The green stone wedge pierced the draconian’s chest and exploded through its back, halfway between those two suddenly flailing wings. “Die, wyrmling!” roared Ankhar, pulling the spear free. The draconian tumbled back and fell to the ground. Wings flapping, it thrashed and kicked for a moment, but its struggles quickly faded and it died in a spreading pool of black blood.
The other sivaks growled and barked and squawked, obviously dismayed. Several feinted lunges at the half-giant but retreated before he could parry against them. He spun through a full circle, feeling the strength returning to his numbed right arm. He still held the heavy shaft of his spear in his left hand, shaking it over his head, roaring challenges and taunts at the reptilian band. With his chest thrust out and his muscles flexing, he felt his mastery over the craven creatures and, like his mother, laughed out loud at their hissing, clacking, and flapping.
“Look at Arcen!” The aurak, Guilder, gasped in surprise as Laka’s spell of silence fell away. He was pointing at the dead sivak, now sprawled motionless on the ground at his feet.
Slowly, with a strange rippling through its flesh, that silver-white body began to change. The shape writhed, its talons drawing back into the fingers and toes, its wings shriveling and shrinking. Ankhar was familiar with the gruesome death throes of lesser draconians-the baaz, who became hard stone statues when slain; or the kapaks, whose flesh dissolved into searing acid. But the sivak was strange and different: the draconian was changing shape.
With a violent convulsion, the scaly flesh of the creature’s skin ripped apart. Its chest thickened, and its dragonlike face smoothed, the jaws shrinking until it resembled a more humanoid creature. With a gasp of disbelief, Ankhar suddenly realized that he was looking at the very image of himself! The corpse was wearing strange, ornate garments-nothing like the half-giant’s leather tunic and leggings-but he was too stunned to take note of the garb.
“What foul sorcery is this?” he demanded, taking a step backward.
But the other draconians were not listening. They all recognized the image of Ankhar the Truth-but it was an Ankhar wearing a golden crown and wrapped in the robes that signified he was a great king. The aurak, Guilder, threw himself to the ground, pressing his face forward to kiss the half-giant’s muddy boots.
“My liege!” he cried. “Forgive me!”
“Hail Ankhar!” croaked another of the draconians, the sivak called Gentar who had first confronted him. The draconian placed the tip of his great long sword on the ground and leaned the hilt toward the great lord. “Allow us to serve you, O mighty one!” he croaked.
“My power is my Truth!” bellowed the half-giant. “Est Sudanus oth Nikkas!”
“And we,” Guilder said, speaking with bowed head from bended knee. “We will follow your Truth to the far ends of Krynn!”
Deciding that they did not want to risk magically transporting themselves into the middle of a battle, Selinda and Melissa teleported safely to the yard of a country inn that the princess knew that was several miles south of Vingaard Keep. They arrived unnoticed and, in the early morning light, simply walked up the lane without being seen by anyone in the barely stirring household.
The two women were dressed in simple shawls and easily passed as farmwives when encountering dairymen or laborers on the dirt road that curled gently down the valley of the Vingaard River. That great flowage, a mile wide, spread to their right, but the keep itself and the town around it was obscured from their view by the ridge of low hills just south of Apple Creek.
They walked along in silence and after about an hour came to the crest of those hills. They both stopped and stared. The silhouette of Vingaard Keep loomed before them, but it was a sad, twisted mockery of the once elegant fortress. Only one tower could be seen, standing aloof and proud, with many black gaps where the once-beautiful windows had been. The other two towers were gone, replaced by stumps of rubble.
There was a picket of Crown Army guards at the crest, a dozen men-at-arms who stood near the road, watching to the south. They had clearly been observing the women for the past hour, but just as obviously did not perceive them to be any threat. In fact, they ignored them as they moved past until Selinda stopped and turned. She spotted the sergeant of the detail, a grizzled knight who was a decade or two past his prime, and approached him.
Curtsying respectfully, she begged his pardon for interrupting him at his duties.
“No problem! No problem at all, little lady. What can I do for you on this fine morn?”
“Is it safe to approach the castle? Does the battle still rage?”
The sergeant chuckled genially. “Not so much of a battle, really. The poor beggars were ready to quit at the first sight of the emperor’s bombard. But he wouldn’t let ’em-turned the cowardly curs right back to their walls, he did, when they tried to yield. He had to teach them a lesson, you know.”
“He turned them down? When they offered to yield?” Selinda tried to keep her voice level even as her stomach heaved with nausea. She felt Melissa take her hand, the priestess squeezing it hard, trying to give her strength.
“Well, he had to, you see. Had to teach them the lesson.”
“And now? Where is the emperor?” asked Selinda.
“Why do you want to know so bad?” asked the guard, suddenly suspicious. “You are a pretty thing, I’ll say. But you know he’s married, don’t you?”
“I had heard that, yes,” said the emperor’s wife. “I’m curious, that’s all. Do you think he will knock the rest of the castle down?”
“I don’t think so. The lord’s daughter came out to see him, in the wee hours it was. She went up and begged him to stop. She was up there with him a long time, but when she rode away, he called for a ceasefire. You can see they’re taking the gun down… right there.”
She looked and did notice the mighty bombard, the barrel lowered almost to a horizontal position as oxen were secured in the wagon’s traces. Beyond, she saw a building, probably an inn, and recognized the three-symbol pennant that was the emperor’s banner.
“Is he down there, then?” she asked, pointing to the obvious headquarters.
“Well, he was. But a few moments ago, he and a party of men, all decked out they was, road across the Stonebridge and into Vingaard Keep. Maybe he had some more terms for the little lady, eh?” he added with a lewd chuckle and a wink.
“Yes, maybe,” Selinda replied disconsolately. Then she walked away from the sergeant with Melissa at her side. Instead of turning toward the castle or the headquarters building, however, she turned her footsteps toward the Apple Creek road, leaving the Vingaard, the castle, and the army behind.
The priestess walked with her in silence for a long time. Finally, she spoke. “You’re not going to try to talk to him, then?” she said.
Selinda shook her head. “No, I’m not. I mean, in the end, there’s really nothing to say.”
The cleric of Kiri-Jolith nodded somberly, and again took her friend’s hand. The Lady Selinda was right.
There really wasn’t anything to say.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Marrinys Kerrigan proved an able administrator. By the time Jaymes, Dayr, and the Freemen rode into the courtyard of Vingaard Keep, she had ordered the vaults opened and somehow collected enough treasure to fill a small chest with gems and larger chests with steel coins. Jaymes didn’t need more than a glance to see that the recalcitrant town’s taxes would be paid in full.
“You’re as good as your word,” he said approvingly.
“I wish I could say the same about you,” she replied, startling him with her vehemence. “But your word has been sullied by your disregard of the parley, more than you even know. The world will long remember how you betrayed my father under a flag of truce.”