“Yes, Sir Gerard,” said Tasslehoff. “And even though you don’t like me, which I have to tell you really hurts my feelings, I wouldn’t want to see you stretched on the rack. Maybe someone else—because I never saw anyone’s arm pulled out of its socket 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 exciting 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 breastplate, 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, attending the first Council of the Last Heroes, felt confident enough to demand that the remnant of the Knighthood that remained 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 survived, but thrived. This was due in part to the leadership of Abrena, Lord of the Night, who added to that military title the political title of governor-general of Neraka. Abrena instituted 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 precept: “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 Khellendros, 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 dragons 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 disaster into a triumph. The Dark Knights made secret pacts with the dragons, agreeing to work for them to collect tribute and maintain law and order in lands ruled by the dragons. In return, the dragons would give the Dark Knights a free hand and cease preying upon their surviving dragons.
The people of Palanthas, Neraka, and Qualinesti knew nothing 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 mystics 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 expounded by the late Ariakan, they were mostly the older members, 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 developed 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.