“The Living Darkness will slay you!” came the cry of the spawn from high above him. “Or she will make you serve her until the flesh withers with age from your body! Until you die!”
Dhamon felt a jerk, and now he stared at a wall of blackness. He gasped as the blackness breathed and blinked to reveal a pair of drab, massive yellow orbs. The blackness returned his gaze.
Sable, Dhamon thought. The black dragon overlord. Despite the unnatural strength his link with Malys provided him, Dhamon knew he hadn’t a prayer of standing against the Black. And he knew Malys realized this also.
The blackness drew closer, her breath so foul Dhamon’s stomach roiled. So huge was the Black that Dhamon’s eyes could not absorb her entire form. I’ll not serve you, were the words his lips tried to form, but they were doomed words. I’ll not be a spawn. Kill me, dragon!
“You will not kill him, Onysablet,” emerged from his mouth. The words were rich and drawn out, inhuman sounding. Malys was speaking through him. “He is my puppet. He brings to me his ancient weapon. The scale, Onysablet. Look at the scale on his leg. It marks him as mine.”
“Malystryx,” the Black returned after several moments of silence. She dropped her gaze to Dhamon’s leg and then lowered her head in deference to the red dragon overlord. “I grant him safe passage through my land.”
No! Dhamon’s mind screamed. Slay me! I deserve my fate!
“He will bother no more of your creations, Onysablet.” Malys continued. “I will see to it.”
The Red turned her thoughts inward, admonishing her puppet.
You will continue through Onysablet’s realm, she instructed him. You will travel southeast until you near the border of mountainous Blöde. There are ruins at the edge of the swamp, an old ogre village called Brukt. A band of Knights of Takhisis is on their way there—my knights. I will not let them kill you, as your mind has told me is the custom with rogue knights. You will travel with them to my peak, where you will surrender the glaive and what, if anything, remains of your spirit.
Brukt consisted of a makeshift village surrounding a crumbling tower of chert and limestone propped up by two massive cypress trees. The tower was pointed and jagged at the fanglike top, and flower-covered vines grew up its sides.
Cobbled around it was a collection of huts made of bamboo and thatch and several lean-tos draped with lizard hide. There were a few sturdier buildings made of stones and planks, and one large structure with doors made from a wagon bottom. Some of the buildings carried weathered wording that suggested the planks had once been crates: Morning Dew Mead, Shrentak Leathers read some. A few others were in a language Dhamon couldn’t fathom.
A kender, a dwarf, and a small group of humans who were gathered at the base of the tower halted their conversation and stared as he approached. They were a scraggly lot, barefoot and in worn clothes. One motioned with his hand toward a lean-to, and a female dwarf stepped out of it to quickly join the others. Her fingers drifted to the handle of the axe stuffed in her belt.
“Friend?” she called in a rough voice.
“Friend?” the dwarf repeated. The kender joined her, whispering something into her ear.
Dhamon tried to answer, to tell them he was far from a friend, but instead was an unwilling agent of the red dragon. They should flee or kill him. But Malys held his tongue.
“He is with us.” The voice came from one of the stone and plank buildings. A woman pulled back a hide covering the doorway and stepped out. Despite the heat of the swamp, she wore armor—black, with the emblem of a skull in the center of the breastplate. A death lily grew from the top of the skull, encircled by a thorny vine. The red flame on the lily indicated she served Malystryx. A black cloak draped down to her ankles, held in place by an expensive clasp. Military decorations covering a shoulder of the cloak glinted in the morning sunlight. “Welcome to Brukt, Dhamon Grimwulf.”
“So he’s definitely not a friend,” the female dwarf muttered glumly.
“Commander Jalan Telith-Moor,” Dhamon heard himself say.
She nodded only slightly and walked toward him. A half-dozen knights followed her out of the doorway. “We arrived here very late last night,” she said in an imperious voice. “Here, in this desolate place, there seem to be a pair of spies sympathetic to Solamnia. We will root them out before we leave.” She pursed her lips in thought and studied Dhamon’s face. “Or perhaps...” She gestured, and two knights flanked him, indicating he should follow them inside the building.
“You must be very important,” one of the knights whispered, “to merit Commander Jalan’s presence. She broke off recruiting ogres near Thoradin just to come here to meet with you.”
Dhamon went inside the building and placed the glaive against the wall. He allowed the knights to strip off his tattered, acid-burned clothes. “Do not touch the weapon,” Malys warned them in his voice.
They indicated a carved wooden bowl filled with fresh water. The dragon let him drink his fill; then he washed, letting his hands linger in the water to ease the pain from the weapon. As he dressed in the padding and armor the knights provided, he listened to their whispers about the scale on his leg. The armor did not fit him well, as it had been made for a slightly larger man.
He hated both the armor and the knighthood. He tried again to push the dragon from his mind, but Malys easily controlled him.
“He’s ready, Commander Jalan,” one of the knights called.
She entered and inspected him up and down. Her cold eyes lingered on his face. She was young for her rank, Dhamon guessed, probably in her late twenties, though with a few age lines. No, tiny scars, he decided, as he stared more closely. Her expression was hard, her mouth thin and unused to smiling. Her blonde hair, much lighter than his, caught the sunlight. Dhamon had heard of her: She was among the top-ranking officials of the knighthood.
“We questioned some of the villagers—refugees, when we arrived last night,” she began. “We were concerned they had... done something... with you. As it turns out, they’d never heard of you. But during our interrogation, one of them revealed the presence of Solamnic spies. You were once close to the Solamnic knights, weren’t you... Dhamon Grimwulf?”
I was close to one, Dhamon thought, an old knight named Geoff who saved me though I had tried to kill him. The Solamnic had successfully turned him from the Knights of Takhisis. Or so Dhamon had once thought.
“Perhaps you could root out the Solamnics for us. They’re in the building at the end of the street. Save us a little trouble.” Jalan moved closer to Dhamon, whispering in his ear. “Malystryx has told me of you and your impressive weapon. She thinks killing a few Solamnic spies should make you more... malleable, more useful to her. You’ll not be so defiant, always trying to resist her and run away. We’ll make your corruption complete and allow her to fully concentrate on more important matters. That’s why I saved this trifling business for you. Go, and kill them.”
From the secret place in his mind, Dhamon steeled himself against the pain as he wrapped his fingers around the hateful weapon once again. He brushed by the commander and strode out into the makeshift village, gazing with dragon-heightened senses at the door to the building at the far end of the road.
Dhamon’s black armor gleamed in the sun. The tabard draped over the top of the mail was pressed. Not a wrinkle was visible, not a loose thread. The white of the lily was bright, the miniature red dragon scale looked like a flame on a glistening petal. The dragon forced him toward the building.
“Hey, why aren’t you back inside there with the rest of the knights?”