lifeless. Even the sky was gray, like a lid of cold iron pressing close above the mountain summits.
There was one lone structure, an eminence rising from the mountain’s gray stone. The color of the structure closely matched its surroundings, yet the sheer walls, looming gate, and lofty tower marked that building as a thing that had been constructed.
The dark castle occupied a cleft in the dark range. A deep moat, with a bottom lost in shadow, surrounded the entire fortress. The moat was spanned in one place by a long, slender bridge that had been built upon a single arch, with the span anchored at each side of the deep barrier. Tall, sheer walls looked down on the moat and the bridge, and the small valley beyond. A single keep rose within those walls, and that building was dominated by a tall tower-which was just a slight shade darker in color than the rest of the castle and the surrounding landscape.
A man stood in the window at the top of that tower, gazing out on the castle and the valley, the mountains, perhaps the whole world. He too was as dark and gray as the mountains, his skin swarthy, his once-black hair growing thick at the brows and on top of his head streaked with enough white to render it gray. A gray cape hung near where he stood, on a peg in the wall.
He wore a black cloak, wrapped like a toga about him, as he stared wordlessly, for a very long time, from his lofty perch. Leaning forward, he let one hand rest on the stone sill of the window, allowed the cool air to brush his features, chilling him as it evaporated the sweat beaded onto his forehead. He looked at the slate sky, at all the gray facets of his world, and he frowned.
“Hoarst? Why don’t you come back to bed?”
Hoarst turned slowly to look at the woman who had spoken. Her shock of hair, snowy white, spilled across the pillow as she stared at him, lazily lying on her side. Her skin, as white as her hair, looked as cold as ice-though he remembered its heat against his flesh. She was Sirene, and she pleased and served him in many ways, willingly giving him her body, even sharing drops of her blood when he needed them for various spells and potions.
At that moment, she simply repelled him.
“Leave me,” he ordered. “I will have need of you, but not until later.”
The albino woman’s eyes widened slightly, but she quickly scooted away, out the far side of the bed, gathering up her clothes and, barely taking time to throw a robe over her slender shoulders, darting out the door. Even in her haste, she remembered to close it very gently.
Hoarst exhaled slowly, relishing the precise control over his breathing. Disdaining the use of magic for now, he took an inordinate amount of time to wash and dress himself, heating a metal bowl of water over a small brazier, cleansing his face and hands, shaving carefully. He smoothed the wrinkles from his gray tunic and leggings before donning them and even buffed, slightly, his worn and comfortable boots. He took pleasure in the mundane tasks, which he could easily have accomplished merely by casting a few simple cantrips. He was saving even the tiniest expenditure of his power for something, anything, more interesting than his ablutions.
He picked up a gray robe and draped it casually over his arm as he finally emerged from his chamber in the high tower. He took the steps one at a time, counting them silently as he rounded the spire again and again in a descending spiral. At one hundred four steps, he reached the door at the bottom, drew a slow, contemplative breath, and emerged into the heart of his stronghold.
What had once been the keep’s great hall, Hoarst the Thorn Knight had converted into a huge laboratory for the working of his magic. A great oven had been installed along one wall, with benches of burners, centrifuges, glass vials, and a myriad of components arrayed on both sides. A pipeline of water had been diverted to run along the length of his primary workbench, with several spigots operated by hand screws, so he could turn on a flow of water at any one of them simply by adjusting the valves.
The other side of the room was devoted to rows of tall cabinets, which stood like wardrobes, each stocked with the odds and ends of magical experimentation: bats and rats and bugs, sometimes dried and whole, sometimes divided into useful components such as eyes, livers, and tongues. There were more than a dozen live birds, some of them tropical creatures of colorful plumage, but including a scruffy crow, several hawks, and a leering vulture, all caged in one corner of the room.
Above the great fireplace, poised over a warm bed of glowing embers, a cauldron large enough to hold a man’s body was suspended. Within that vat bubbled a brew of dark brown, with bits of organic matter-the tip of a tentacle, a bit of leathery wing, an eyeball, something that looked distressingly like a child’s hand-occasionally roiling to the surface. A miasma of steamy vapor lingered above the cauldron but also seeped outward to infuse every corner of the great room.
All that was Hoarst’s creation, and all of it he ignored, stalking through the laboratory and on through the anteroom, where three wide halls converged at the keep’s front door. He gave no thought to the locked door at his left, though behind that door was the long stairway leading deep into the rocky ground. Down there, behind a succession of locked doors-and guarded by other, more devious threats as well-was the trove of treasure and possessions that made Hoarst one of the wealthiest men in the world.
Not very long ago, a mere stroll down into that dungeon, with its permanent light spell cast broadly over the piles of gleaming coins, the chests full of precious gems, the bullion and statuary, paintings and vases and chandeliers, would have gladdened his heart, rescued him from the deepest depression. Much of the treasure he had plundered from Palanthas, when he had been the chief Gray Robe of the ruling Dark Knight Council. Oh, there had been lords who outranked him, generals with greater authority than the Thorn Knight Hoarst. But he had feared none of them-no, they had feared him, and he had prospered by their fear.
The rest of the trove had been fair payment given to Hoarst by the half-giant Ankhar the Truth. The Gray Robe had served in the army of the great barbarian as his chief wizard, and for his service, he had been well rewarded. Ankhar’s own treasure wagons had bulged, following his sacking of Garnet and Thelgaard, and the cultureless barbarian had willingly allowed Hoarst to pick and choose from among the objects of art, the enchanted items, and classical statues that had all been tossed together in a jumble.
As a result, the Gray Robe possessed a collection unmatched anywhere on Krynn, save perhaps the palace of some eastern king. Now and then, Hoarst thought about bringing those priceless objects up from the dungeon and scattering them around the barren castle to enliven his mood. It depressed the wizard to realize that he kept putting that off; he really didn’t care to exert the energy, to take the trouble of deciding where to display his treasure.
Of course, his women would have helped. There were nearly two dozen there at that moment. He thought of them as his harem, using them as concubines as well as servants. They were all young and beautiful, and he had collected them from the many corners of the world. They varied in complexion from the alabaster Sirene to women of brown and darkest black. Some were voluptuous, others slender; some short, some tall. There were elf maids and humans among them, for those two races he judged to possess the greatest physical beauty. All were cheerful and accommodating-their cooperation assured, when necessary, by the careful use of a charm spell.
Sirene, the albino, had become something of a favorite lately, spending night after night in his bed. He knew the others were jealous of her, and that pleased him for, in their jealousy, the rest became all that much more eager to do his bidding.
Yet even the pleasure of controlling all those women grew thin and tasteless, feeling like merely another way to bore himself.
He turned to the right, away from the steps leading to his treasure trove. The kitchen lay in that direction and there would be fresh bread-as there always was in the morning-and that kindled a gnaw of hunger in his belly. He was grateful for the sensation, any glimmer of sensation.
Then he felt a chill, as if an unseen filter had passed above the layer of gray cloud, leaving full daylight in the courtyard beyond his windows but somehow sapping even the minimal heat of the day from the air. A knock sounded on the great doors of the keep, a booming thunder that originated only a few steps away and echoed through the lofty, empty halls like some kind of dirge.
Hoarst stepped to the door and opened it, his curiosity piqued. He encountered a man who was wrapped in a black robe, the cloaking so complete as to mask even the fellow’s face. There was a medallion around the masked man’s neck, a disk of gold displaying the emerald eye of Hiddukel.
“Who are you?” asked the magic user.
“I am the Nightmaster, High Priest of the Prince of Lies,” said the other man, bowing formally and entering the hall.
Hoarst nodded, not displeased. Perhaps something interesting would happen after all.
The hobgoblin pulled back the leather flap and leered into the dark, humid hut.
