“Guilty, guilty!” cried Toede, then added nervously, “Therefore she should most definitely be in leg irons!”
“I am sorry, Kitiara,” said Feal-Thas gravely. “I enjoyed our meeting at Icereach, but my duty is to my emperor. I must find you guilty.”
Ariakas shifted the sword around. The point faced Kitiara. “Kitiara uth Matar, you have been found guilty of the death of a Dragon Highlord. The punishment for that crime is death. At dawn tomorrow, you will be taken to the Arena of Death where you will be hanged, drawn and quartered. The remains of your body will be placed upon pikes at the Temple gates to serve as a warning to others.”
Kitiara stood still. She no longer struggled. Her ravings ceased.
“You are making a terrible mistake, my lord,” she said calmly. “I have been loyal to you when all these others have been false. But no longer, my lord. No more. It is you who have betrayed me.”
Ariakas made a gesture to the bent-wing bozak as if tossing out garbage. “Take her away.”
“Where to, my lord?” the bozak asked. “Does she go to the Pen or to the dungeons in the Temple?”
Ariakas considered. The Pen was the local prison house and it was always overcrowded, verging on chaos half the time. Escapes were not common, but they did occur, and if anyone could manage to escape confinement, it would be Kitiara. She would be put into a cell with other prisoners—male prisoners. He could picture her seducing the jailer, her guards, her fellow inmates, rousing them all to revolt.
The dungeons in the Temple were more secure and less crowded. Most political prisoners were jailed there, yet Ariakas hesitated to send Kitiara to the Temple. The dark priests and the Nightlord had no love for Kitiara, who had stated openly she considered them lazy toadies who did nothing except eat and sleep while the military undertook the hard and thankless work of winning the war. Still, the Nightlord was jealous of Ariakas and Kit might find a way to win him to her side.
No matter where she was incarcerated, so long as she lived, Kitiara was a danger. Ariakas began to wish he’d scheduled her execution immediately, not waited for the public spectacle. Too late to change his mind. The other Highlords would scent weakness. He could think of only one place where she would be safe and completely inaccessible to anyone.
“Lock her up in the storeroom in my private chambers in the Temple,” Ariakas said. “Post guards at the door. No one is to enter my chambers. No one is to speak to her. Any who fail me in this will suffer a fate identical to hers.”
The bent-wing bozak saluted and started to lead Kitiara out the door. She had one last bold and desperate plan in mind. She had only to decide where and when to strike.
As if reading her mind, Ariakas remarked casually, “Oh, and by the way, Targ, be careful. She has a knife concealed in her dragon scale armor.”
“The knife!” the draconian demanded, holding out his clawed hand.
Kitiara glared at him defiantly and made no move to comply.
“You can either show Targ where it is, Kitiara,” said Ariakas dryly, “or he will strip you naked here and now.”
Kitiara showed Targ where to find the knife. The bozak removed the weapon and then took off all her armor, leaving her in her gambeson. He searched her again from head to toe, just in case, and then placed her in the custody of two baaz draconians.
Kit endured these indignities with her head held high, her fists clenched. She’d be damned if she would give her enemies the satisfaction of seeing her sweat.
“Take her out,” ordered Ariakas.
As the baaz were about to haul her away, Kitiara turned to Feal-Thas.
“You have the gift to look into hearts,” she said. “Look into mine, now.”
Feal-Thas was startled. He was about to refuse, but he saw Ariakas watching him and the thought came to him that this was some sort of test. Perhaps she meant to prove him a liar. Shrugging, he did as she requested. He cast the spell of the winternorn and gazed into her heart. He saw three Solamnic knights and a powerful cleric of Paladine leaving Tarsis, traveling the road to Icereach, intent upon stealing his dragon orb.
Feal-Thas shivered in rage, as though he’d been nipped by his own chill winds. He stood up from the table.
“I beg your pardon, my lord, but I must leave at once.” The elf cast a pale, cold glance at Kitiara. “Events require my immediate return to Icereach.”
The other Highlords stared at him. Kitiara’s lip curled. Turning on her heel, she allowed her captors to lead her away.
The emperor looked out his window where he had once stood with Kit, watching traitors hang. Kit walked down the street in the midst of her guards, her head high, shoulders thrown back. She was laughing.
“What a woman,” Ariakas muttered. “What a woman!”
On their way to the Temple, Kitiara attempted to bribe her baaz guards. The bent-wing bozak heard her talking to them and he ordered the two to leave, replacing them with two more.
Next Kit tried to bribe the bozak. Targ didn’t even deign to reply to her generous offer. Kitiara sighed inwardly. She had guessed the attempt would fail, for the draconian guards were known to be extremely loyal to Ariakas. Still, it had been worth the attempt. The bozak would report back to Ariakas that she’d tried to bribe them, but what did that matter? What would he do to punish her? He couldn’t kill her twice.
Ariakas’s servant had run ahead of them to alert the Temple authorities. When informed that he was to house a Highlord on charges of treason, the Nightlord was confounded, did not know how to react. He was angered at first; he felt he should have been informed of Kitiara’s treachery and consulted in the decision to execute her. He most certainly should have been told in advance that Ariakas planned to imprison her inside the Temple.
That being said, the Nightlord was not sorry to see the arrogant Blue Lady humbled and humiliated, nor would he fail to enjoy watching her execution.
The Nightlord sent a terse reply back to Ariakas, but that was the extent of his protest. He dispatched several acolytes to the Arena of Death to insure that his private box was supplied with food in case Kitiara’s demise was prolonged. People had been known to survive an amazingly long time in screaming agony after having been disemboweled.
The Temple of Neraka was located in the center of the city, which had grown up around it. The Temple existed simultaneously on two planes—the material and the spiritual—and was a strange and eerie place. One felt as if one were walking in a building that existed in a dream, rather than reality. Organic in nature, having sprouted from the seed of the foundation stone, the Temple’s walls were twisted and misshapen, its hallways twisting and tortured. As in a dream, corridors that appeared to be short and straight were actually long and winding. Those who attempted to walk through the Temple alone, without the guidance of the dark priests, would either end up lost or insane.
Kitiara, like the other Highlords, had her own furnished quarters in the Temple. Each Highlord had his own entrance, guarded by his own soldiers. The Highlords used these only on ceremonial occasions, all of them preferring the warm and homely comforts of an inn or even their own barracks to the unnerving atmosphere of the Temple.
Ariakas’s imperial suite was the most luxurious in the Temple, second only to that of the Nightlord. Ariakas rarely spent much time there. He did not trust the Nightlord, nor did the Nightlord trust him. The bozak, Targ, knew his way around the temple, but he was glad to have one of the dark priests serve as escort. They marched Kitiara through the distorted halls. But even those who worked in the Temple often found the hallways confusing. Their escort was forced to halt at one point to wait for another dark pilgrim to provide direction.
As Kitiara trudged along in between the two baaz, who wouldn’t even look at her, much less speak to her, she tried to devise some plan of escape. Ariakas was smart. The Temple made an excellent prison. Even if she managed to free herself from her confinement, she might wander these halls forever and never find the way out. The dark priests would not help her. They would be just as happy to see her dead.