Knight of the Black Rose tols-1

  Knight of the Black Rose

  ( Terror of Lord Soth - 1 )

  James Lowder

  James Lowder

  Knight of the Black Rose

  PROLOGUE

  From the Iconochronos of Astinus of Palanthas

  One name recorded here, in these scrolls that make up my history of Krynn, has become a byword for corruption and monumental evil throughout the continent of Ansalon: Lord Soth of Dargaard Keep.

  The Knight of the Black Rose.

  Such was not always the case. Once, in the years before the gods punished mortals with the Cataclysm that shook these lands to the core, Lord Soth was a great and noble soldier for Good, a member of the renowned Knights of Solamnia. In that most famed of famed brotherhoods, Soth attained their highest honor, the Order of the Rose. For a time, he fought for justice and freedom. His heart remained pure then, his soul unspotted. When it came time to build his castle, Soth designed it himself to resemble the symbol of his order-the flawless red rose.

  Yet it was not long after Soth married and brought his wife to Dargaard Keep that darkness settled upon his life, a darkness so profound he has never escaped it, a corruption so complete it made the once-proud knight a willing agent of Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness.

  Some claim that pride undermined Soth’s will to do good, others say lust, and still others greed. Of those who still walk beneath the triple moons of Krynn, only Soth himself knows for certain the cause of his own doom. The world is left to construe what it will from skeletal bits of history.

  Soth’s wife befitted a man of his station and potential. A noble’s daughter and only child, she offered the young knight much in the way of worldly goods. That love had little traffic in Dargaard in those days was apparent to all who visited the keep, if they found Soth there at all. The lord of the castle spent much of his time traversing the Solamnic countryside in search of suitable wrongs to right, accompanied by thirteen knights loyal to him above all others.

  The summons to Palanthas, most beautiful of all cities, came to Soth early in the spring. He and his retainers set off for the Knights’ Council to be held in that unconquered city, but before they reached its perfectly planned streets, temptation bested the Knight of the Rose. He and his men came across a mob of ogres attacking a small band of elven women. The knights easily defeated the brutes, save one who had snatched up an elfmaid and dashed off into the woods.

  Lord Soth himself battled and conquered this, the strongest of the ogres. The woman he saved, a young elfmaid on her way to take her vows as a Revered Daughter of Paladine, dazzled him with her innocent beauty. Soon after, they became secret lovers, though in doing so Soth broke both his sacred marriage vows and the Code of the Knights of Solamnia.

  It seemed as if the lord of Dargaard Keep believed this blot on his soul would remain hidden forever, for he went to the Knights’ Council as if nothing had transpired between him and the elfmaid. Yet two things conspired to bring the Rose Knight’s shame to the pure light of Krynn’s sun. The first was the news that Soth’s wife had disappeared from Dargaard Keep. The blood found in her chambers cried foul play, and the nobleman’s almost casual reaction to this shocking news made many in his order wonder for the first time if they had judged Soth too highly.

  The second incident that shouted Soth’s guilt to those gathered at the Knights’ Council was the elfmaid’s sudden illness. When it was discovered she was with child, many suspected Soth, for he had kept company with her even before his wife’s disappearance. The other elven women who had been rescued by the Rose Knight and his followers that fateful day confirmed those suspicions and revealed Soth’s faithlessness.

  The minutes of Soth’s trial are recorded elsewhere in this history. Here I will note only that he was found guilty of many crimes, sentenced to death, and dragged through the streets of Palanthas in shame. Death would have been a kinder fate than the one eventually claimed by the fallen knight.

  The nobleman’s thirteen loyal followers rescued him from his prison on the night before his planned execution. Accompanied by the elfmaid, the disgraced band slunk from the walls of the city and made their way to Dargaard Keep. The true Knights of Solamnia pursued the renegades, but Soth reached the safety of his castle before they could capture him.

  In the months that followed, the lord of Dargaard attempted to build a new life within the walls of his besieged castle. He married the elfmaid and went through the motions of honoring his order’s rituals. Though none who stayed within Dargaard’s walls for long lived to tell the tale, legend has it Soth grew moody and violent. Not even his wife, heavy with child, was spared the disgraced knight’s mailed fist.

  The gods granted Soth enough self-knowledge to see how low he’d fallen, and the realization fanned the few sparks of honor left in the weave of his besotted soul. In Dargaard’s long-unused chapel, Soth prayed to Paladine, Father of All Good, and his elfmaid bride offered her hopes to Mishakal, the Light Bringer. Again the gods favored Soth with the ability to see, though this time it was a vision of the Kingpriest of Istar, who some named prophet and others labeled madman. Paladine himself charged Soth with a sacred task: prevent the kingpriest from demanding power from the deities who oversaw Krynn.

  Had Soth succeeded in this quest, Ansalon-nay, all of Krynn-would be a much different place today. Yet the fallen knight never reached the city of Istar. The elven women he had once rescued now poisoned his mind with intimations of his wife’s infidelity, and Lord Soth returned to his castle before his quest was done. Raging like a lunatic, he confronted his elfmaid bride, mother of his newborn child, with the imagined transgressions of their vows; at that very same moment, the kingpriest raised his voice to the heavens, demanding the power to eradicate all evil on Krynn, ordering the gods to bow down and serve those mortals who offered them worship.

  In their fury at this affront, the gods hurled a mountain at the prideful city of Istar. The destruction wrought by that most terrible of heavenly messengers is known to all as the Cataclysm. Yet few who know how that catastrophe twisted the land realize the manner in which it altered Lord Soth’s destiny, as well.

  As the flaming mountain struck Istar, a fire engulfed Dargaard Keep. Soth’s elfmaid bride, trapped in the blaze and dying, held out her infant for the fallen knight to rescue. Still possessed by jealous rage, he turned away.

  For failing in his quest, for letting his own child burn to death before his eyes, Soth’s elfmaid bride called a curse down upon the once-noble knight. “You will die this night in fire,” she wailed, “even as your son and I die. But you will live eternally in darkness. You will live one life for every life your folly has brought to an end!” Some say the elfmaid’s curse still echoes through the mountains around the castle. Others claim Lord Soth repeats the words to fill the silence of his long and sleepless nights.

  The flames took Soth’s life that night, but he did not die. Blackened and burned, he was reborn as an unliving, undead creature of evil. He still wears the charred armor of a Knight of Solamnia, but the rose emblem that once told of his honor was scorched and twisted by the fire. It is by this corrupted symbol-the black rose-that many know Soth; and for more than three hundred years he has walked the earth, doing the bidding of the most evil of evil deities, Takhisis, Queen of Darkness.

  Though the Knight of the Black Rose has appeared in the pages of my history before, I write of him now because he is once again coming to Palanthas. We await him here in fear, in this city that has never been conquered. We have received word he brings a frightening force to stand against us. He and the dragon highlord, Kitiara Uth Matar, will be at the walls before sunset.

  The future remains hidden from men, and with good reas
on. On this day, however, I would not refuse knowledge of the morrow.

  ONE

  With each strike of its burning hooves, Lord Soth’s monstrous steed left flaming tracks on the arrow-straight streets of Palanthas’s New City. The creature was a nightmare, a denizen of Hades that evil beings such as the undead knight could summon for use in battle. One look at its coat of most profound black, eyes of sulphurous red, and nostrils brimming with orange flame revealed the steed’s unearthly origin.

  Lord Soth was unconcerned with his mount’s reputation for treachery. His mind was wrapped around thoughts of his own traitorous plans.

  The death knight served as vanguard for the armies of the dragon highlord, Kitiara Uth Matar, who coveted the city of Palanthas for a single magical building sheltered within its walls. In the Tower of High Sorcery, near the city’s heart, lay a portal to the Abyss, and through this portal Kitiara’s power-mad half-brother Raistlin had ventured to confront the evil goddess Takhisis. The dragon highlord planned to raze Palanthas to reach the tower. From it she would present the defeated city to whomever emerged victorious from the portal; Soth cared for none of this. He wanted Kitiara, preferably dead.

  Though he now led the armies of Highlord Kitiara, the death knight had warned Palanthas of her coming. Soth knew the Palanthians were not powerful enough to stop the evil troops, but the guardian of the tower had magic enough to bring Kitiara low. After retrieving her corpse and trapping her soul, Soth planned to abandon the fight and return to Dargaard Keep. In the shelter of that hellish place, he could perform a rite that would make the highlord his unliving companion for all eternity.

  Soth banished these thoughts as he drew near the twin minarets that framed the main gate. The death knight could see scores of men, some armored, others clad only in cloth, lining the ancient wall. Their gazes were locked on the flying citadel that had just dropped from the clouds and now moved steadily over New City. As Soth stopped before the gate, many turned in horror toward the undead herald come to deliver the attacking dragon highlord’s demands.

  “Lord of Palanthas,” he called, his hollow voice echoing from the walls. When the noble Lord Amothus moved to the fore on the battlements, the death knight continued. “Surrender your city to Lord Kitiara. Give up to her the keys to the Tower of High Sorcery, name her ruler of Palanthas, and she will allow you to continue to live in peace. Your city will be spared destruction.”

  A pause followed in which the soldiers around Lord Amothus evidenced panic. Though frightened himself, Amothus ran a hand through his thinning hair and glanced with forced casualness at the death knight, then at the flying citadel approaching in the sky.

  Lord Soth sat astride the nightmare, clad in ancient armor. The fire that had taken his life had also blasted the mail and obscured its intricate carvings of kingfishers and roses. The lone image still visible-a rose on the breastplate, charred black-had become the dead man’s symbol.

  A flowing cape of royal purple waved in the breeze behind Soth like a ghostly banner of challenge. From his helmet, his eyes glowed with an orange fire of their own. He sat stiffly in the saddle, one mailed fist gripping the reins. His other hand rested on the hilt of his sword, a blade dark with the blood of hundreds of men. As the citadel passed overhead, a shadow covered the death knight and he faded from view slightly, as if the darkness welcomed and engulfed him as part of itself.

  The flying citadel was a masterpiece of evil sorcery. A dark-stoned castle rested on a mammoth rock, which was itself surrounded by boiling, magical clouds. The shock of being wrenched from the earth had toppled a few of the keep’s walls, but the citadel remained intact enough to house an army of foul creatures. And as the citadel came close to the walls protecting Palanthas’s Old City, evil dragons dropped from the clouds. They flew in looping, chaotic patterns around the fortress as they awaited the order to attack. Even now evil creatures lined the edge of the rock, waiting to drop into battle. Formations of good bronze dragons sped into the air and clashed in defense of Palanthas with the blue and black swarm. The great dragons dove through the sky at terrible speeds, their screeches resounding through the almost-silent streets.

  “Take this message to your dragon highlord,” Amothus said at last, forcing steel into his voice. “Palanthas has lived in peace and beauty for many centuries, but we will buy neither peace nor beauty at the price of our freedom.”

  The citadel was even then gliding over the wall surrounding Old City as Lord Soth shouted his reply. “Then buy them at the price of your lives!”

  Softly the fallen knight uttered a magical command. From the darkness around him there appeared thirteen skeletal warriors, all mounted, like their lord, astride nightmares. Behind them banshees from Dargaard Keep rode low over the ground in chariots wrought of human bone. Wyverns pulled the ghastly chariots, but it was not those broad-winged, lesser dragon-kin that thrust fear into the Palanthians’ hearts. The banshees were wailing and swinging swords of ice as they circled before the gate. It was the sound of their shrill cries that froze the souls of men on the battlements.

  Again Soth spoke a word of magic, pointing a gauntleted hand at the massive gate before him. A gorgeous pattern of frost spread like lace across the iron bands that held the gate together. The frost rapidly grew thicker and thicker until it covered the entire gate. At another command from Soth, the frozen gate shattered.

  Faintly the death knight heard the frantic cries of the city’s defenders as he rushed forward, his skeletal warriors and banshees trailing in his wake.

  “The gods of Good save us!” one man shouted.

  Another soldier fired an arrow at the undead warriors. “Stop them! By the Oath and the Measure, we can’t let the monsters inside!”

  This last exclamation-uttered by a Knight of Solamnia-caught Soth’s attention, but only momentarily. The knight’s words and the various other cries were drowned out by horrified gasps as the army began to plummet from the floating citadel onto the walls and into the city. Their leathery wings spread out to slow their fall, draconians leaped by the hundreds from the fortress. The creatures looked in many ways like men, but their flesh was reptilian and their hands and feet savagely clawed. As they lowered, the draconians shouted out their battle cries. Inhuman, lisping voices swore allegiance to Highlord Kitiara and Takhisis, the dark goddess she served. Other draconians called out for human blood and licked their lips with long, snaking tongues.

  One such creature landed next to Soth as he entered Palanthas’s Old City for the first time in three and a half centuries. The draconian hit the ground next to the death knight’s horrible steed and cringed in fear at the demonic horse and its inhuman rider. Even the lizardlike soldier, with its tough, scaly skin, felt the cold radiating from Soth. Like the human defenders of the proud city, the draconian fled before the fallen knight.

  “Kitiara is planning to race to the Tower of High Sorcery on her dragon once the battle begins. Kill everyone standing between us and the tower,” the death knight said. Magic carried his words to the skeletal warriors and banshees, even over the din of battle.

  The undead minions began their slaughter, but Soth’s attention was drawn to the defensive line forming far down the street. In the middle of the broad, stone-paved way was a group of mounted Solamnic Knights, waiting for Lord Soth and his undead warriors. The assembled Knights of the Rose interested the death knight only marginally, however. His attention was drawn to their leader.

  Tanis Half-Elven.

  Lord Soth headed straight for Tanis. The death knight had faced the heroic half-elf before, and Tanis had survived the conflict through luck-or so Soth believed. Then the half-elf had killed the dragon highlord Ariakas and taken the mighty Crown of Power from the body, stealing the artifact out of Soth’s very grasp. But that defeat had little to do with the overwhelming hatred the death knight felt for the young hero. Tanis had been one of Kitiara’s many lovers, and the half-elf held a powerful influence over the ruthless general.

  Now, by th
e armor Tanis wore, it seemed the Knights of Solamnia had granted him some honorary rank for his help in defending Palanthas. Soth scoffed at the sight of the half-breed wearing the armor of a knight; in his day, the Order would not have allowed such a travesty. Tanis had surely never faced the necessary tests for advancement. He had proved neither himself nor his family worthy of such ranking. Smiling foully, Soth told himself that he would prove the half-elf unworthy in battle before the day was through.

  The death knight’s eyes blazed as he watched a small figure leap at Tanis. A kender, one of the much-maligned, mischievous race of beings known for their penchant for “borrowing” things not their own, clung to the half-elf like a sorrowful wife at her husband’s departing. After a brief struggle, Tanis caught the kender around the waist and dumped him unceremoniously out of harm’s way. As the child-sized kender landed, Soth recognized him as Tasslehoff Burrfoot, one of the half-elf’s longtime companions.

  “Tanis!” the kender wailed from the mouth of a nearby alley, “you can’t go out there! You’re going to die. I know!”

  The half-elf glanced once at the kender, then ran back to the knights. “Fireflash!” he shouted, looking to the sky. With an audible rush of wind, a young bronze dragon swooped out of the air and landed in the broad street next to Tanis. Close at hand, the other knights’ chargers whinnied and shied away from the good dragon.

  From the alley, the kender ran a few steps down the street, his blue leggings pumping frantically. He stopped, then screamed, “Tanis! You can’t fight Lord Soth without the bracelet!”

  Bracelet? The death knight pondered the kender’s words for an instant, then he concluded that Tasslehoff must be referring to some magical trinket meant to aid Tanis against the undead. “Imposter,” Soth murmured maliciously. “No real knight would ever use wizardry in a duel of honor.”

  The death knight was close enough now to see that the half-elf wore the insignias of a Knight of the Rose on his armor. At last, one of the mounted riders pointed at Soth and called his commander’s name. Tanis turned, his brown-red beard framing a frightened scowl. His gaze met the flaming orbs glowing from Soth’s helmet, and an expression of fear spread across his tanned face. The death knight reined in the nightmare and slowly dismounted.