lord, but I have seen you break your word too many times in the last three and a half centuries. I want-”
“You will demand nothing of me!” Soth shouted and lunged forward.
The ghost evaded the death knight’s mailed hand as it reached for him. He flew across the room to the open window. “Harm me and you will never have her.”
Forcing the fury swelling inside him to subside, Lord Soth faced his seneschal. “Fly out the window if you’d like, Caradoc. I know your curse requires you to return to your corpse eventually.” He raised a hard-soled boot over the skull beneath the tapestry. “Your next threat brings my heel down.”
The ghost froze. He valued nothing so much as the bones that had once housed his soul, and the hope that he might one day be raised from undeath had impelled him to keep his corpse clean and intact. “Wait! Please!”
Soth stood perfectly still, his boot resting lightly on the veiled bones. “Come here.”
Reluctantly the ghost floated toward his master. “I reached Takhisis’s domain as the battle still raged between the Dark Queen and the mortal mage,” he noted as he drew close to Soth.
The death knight placed his foot on the floor once more. “Good,” he said. “Did you locate the soul of Kitiara Uth Matar?”
“Yes. The spell you cast upon my medallion made it easy.”
Soth nodded, and the orange globes of flame that were his eyes flickered in anticipation.
The ghost paused. A look of indecision crossed his face, and he nervously glanced away from the death knight. “She… struggled, my lord,” he continued at last. “Luckily, her spirit was still disoriented from the plunge into the Abyss. As you instructed, I trapped her soul in the medallion.”
The death knight could bear the suspense no longer. His hand darted out and locked around Caradoc’s throat. Before the ghost could react, Soth shredded the neck of his seneschal’s doublet with his other hand. “The medallion’s not here! Where is it?”
The death knight struck Caradoc. No mortal could have done the same, for the ghost’s noncorporeal form protected him from physical attack. To Soth, another undead creature, Caradoc was as solid as the skeleton that lay preserved in the room. “In Pazunia,” the ghost gasped. “I left the medallion in Pazunia.”
“And Kitiara is trapped inside of it?”
“Y-Yes.”
The steel in Soth’s voice was more threatening than the cold emanating from his unliving form. “What do you hope to gain from this, traitor?”
“I–I made a bargain with a powerful tanar’ri lord on my way back from Takhisis’s domain,” he said. “Unless you-” The ghost swallowed hard and forced himself to continue. “Unless you honor your word and see to it I am made mortal again, you will never have Kitiara’s soul.”
Nonchalantly, Soth kicked Caradoc’s remains, shattering the rib cage of the skeleton and splintering both arms. The ghost, still trapped in the death knight’s grip, cried out in anguish. Next, Soth crushed the skull at his feet. Ancient bones fractured and skittered across the floor in the moonlight, disappearing into the thin fog spreading unnoticed on the stones.
“You have no idea how angry you’ve made me,” the death knight said coldly, his voice level.
Soth dragged Caradoc toward the shadowed corner of the study. When he and the whimpering seneschal were covered by the murk that lurked in the corners, the death knight spoke a word of magic. Both creatures disappeared into the darkness. An instant later they emerged from a patch of shadow in the keep’s throne room.
The banshees were hovering near the hall’s high, vaulted ceiling. When the death knight stepped from the darkness, still clutching Caradoc by the throat, the unquiet spirits broke into a mad fit of howling. The thick fog now covering the floor swirled and pulsed, as if it responded to the chilling call of the banshees.
See how he treats his trusted servant! one of the unearthly voices shrieked.
Another of the banshees streaked across the room. I do not see Kitiara’s soul.
The highlord has eluded the death knight’s grasp! Can it be that the book of his fate is correct? Has the master of Dargaard found a traitor in his ranks?
“Do not mock me,” Soth said chillingly, “or I will deal with you after Caradoc.”
The threat quieted the banshees but a little. As the death knight moved to the hall’s center, the spirits floated out of his reach, whispering taunts and barbs. All the while, Caradoc tried in vain to pull free from Soth’s iron grip. “Mercy, my lord,” he cried.
Abruptly Soth marched to his throne, dragging the ghost behind him. There he grasped the hem of his long, purple cloak and fanned the mist away from Kitiara’s still, rigid form. The fog parted for an instant, revealing a corpse covered with tiny drops of water condensed from the ivory mist. On Kitiara’s cheeks, the beads of moisture looked like nothing so much as tears gradually working their way from her deadened eyes.
The death knight gazed at the general’s beautiful face, then he lifted his servant off the ground with one strong arm. “You buy my mercy with Kitiara’s soul. Tell me where to find it.”
During the long return journey from Takhisis’s domain, Caradoc had carefully calculated his bluff. He knew that it was unlikely that Soth would fulfill his promise… unless the death knight believed the seneschal had an ally of greater or equal strength. The substance of the lie had come easily to the seneschal, for even Lord Soth respected the tanar’ri, the terrible fiend-lords that populated the Abyss. How, though, the thought of maintaining the charade terrified the ghost. His only option was to reveal the true location of the medallion and Kitiara’s soul, however, and that would certainly mean the end to the ghost’s hopes for resurrection.
“On my way back across Pazunia,” Caradoc stammered, “I came to an abandoned fortress. I left the medallion-and the highlord’s soul-there.”
“I will open a portal to the Abyss, and you will take me to this fortress.”
“I–I cannot.”
“Why?” Soth snapped. He tightened his strangulating grip on the ghost’s throat.
Caradoc flailed at Soth’s arm, desperate to break away. “A tanar’ri lord arrived at the fortress and took the medallion,” he gasped.
“A tanar’ri lord,” the death knight repeated flatly. He lowered the ghost to the floor.
“Yes, I made a bargain with a very powerful denizen from a place of rotting fungus in the Abyss,” Caradoc said with some relief. He was surprised to find his voice did not quaver now, as if, somehow, the lie gave him strength. “Highlord Kitiara’s soul is trapped in the medallion, and the tanar’ri lord will hold it until I come to collect it… in an unharmed mortal body.”
The banshees hooted with malevolent glee at Caradoc’s words. He has outsmarted you, death knight, they taunted. His new master will shield him from his old. You are undone!
Caradoc looked into the death knight’s glowing eyes, hoping to read something of his intent there, but found them barren of expression.
“Your ploy is clever, Caradoc,” Lord Soth said finally, his voice surprisingly calm. “Though it means I will have to fight this tanar’ri master of yours, I can not let your cleverness go unrewarded.”
That said, the death knight tightened his grip on the ghost’s throat once more. Caradoc squirmed and clutched at Soth’s mailed hand, but the fingers dug slowly, painfully into him. Soon enough the seneschal found he could not speak, then he heard a high ringing in his ears. Soth’s voice broke into his consciousness.
“After I destroy this form, your soul will return to the Lord of the Undead. He will jail you in the void he reserves for ghosts that are no more,” the death knight said.
Caradoc’s vision faded for a moment, then mist rose to block his view of Dargaard’s throne room. He heard the banshees screaming from a place very far away. Only Soth’s voice remained clarion.
“Perhaps Chemosh will resurrect you once again, traitor, but this time as something more mindless-rather like Sir Mikel and the other knights who are condemned to serve me.”
A loud snap sounded from Caradoc’s neck. His head lolled to one side, unsupported by his broken spine. Yet even that did not end the seneschal’s life, so the death knight continued to exert pressure. “Or you may end up as a mane, caught in the army of some monstrous general. I think-”
Abruptly the death knight stopped speaking, his grip faltering. Around him a bank of mist had risen high off the floor, obscuring the throne room, muffling the shrieks and taunts of the banshees. “Is this some kind of trick, Caradoc?”
The ghost, nearly senseless, grunted a reply, but Soth did not comprehend it. Caradoc would tell the death knight where the medallion was if only he would deign to stop the torture. Perhaps if Soth knew that Kitiara’s soul
