"They require much study," the mage protested. "I don't know their secrets yet."
"Use them!"
Wearily rising to his feet, the mage stepped to the sandalwood box, began the spell to unlock the box, then stopped in mid-incantation. Hands shaking, he reached out. The lid came up easily. The mage looked up, horror and anger warring on his gray face, then stared back into the sandalwood box. "They're gone!" he whispered. "That bitch!" Janusz, his lips thin, reached into his pocket and pulled out two glowing stones. "She has nine, while only one may be enough to rule Krynn, for all I know."
A shout sounded outside. The self-important general entered, nervousness apparent in every twitch of his hands. "We have found the body of your son-in-law, Valdane," he said, adding unnecessarily, "the Meir."
"So?" snapped the leader. "We knew he died days ago, in the first attack. Go away or get to the point. I have greater problems."
The general looked deflated. "The corpse of a woman lies at the coffin's foot."
"Do I care? Who is it?"
"It . . . it appears to be the body of the Meir's wife."
The Valdane grew deadly quiet, then spoke. "Kitiara swore Dreena escaped."
"It appears Captain Uth Matar was wrong, Valdane," the general said, his words thick with spite. "The body wears the wedding jewelry of Dreena ten Valdane—the malachite owl on a chain of silver thread. The chain is melted, but the stone is identifiable."
The Valdane's voice remained quiet. "Dreena would never part with that."
"By the dark god Morgion," Janusz said brokenly at last. His words rasped. "Dreena died in the magefire. And I . . " He swayed and leaned heavily against the trunk that once held the sandalwood box. His voice trailed off. Dazed, he watched as the general met the same fate as his colleague only minutes before.
As the general choked out his last, the Valdane swung back to the mage. His face was colorless; his fists were clenched.
"As you value your life, mage, find Kitiara Uth Matar. Bring her to me. I will see her die."
Chapter 1
Meeting in the Dark
The scream shredded the night like a broad-axe cleaves the head of an ogre.
Wayfarers in the woods learned to awaken in a hurry, or they didn't awaken at all. In an eyeblink, Tanis Half-Elven leaped into awareness and, with a smoothness born of many nights spent in lonely camps, pulled his longsword from his pallet. He swept sand over the campfire embers with one kick of a bare foot and froze, sword extended diagonally before him. Tanis pivoted slowly and waited, his elven night-vision probing deep into the surrounding underbrush.
Nothing. The breeze barely disturbed the spring leaves of the maple saplings that crowded around him. The wind wafted the scent of mud and decayed plants from the White-rageRiver to the north but carried no sound beyond the stream's gurgle and the creaking of the ageless oaks overhead. Both moons, silver Solinari and scarlet Lunitari, were waning, and the clearing's darkness would have been nearly impenetrable to anyone but a night-seeing elf.
Then, twanging against Tanis's nerves like fingers on a mistuned lyre, the scream came again. From the north, he realized.
The half-elf caught up bow and quiver and raced through the night, the fringe of his leather shirt snapping with his speed. The night creatures of the inland forest—skunks, opossums, and raccoons—flattened against the ground as the half-elf pounded past. His steps were lighter than those of his human kin, but far heavier than those of the elven brethren he'd left behind weeks earlier in Qualinost.
Tanis paused at a cleft in the path, waiting for a clue to send him down either left or right. The left wandered generally north and west, ending several days' journey away in Haven. The right path eventually ended at the White-rage gorge, pointing, across the river, toward Darken Wood. Rumors were rife of creatures, both alive and not quite alive, that made the forbidding wood their home. There was little in the way of firsthand knowledge about Darken Wood; people who ventured in rarely came out.
At that moment, another scream sent the half-elf sprinting along the left fork. Tanis dashed into a clearing in the oaks and maples in time to see a human, with a shout of satisfaction, plunge a longsword into a hairy behemoth. The victim, wearing blood-red armor, fell with a scream. The creature's weapon, a type of spiked cudgel called a morning star, rolled into the undergrowth.
"Hobgoblins!" the half-elf breathed. He slid to a halt in the decaying litter of the clearing.
Three monsters lay motionless. Three other snarling creatures, a head taller than Tanis, loomed over the slender human. They jabbed spears, twitched whips, and swung morning stars. All boasted the bluish noses of the hobgoblin warriors. One beast leaped forward, the watery moonlight of waning Solinari painting its red-orange skin with a silvery patina.
The hobgoblin waved a cudgel over the human's helmed head. The human deftly sidestepped, and the hobgoblin's eyes glowed yellow under its headpiece. The air reeked of blood, flattened plants, mud, and unwashed hobgoblin. The creatures stank of carrion and a hundred battles. The human, a lithe figure, decapitated the attacking hobgoblin with a slash and an oath, but the creature's fist struck the human a glancing blow as the monster fell, snapping the strap that held the helmet. The helm fell back, revealing a pallid face topped with curly dark hair.
"A woman?" Tanis demanded loudly. The new sound attracted the two remaining hobgoblins, who swung around to look toward Tanis.
The woman cast the half-elf a furious look and switched her sword from her right hand to her left. She straightened the helm on her head, mindless of the broken strap, and flicked the tip of her weapon, slicing an arc across the brawny arm of a monster. "Don't get cocky," she snapped in Common at the hobgoblin. "I could finish you at any time."
The creature grunted and retreated, but its companion continued to peer at the new
