnerved, Sara gazed wide-eyed at the vision before her. She could see everything so clearly, yet the images were strangely silent.
She saw a rustle of movement in a tall stand of grasses, and a knight on foot appeared out of the underbrush, bent low over a trail he followed along the rim of a grove of trees. It wasn't until he straightened and rubbed his neck with one hand that Sara saw his breastplate bore the rose design of the Solamnic Knights.
Suddenly he crouched low, alert, and his hand flew to his sword and slid it loose from the scabbard in one flowing movement.
A second knight stepped out of the trees, a tall, dark-haired knight in black armor. Derrick.
Sara wanted to cry out to him, but she couldn't move or make a sound. She was locked in place as the vision unfolded before her.
Aching, she watched Derrick approach the Solamnic with his hands outstretched in a gesture of peace. The older knight took in Derrick's muddy boots and his tunic, torn from thrashing around in the swamp, and he relaxed enough to let him come close to talk. A long, animated conversation ensued. The Knight of the Rose seemed very agitated about something, for he continually pointed toward the south and then to the trail in front of them.
Derrick bent his head to examine the ground and listened intently to every word. Concern hardened his lean face.
Soon it became apparent the knights had reached some accord. The older Solamnic and young Derrick set off together, single file, down the winding trail deeper into the swamp. They walked warily, their swords drawn, their eyes on the trail and the swamp ahead.
They passed a huge skeleton of what could have been a dragon half-submerged in a slimy pool. More bones, dented rusting armor, and bits of junk littered the trail. Here and there a shattered tree lay to the side as if something large had kicked it aside.
Sara felt her heart beat faster.
Ahead of the knights, the trail widened into a large, egg-shaped piece of land surrounded on three sides by the dark waters of a mere. Grasses and shrubs had been trampled flat or uprooted; bones lay scattered everywhere.
In the clearing sat the most peculiar and hideous structure Sara had ever seen. A huge rounded dome, similar in shape to a beaver's den, straddled the center of the stripped earth. But this domicile had none of the careful engineering and only a few trees in common with a beaver's house. The rest of the material consisted of anything some foul creature had tossed there: bones, armor, wagon wheels, half-devoured cows, plowshares, battered shields, a child's doll, rags, a broken chair, pieces of a raft, a headless ogre, a dragon's skull, and those were only the things Sara recognized. A crude doorway penetrated the revolting structure, and from the height of it, the owner had to be abnormally tall.
Sara watched the two knights separate and approach the hut cautiously from two directions. Although she could not hear a sound, she guessed from the tension in the men's faces that their quarry was at home.
All at once Derrick and the second knight scrambled back as two small girls in ragged dresses came pelting out of the doorway, their faces contorted in terror. A third form, a young man, flew out behind them, though it was obvious, even from Sara's position, that the man had been flung out. He landed in the mud in front of the girls and lay spread-eagled, shattered beyond hope of life. The two girls slid to a frantic stop and turned to bolt in another direction, unaware that the two knights were close by.
Abruptly a huge shape paused in the doorway, then burst into the open, its face contorted with fury.
Sara's stomach lurched in reaction. She had only heard about such brutes in the past few years, since it was rumored that the monstrous manlike things were spawns of Chaos, sprung from the earth during the Second Cataclysm. Chaos giants, they were called, and they were three times the height of a man and three as broad.
This one looked as if it had eaten well. Its heavy body was ponderous with muscle and fat that rolled and bulged like cooling lava. Its great hairless head hunkered on its shoulders like a monolith crudely carved with thick, bulbous features. It saw the two knights immediately. It stamped the earth and bellowed its fury at the puny intruders.
Derrick shouted something to the girls. They stared, stunned by the sudden appearance of the men, then the elder grabbed the younger's hand and fled up the path into the swamp.
Both knights attacked the giant at once.
The battle raged around the clearing. The giant, like a bull besieged by dogs, charged after first one assailant, then the other, and each time it thundered after one knight, the other harried it from behind. Again and again the giant rushed to catch one man in its crushing hands, and each time the knight slipped away.
Alone, neither man could have fought the superior strength of the giant and survived, but together they worked as a team and wore the brute down to a staggering exhaustion.
At last, bleeding from a dozen sword cuts and drenched in sweat, the giant stumbled to one side, lost its balance, and toppled over. The ground shook from the impact.
Derrick and the Solamnic knight threw themselves at its prostrate body before the gigantic creature could get up and stabbed their swords through its eyes deep into its brain. The giant bawled in outrage, shuddered violently, and lay motionless.