Lord Soth (46 page)

Farold, Kern and Caradoc felt the ground shake and stopped their horses in their tracks.

They could see Dargaard Keep in the distance, its roselike towers a welcome sight after such a hard and eventful journey.

But as they stood there looking at the keep in all its glory, they felt the ground give way beneath their mounts and a rush of hot air push against their faces.

“Look there!” shouted Kern, pointing to the sky.

A huge fiery mass, one as big as a mountain, streaked across the darkened sky, leaving a trail of bright yellow-orange fire in its wake.

The trail of fire burned white hot, then turned to smoke, blocking out the sun and leaving the land eerily dimmed.

“Is this it?” asked Farold.

“Is this
what?”
asked Kern.

“The Cataclysm,” answered Caradoc.

Indeed, these were cataclysmic events. The land itself seemed to be trembling as if in fear that the end might be near.

“I’m afraid so,” said Farold. “Only the gods can produce fire where it cannot be. Surely the burning sky can be nothing but the powerful manifestation of the gods’ wrath.”

“Wrath?” asked Kern, aghast. “Against Lord Soth?”

Farold nodded. “Against Soth, against the Kingpriest, against all of the people of Krynn.”

“Soth could have stopped this,” Caradoc said in disbelief, almost as if he were asking a question.

“The Kingpriest’s powers of persuasion proved stronger than Soth’s strength of will.”

Just then, the keep itself burst into flames.

“Merciful gods, no!” cried Farold.

Caradoc and Kern leaped onto their horses. Caradoc waited, then lifted a stunned Farold behind him onto the horse’s haunches. All three knights rode hard toward the keep.

In minutes they were close enough to see the devastation that the flames were inflicting upon the keep. It seemed that every inch of it was on fire. Even places where flames simply were not possible burned brightly.

The stones themselves were ablaze.

The knights tried to get nearer to the keep, but the intense heat and flames continued to push them back until they were forced to move away and helplessly watch it burn.

But even as they watched the fires slowly die, gouts of flame began shooting up from the ground behind them, forcing the knights forward in the direction of the keep.

“What’s happening?” shouted Kern.

“We are part of the keep, part of Soth’s world. We belong inside.”

“What are you saying?”

“The gods won’t allow us to be spared,” answered Caradoc, his voice surprisingly calm, as if he knew his deeds would eventually catch up with him and he would be made to suffer as his lord had. “Our destiny is too closely linked with Soth’s. We cannot escape the flames.”

The fire was all around them now, pushing them ever closer to the keep.

With flames behind them and a burnt but clear path
ahead of them, they were pushed across the bridge and into the smoldering keep.

Once inside, the fire suddenly began to burn anew as rivers of flames streamed down the bleeding stone walls.

And then, like the rest of the knights in the keep, they gave themselves up to the flames …

Joining Lord Soth.

The fire continued to burn.

All around him flames shot up from the floor, ringing him in fire. But no matter how hot and intense the flames were, Soth remained untouched by their flickering tongues.

Like a doomed man on his way to his own execution, Soth exited the hall, leaving the burning mass of his wife and son behind.

He walked through the flaming keep, ignoring the dying people around him.

“Help me, milord!” cried a laundress.

“You could have stopped th—” said a guard, his words cut off by the flames eating away at his throat.

Soth continued on, seemingly unaffected by the magnitude of the tragedy, toward his throne room.

The place where he would die.

When he arrived, he found the entire room engulfed with flames and filled with thick black smoke. But as he walked toward his throne, a path opened up for him across the floor. When he reached the throne he turned around, took one last look at the devastation—the devastation that he could have prevented—and sat wearily down on his throne.

He breathed a final smoke-filled sigh, and waited for death to claim him.

The flames were upon him in seconds.

He did not scream.

Epilogue

When at last, after days of burning, the flames died down
, Dargaard Keep—once the pride of all Solamnia and one of the wonders of Krynn—was little more than a black and charred husk retaining its roselike shape, but none of its former glory.

There had been some who escaped the flames. They had managed to leap from the burning keep and across the yawning chasm surrounding it. But those survivors were few, as most of the inhabitants had succumbed to the flames, dying horrifically only to be reborn as wraithlike beings who haunted the keep in the service of its lord.

Lord Loren Soth.

The Death Knight.

Weeks later, some signs of life returned to the grounds around Dargaard Keep. While the land surrounding the keep, once green and lush, had been blackened by ash
and become almost devoid of life, some flowers had begun to bloom.

In the charred garden within the keep and on the grounds around it, black roses bloomed, their thorns long and sharp and quite painful to the touch.

Travelers sometimes picked the odd, gloomy flowers, but never more than one or two at a time. And most important of all, never did they linger afterward for fear of attracting the attention of the lord of the keep and incurring his wrath.

Lord Loren Soth.

Knight of the Black Rose.

As the sun set on the gray plains of Solamnia, the flame-blackened drawbridge leading into the keep rumbled and was slowly lowered across the chasm.

In silence, Soth’s thirteen retainers, former Sword, Crown and Rose knights, appeared through the archway under the raised portcullis. They were skeletal warriors now, still loyal to their lord, even in death. They exited the keep mounted upon their horses, which had also been transformed by the flames, for yet another nocturnal patrol of Nightlund.

Soth sat on his throne. The walls of the keep that surrounded him were black and charred by the fire. Soth’s armor had also been blackened by the flames.

His flesh had burned too, but he had not died.

With each agonizing movement, his burnt and charred flesh cracked and broke off in pieces. The pain had been less these past few days as most of his skin had slowly fallen off of his body. In another week it would be gone completely, leaving only a cold, hard skeleton.

If anything remained alive in his new undead form, it was his eyes. They burned the color of the same bright orange flames which had consumed him. But they burned also with anguish, regret, and the pain of never ending torment, as he knew he would remain in this form for an eternity so that he might be properly punished for his sins.

The pain of it all was sometimes too much for him to bear. Orange tears fell from his eyes and sizzled like water on a hot iron as they hit the ground below.

To compound his torment, around him circled the banshee spirits, spirits he had brought to life when he so brutally killed the elf-maidens who had confronted him on the way to Istar.

In life they had tormented him with their words. In death they did the same, their words transforming into song.

They would never let him forget.

And now, as he sat on his throne pondering his former life and current unlife, the banshees’ keening wails continued to rip into his mind and tear relentlessly at his soul.

And though his heart did not beat, it was nevertheless shattered and racked by the agonizing pain of regret.

He tried to close his eyes.

But as death would not come to relieve him of this world …

Neither would sleep.