cursed the structure. He swore the tower’s gates would remain closed and its halls empty until the vague prophecy he uttered came true. To seal the curse, he leaped from the tower’s highest balcony onto the spiked fence surrounding it. Instantly the gold and silver gates turned black, and the once-beautiful structure darkened. Now the Tower of High Sorcery was a pool of shadow within the radiance of Palanthas; its ice-gray marble stood in stark contrast to the pure white stone that made up the city’s minarets.
The only way to enter the Tower of High Sorcery was through the Shoikan Grove; not even powerful spells of teleportation could gain someone entrance. The twisted oaks that had grown up around the tower housed dreadful supernatural guardians. The grove radiated fear as well. The terror the place inspired was so overwhelming that even kender, whose curiosity almost always overcame their fears, could not pass within the grove without their resolve crumbling.
Such threats held no sway over Soth, and he stepped into the bleak grove as if it were any ordinary wood.
Yet as he moved into the trees, the death knight dimly felt the chill that would have made a mortal shiver uncontrollably. An eternal darkness hung like moss on the grove’s twisted roots and branches, and no wind stirred the ragged, shriveled leaves. Indeed, there was a presence in the grove. Soth recognized the pulsing that permeated the cursed wood: the aura of souls caught in tormented unlife. It was a feeling with which he was quite familiar.
The ground, spongy with decaying leaves and mold-covered from the lack of sunlight, trembled with each silent step. When Soth was surrounded by the tall trees, the trembling stopped. Covered with grime, a pale hand burst from the dirt and reached for Soth’s leg. Another bony hand, then another, pushed through the soft earth to clutch at the death knight. Still more dead hands closed around Soth’s ankles and tried to pull him down.
“You have no cause to bar me, brothers,” the death knight said calmly. The pale, decayed hands hesitated. “I wish to take nothing from the tower that you have been sworn to guard, but I will destroy you if you delay me.”
From inside the ground a voice came weakly, “We know you, Soth, as one of us. What do you seek in the Tower of High Sorcery?”
“The mortal woman-Kitiara Uth Matar-half-sister to the dark mage, Raistlin. She passed through the grove a short time ago, did she not?”
“She attempted to brave the Shoikan Grove,” came the disembodied reply.
“Attempted?” Soth asked, anger edging his voice. “She possesses a black jewel granting her power to pass through your grasps unhindered. I was with her once when she used it against you.”
“The jewel grants her protection… unless she shows fear,” the voice murmured from deep in the ground.
Tensing at the guardian’s implication, Soth snapped, “Where is she?” The hands fell back and withdrew into the spongy earth.
“Surrender her body!” the death knight shouted, furious. His hollow voice echoed through the silent trees.
The oppressive feeling in the grove grew stronger, and a quiet moan of despair floated from deep underground. A single hand pushed through the matted fallen leaves. It held a fragment of night-blue dragonscale armor. “We wounded her, shattered her armor, but we did not claim her body. She is alive, in the tower.”
The death knight stormed toward the iron fence that surrounded the tower. He wrenched the rusted gate open, then forced the rune-covered door that barred his path into the tower itself. Like the guardians of the grove, the shapeless, shadowy things haunting the ancient halls of the Tower of High Sorcery cowered before Soth.
Once inside, the death knight stood at the foot of a long stair that ascended to the tower’s upper floors, its length lit sparsely by globes of feeble magical radiance. The room that held the portal to Takhisis’s domain, the room that had been Kitiara’s goal, lay far above him. Without hesitation, Soth stepped into a large corner of shadow, away from the magical globes. Using a power granted him by his nether-life, the death knight melted completely into the darkness.
A moment later, Soth emerged from a similar shadow that darkened the door to the tower’s laboratory. This was the room that housed the portal. Noting with a dull satisfaction that the wards had not prevented his magical travel within the tower, the death knight pushed the heavy wooden door. Its battered hinges creaked a loud complaint as it swung open.
The outcast elf, Dalamar, gazed at the open door, but at first Soth hovered in the shadows, hidden from sight. The mage sat in an uncomfortable chair, reflexively crumpling, then smoothing his black, rune-covered robes. “No one can enter,” he said softly to an armored man who knelt with his back to the door. The mage’s hand dropped to a parchment scroll in his belt. “The guardians-”
Soth stepped into the room just as the armored man turned to face the door. It was Tanis Half-Elven. “- cannot stop him,” the half-elf said, completing Dalamar’s sentence.
A look of horror came over Tanis’s face at the sight of the death knight. Dalamar smiled grimly and relaxed. “Enter, Lord Soth,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
When the fallen knight did not budge, Dalamar repeated the invitation. Soth remained in the doorway a moment longer, his orange glare locked onto Tanis’s visage. The death knight didn’t care how his foe had come to be in the tower-perhaps he’d flown over Shoikan Grove on the bronze dragon and dropped onto the roof. All that mattered to Soth was that Tanis Half-Elven stood between him and his prize.
Tanis lowered his hand toward his sword, a move that surprised Soth after his earlier cowardice. Dalamar placed slender fingers gently on the half-elf’s arm and said, “Do not interfere, Tanis. He does not care about us. He comes for one thing only.”
Dim candlelight illuminated the laboratory, revealing rows of black-bound spellbooks, ominously hissing vials and beakers, and huge stone tables reserved for larger, more frightening experiments. The portal through which Raistlin had already passed to encounter Takhisis stood on the opposite side of the room, away from Soth. The great circlet of steel was covered in gold and silver runes, and five carved dragons’ heads snarled around its edges. In a corner away from the portal, covered in a cloak, was the object of the death knight’s search. Kitiara! Soth’s undead heart leaped as he crossed the room with forceful steps. He drew back the cloak and knelt beside the corpse.
In death Kitiara Uth Matar appeared as beautiful to Soth as she had in life. Her bright brown eyes were frozen open in an expression of horror. Her night-blue dragonscale armor had been stripped away by the tower’s guardians, and her black, tight-fitting doublet was shredded, revealing her tan skin. The death knight hardly saw the bloody gash in her leg or the long scratches, purple from poison, that the guardians had inflicted. The charred hole burned into her chest, undoubtedly from some magical attack of Dalamar’s, troubled him for only an instant. The wounds mattered little as long as Kitiara’s body remained intact enough to house her revived soul.
The last embers of Kitiara’s mortal life were flickering out, yet her soul still hung over her body. A small, ghostly image of the general writhed in torment, attached to her corpse by a thin, yet brilliant cord of energy. “Let go of this life,” Soth murmured to Kitiara. The cord brightened as the soul clung desperately to mortal life. The cause was not fear, but love.
Soth turned to face his most hated adversary. “Release her to me, Tanis Half-Elven,” he said, his voice filling the laboratory. “Your love binds her to this plane. Give her up.”
The half-elf screwed a look of resolve onto his face and took a step forward. His hand was on the hilt of his sword. Before he could move closer to Soth, Dalamar warned, “He’ll kill you, Tanis. He’ll slay you without hesitation. Let her go to him. After all, I think perhaps he was the only one of us who ever truly understood her.”
The words of the outcast elf fanned the blaze of hatred in Soth’s heart; Kitiara was being kept from him by cowards and lackeys! The death knight’s orange eyes flared. “Understood her?” he rumbled. “Admired her! Like I myself, she was meant to rule, destined to conquer! But she was stronger than I was. She could throw aside love that threatened to chain her down. But for a twist of fate, she would have ruled all of Ansalon!”
Tanis gripped his sword more tightly. “No,” he said softly.
Dalamar grasped the half-elf's wrist and met his gaze. “She never loved you, Tanis,” he said without emotion. “She used you as she used us all, even him.” As Dalamar glanced toward Soth, Tanis started to speak. The dark elf cut him off. “She used you to the end, Half-Elven. Even now, she reaches from beyond, hoping you will save her.”
As Soth grasped his own sword, ready to strike Tanis down, the half-elf's face went slack. It was as if he had
