Read Dragonlance 15 - Dragons Of A Fallen Sun Online
Authors: Margaret Weis
before-but not you."
Gerard did not appear impressed by this magnanimous offer.
"Keep a curb on your tongue for your sake as well as mine."
"I promise," said Tas, putting his hand to his topknot and
giving it a painful yank that brought tears to his eyes. "I can keep
a secret, you know. I've kept any number of secrets-important
secrets, too. I'll keep this one. You can depend on me or my
name's not Tasslehoff Burrfoot."
This appeared to impress Gerard even less. Looking very
dour, he returned to his horse, remounted and rode forward-a
Dark Knight leading his prisoner.
"How long will it take us to reach Qualinesti?" Tas asked.
" At this pace, four days," Gerard replied.
Four days. Gerard paid no more attention to the kender. The
Knight refused to answer a single question. He was deaf to
Tasslehoff's very best and most wonderful stories, and did not
bother to respond when Tas suggested that he knew a most excit-
ing short cut through Darken Wood.
"Four days of this! I don't like to complain," Tas said, talking
to himself and the pony since the Knight wasn't listening, "but
this adventure is turning out to be dull and boring. Not really an
adventure at all, more of a drudge, if that is a word, which
whether it is or not certainly fits the situation."
He and the pony plodded along, looking forward to four days
with no one to talk to, nothing to do, nothing to see except trees
and mountains, which would have been interesting if Tas could
have spent some time exploring them, but, as he couldn't, he'd
seen plenty of trees and mountains at a distance before. So bored
was the kender that the next time the magical device came back
to him, appearing suddenly in his manacled hands, Tasslehoff
was tempted to use it. Anything, even getting squished by a
giant, would be better than this.
If it hadn't been for the pony ride, he would have.
At that moment, the black horse looked around to regard the
pony balefully and perhaps some sort of communication passed
between horse and rider for Gerard turned around too.
Grinning sheepishly and shrugging, Tas held up the Device of
Time Journeying.
His face fixed and cold as that of the skull on his black breast-
plate, Gerard halted, waited for the pony to plod up beside him.
He reached out his hand, snatched the magical device from Tas's
hands, and, without a word, thrust the device in a saddlebag.
Tasslehoff sighed again. It was going to be a long four days.
CHAPTER TEN
LORD OF THE NIGHT
The Order of the Knights of Takhisis was born in a dream of
darkness and founded upon a remote and secret island in
Krynn's far north, an island known as Storm's Keep. But
the island headquarters had been severely damaged during the
Chaos War. Boiling seas completely submerged the fortress-
some said due to the sea goddess Zeboim's grief at the death of
her son, the Knights' founder, Lord Ariakan. Although the waters
receded, no one ever returned to it. The fortress was now deemed
too remote to be of practical use to the Knights of Takhisis, who
had emerged from the Chaos War battered and bruised, bereft of
their Queen and her Vision, but with a sizeable force, a force to be
reckoned with.
Thus it was that a Knight of the Skull, Mirielle Abrena, at-
tending the first Council of the Last Heroes, felt confident
enough to demand that the remnant of the Knighthood that re-
mained be granted land on the continent of Ansalon in return for
their heroic deeds during the war. The council allowed the
Knights to keep territory they had captured, mainly Qualinesti
(as usual, few humans cared much about the elves) and also the
land in the northeastern part of Ansalon that included Neraka
and its environs. The Dark Knights accepted this region, blasted
and cursed though parts of it were, and set about building up
their Order.
Many on that first council hoped the Knights would suffocate
and perish in the sulphur-laden air of Neraka. The Dark Knights
not only surviv~d, but thrived. This was due in part to the lead-
ership of Abrena, Lord of the Night, who added to that military
title the political title of governor-general of Neraka. Abrena in-
stituted a new recruitment policy, a policy that was not so choosy
as the old policy, not so nice, not so restrictive. The Knights had
little problem filling their ranks. In the dark days following the
Chaos War, the people felt alone and abandoned. What might be
called the Ideal of the Great "I" arose on Ansalon. Its main pre-
cept: "No one else matters. Only I."
Embracing this precept, the Dark Knights were clever in their
rule. They did not permit much in the way of personal freedoms,
but they did encourage trade and promote business. When Khel-
lendros, the great blue dragon, captured the city of Palanthas, he
placed the Dark Knights in charge. Terrified at the thought of
these cruel overlords ravishing their city, the people of Palanthas
were amazed to find that they actually prospered under the
rulership of the Dark Knights. And although the Palanthians
were taxed for the privilege, they were able to keep enough of
their profits to believe that life under the dictatorial rule of the
Dark Knights wasn't all that bad. The knights kept law and
order, they waged continuous war against the Thieves Guild,
and they sought to rid the city of the gully dwarves residing in
the sewers.
The dragon purge that followed the arrival of the great drag-
ons at first appalled and angered the Knights of Takhisis, who lost
many of their own dragons in the slaughter. In vain the Knights
fought against the great Red, Malys, and her cousins. Many of the
Knights' order died, as did many of their chromatic dragons.
Mirielle's cunning leadership managed to turn even this near dis-
aster into a triumph. The Dark Knights made secret pacts with the
dragons, agreeing to work for them to collect tribute and main-
tain law and order in lands ruled by the dragons. In return, the
dragons would give the Dark Knights a free hand and cease prey-
ing upon their surviving dragons.
The people of Palanthas, Neraka, and Qualinesti knew noth-
ing of the pact made between the Knights and the Dragons. The
people saw only that once again the Dark Knights had defended
them against a terrible foe. The Knights of Solamnia and the mys-
tics of the Citadel of Light knew or guessed of these pacts but
could not prove anything.
Although there were some within the ranks of the Dark
Knights who still held to the beliefs of honor and self-sacrifice ex-
pounded by the late Ariakan, they were mostly the older mem-
bers, who were considered out of touch with the ways of the
modem world. A new Vision had come to replace the old. This
new Vision was based on the mystical powers of the heart devel-
oped by Goldmoon in the Citadel of Light and stolen by several
Skull Knights, who disguised themselves and secretly entered the
Citadel to learn how to use these powers for their own ambitious
ends. The Dark Knight mystics came away with healing skills
and, more frightening, the ability to manipulate their followers'
thoughts.
Armed with the ability to control not only the bodies of those
who entered the Knighthood but their minds as well, the Skull
Knights rose to prominence within the ranks of the Dark Knights.
Although the Dark Knights had long and loudly maintained that
Queen Takhisis was going to return, they had ceased to believe it.
They had ceased to believe in anything except their own power
and might, and this was reflected in the new Vision. The Skull
Knights who administered the new Vision were adept at probing
a candidate's mind, finding his most secret terrors and playing
upon those, while at the same time promising him his heart's
desire-all in return for strict obedience.
So powerful did the Skull Knights grow through the use of the
new Vision that those closest to Mirielle Abrena began to look
upon the Skull Knights with distrust. In particular, they warned
Abrena against the leader, the Adjudicator, a man named
Morham Targonne.
Abrena scoffed at these warnings. "Targonne is an able ad-
ministrator," she said. "1 grant him that much. But, when all is
said and done, what is an able administrator? Nothing more than
a glorified clerk. And that is Targonne. He would never challenge
me for leadership. The man grows queasy at the sight of blood!
He refuses to attend the jousts or tourneys but keeps himself
locked up in his dingy little cabinet, absorbed in his debits and his
credits. He has no stomach for battle."
Abrena spoke truly. Targonne had no stomach for battle. He
would have never dreamed of challenging Abrena for the leader-
ship in honorable combat. The sight of blood really did make him
sick. And so he had her poisoned.
As Lord of the Skull Knights, Targonne announced at
Abrena's funeral that he was the rightful successor. No one stood
to challenge him. Those who might have done so, friends and
supporters of Abrena's, kept their mouths shut, lest they ingest
the same "tainted meat" that had killed their leader. Eventually
Targonne killed them too, so that by now he was firmly en-
trenched in power. He and those Knights who were trained in
mentalism used their powers to delve into the minds of their fol-
lowers to ferret out traitors and malcontents.
Targonne came from a wealthy family with extensive holdings
in Neraka. The family's roots were in Jelek, a city north of what
had formerly been the capital city of Neraka. The Targonne
family's motto was the Great "I," which could have been en-
twined with the Great "P" for profit. They had risen to wealth and
power with the rise of Queen Takhisis, first by supplying arms
and weapons to the leaders of her armies, then, when it appeared
that their side was losing, by supplying arms and weapons to the
armies of Takhisis's enemies. Using the wealth obtained from. the
sale of weapons, the Targonnes bought up land, particularly the
scarce and valuable agricultural land in Neraka.
The scion of the Targonne family had even had the incredible
good fortune (he claimed it was foresight) to pull his money out
of the city of Neraka only days before the Temple exploded. After
the War of the Lance, during the days when Neraka was a de-
feated land, with roving bands of disenfranchised soldiers, gob-
lins, and draconians, he was in sole possession of the two things
people needed desperately: grain and steel.
It had been Abrena's ambition to build a fortress for the Dark
Knights in southern Neraka, near the location of the old temple.
She had the plans drawn up and sent in crews to start building.
Such was the terror inspired by the accursed valley and its eerie
and haunting Song of Death that the crews immediately fled. The
capital city was shifted to the northern part of the Neraka valley,
a site still too close to the southern part for the comfort of some.
One of Targonne's first orders of business was to move the
capital city. The second was to change the name of the Knight-
hood. He established the headquarters of the Knights of Neraka
in Jelek, close to the family business. Much closer to the family
business than most of the Neraka Knights ever knew.
Jelek was now a highly prosperous and bustling city located
at the intersection of the two major highways that ran through
Neraka. Either by great good fortune or crafty dealing the city
had escaped the ravages of the great dragons. Merchants from all
over Neraka, even as far south as Khur, hastened to Jelek to start
new businesses or to expand existing ones. So long as they made
certain to stop by to pay the requisite fees to the Knights of
Neraka and offer their respects to Lord of the Night and Gover-
nor-General Targonne, the merchants were welcome.
If respect for Targonne had a cold, substantial feel to it and
made a fine clinking sound when deposited together with other
demonstrations of respect in the Lord of the Night's large money.
box, the merchants knew better than to complain. Those who did
complain or those who considered that verbal marks of respect
were sufficient found that their businesses suffered severe and
sudden reverses of fortune. If they persisted in their misguided
notions, they were generally found dead in the street, having ac-
cidentally slipped and fallen backward onto a dagger.
Targonne personally designed the Neraka Knights' fortress
that loomed large over the city of Jelek. He had the fortress built
on the city's highest promontory with a commanding view of the
city and the surrounding valley.
The fortress was practical in shape and design-innumerable
squares and rectangles stacked one on top of the other, with
squared-off towers. What windows there were-and there