Now the kender was likely somewhere in Xak Tsaroth or hopelessly searching for Kaz east of the city, unless something else had caught his attention. Or, for all the minotaur knew, Delbin was at this moment deep in Qualinesti looking for an elven horse, something he had always wanted to see.
Staring at the two visible moons, Kaz began to wonder if he was going to spend the entire night thinking about the kender or getting some of the rest he so badly needed. He hoped to have journeyed well into the forest before tomorrow evening.
Exhaustion finally began to overwhelm his senses. Nightmare visions of hundreds of curious and excited kender began to fade into the warm darkness of slumber. Kaz almost sighed in relief as at last he drifted away in peace.
He was standing before a great fortress that seemed to cling precariously to one side of the jagged peak. Creatures of all races lay dead or dying, and it was difficult to say who had been fighting whom.
“It’s all over now,” Huma sighed. Kaz turned to gaze at his friend and comrade. Despite his relatively young age, Huma’s handsome visage was marked with lines, and his hair, including his mustache, was silver-gray. His face was pale, almost deathlike.
An inhumanly beautiful woman with gleaming tresses of silver stood at his side, her arm linked with the knight’s. Kaz blinked. Every now and then, her face seemed to shift to that of a dragon.
“We won,” she said sweetly.
“You have won nothing but death!” a voice cried.
The ground before the vast citadel burst open, and a fearsome creature with a multitude of heads rose before them. Huma pulled a Dragonlance from his scabbard, but the monstrosity only laughed. The woman at Huma’s side melted and grew, wings bursting from her delicate back. Her slender arms and legs gave way to misshapen limbs that could only belong to a dragon. A symbol of majesty, she flew into the air and challenged the horror that Kaz realized must be Takhisis, the dark goddess.
Takhisis laughed mockingly and burned the silver dragon in midflight. A shower of ash, all that remained of Huma’s love, scattered in the breeze created by the goddess’s massive, leathery wings.
Takhisis laughed even harder. Kaz uttered an oath to his adopted god, Paladine. The heads of Takhisis were not the heads of dragons, as the minotaur had thought at first. Instead, most were human. One was incredibly beautiful, so that even Gwyneth, the silver dragon, was ugly by comparison. Takhisis the seductress. Turning his gaze from that visage to another did not help. The next head was the ebony-helmed visage of the mad warlord, Crynus. Spittle ran down his chin. Another was the head of the sorcerer Magius, Huma’s childhood friend, who had died a prisoner of the Dark Lady’s servants.
Yet another, this one the gaunt, deathly visage of a Knight of Solamnia, made both Kaz and Huma gasp. This was Rennard, he who had helped sponsor Huma to the knighthood and who, in the end, had been revealed not only as the lad’s uncle, but also as a treacherous cultist serving Morgion, god of disease and decay. Rennard had died horribly after failing in his mission to kill both Lord Oswal and Huma. Morgion was not a forgiving god.
The worst was last. Towering above the other heads, even that of the temptress, was one that Kaz had never really seen, but knew without having to hazard a guess. Grinning like a death’s-head, the long, narrow face swelled until it was almost as large as the rest of the abomination itself. Human was a term one could only loosely apply to it, for the skin had a slightly greenish tinge to it, and Kaz could see an elaborate network of scales, like those of a snake, covering it. The hair lay thin and flat against the head. The teeth were long, sharp, and predatory.
“Dracos,” Huma muttered. “In the good graces of his queen once more.” He shifted his grip on the Dragonlance, the only weapon ever to defeat Takhisis, and to Kaz’s horror, held it out for the minotaur to take.
“What-what’s this?”
Huma smiled at him sadly. The young-old face was drawn and white, as dead as ghostly Rennard’s. “I cannot do any more. I’m dead, remember?”
As Kaz watched in horror, his comrade was caught up in the wind and scattered like ash all around. In seconds, there was not a trace left.
“Minotaurrrr. Wayward child. Time to come back to the fold.”
He looked up at the leering faces and was gripped by an overwhelming panic. Despite a part of him that cried out at such cowardice, he turned and tried to flee, only to discover that no matter how hard he ran, he only seemed to be drawing closer to the five-headed beast.
The Knights of Solamnia were there, but instead of aiding him, they were jeering. Lord Oswal and his nephew Bennett, their hawklike features so identical it was uncanny, watched his struggles with as much interest as if they were studying an ant oh the ground.
“I’ve never seen a five-headed dragon before,” a familiar voice commented happily. “Will each head take a bite out of you? Does it have five stomachs? Is something wrong? Kaz? Kaz?”
The heads, maws open and grossly exaggerated in size, dove toward him.
The last thing he heard was a voice asking, “Kaz, do you want me to leave you alone?”
With a bellow, Kaz sat up, eyes wide with horror. Something short and wiry fell backward, landing with a loud “Ouch!” on the rocky ground.
“Are minotaurs always this excitable when they wake up? Maybe that’s why nobody likes minotaurs! Well, I like minotaurs, but you know what they say about kender-well, they say something! I thought I’d never find you!”
Kaz rubbed his eyes, unsure whether the voice he was hearing was part of the nightmare from his sleep or a living nightmare instead. His eyes began to adjust to the light of the moons. Squinting, he ventured a hesitant “Delbin?”
Even in the darkness, he could still make out the kender’s irreverent smile. “What’re you doing here, Kaz? Did you ever see so many humans fighting each other? Was it like that during the war? I didn’t get to see any of that! Grandfather said I was too young! Said I should leave serious business like that to the adults!”
“Take a breath, Delbin,” Kaz replied automatically. After weeks of effort, he had finally been able to make the kender understand that there were times when it was absolutely necessary to shut his mouth, unless he wanted to chance making the acquaintance of the heavy fist of an enraged minotaur.
Delbin quieted, though it was always an effort for him to do so.
“How did you find me, Delbin?”
The kender gave him a triumphant look. “My grandpa, he could track something as small as a mouse halfway across Hylo-well, maybe not that far-and he taught me all sorts of stuff, so when I saw all those men fighting, I figured you’d either be trying to take them all on or you had gone! When I didn’t find you, I remembered the river from the map, but you don’t want to be seen any more than you have to, so that left the mountains, and you were easy to find after that, what with the trail you left behind! ‘Course anyone but a kender like me would’ve never seen it, but I did!”
Kaz snorted. He had forgotten what explanations from Delbin were like, although this one was fairly straightforward for the kender. “You must have traveled nonstop.”
For the first time, the cheerful look vanished from his companion’s visage. “I was worried about you.”
“Worried?” Kaz, unused to such sentiment from anyone, especially a happy-go-lucky soul like Delbin, grunted. Taking a deep breath, he tried to make himself look as huge as possible. “I’m a minotaur, Delbin! No reason to worry about me!”