raised them high in salute. “
Here, too, Cathan lit the first brand. He had lost count of how many men of the Divine Hammer-and boys, for that matter-he had burned over the years. Too many faces to remember, all of them martyrs in the Kingpriest’s name. Today, though, it was harder to light the fire. Damid, whose body lay shrouded to conceal how the Deathmaster had ruined him, had been more than just a comrade at arms. They had spent many good days together, drinking in wine shops and laughing at each other’s tales. They had journeyed from one end of the empire to the other. Now those days were done, and Cathan felt tired and old. It wasn’t like losing a brother, as some men said-Cathan’s own brother was twenty years gone, victim to a terrible plague, and that loss was still a thorn in his heart-but it hurt all the same.
“Farewell, my friend,” he said, as he set the pyre ablaze.
He walked away, not bothering to look back as the other knights added their own torches to the pile. He went to the cliffs edge, staring out at the caravel with his colorless eyes. The wind snapped at his white tabard, and fine rain began to fall. Sighing, he reached to his belt and pulled forth a talisman of bones and teeth, tipped with a rat’s skull. Black sapphires glittered in the empty sockets. He had pulled it from the Deathmaster’s neck, as proof the old man was dead. There was still blood on it. Now he stared at it, drawn into its ebon gaze.
Behind him, someone coughed. Cathan started, closing his fist around the talisman, and glanced over his shoulder. Tithian stood there, freckled, shaggy, and gangly.
Confronted with his master’s strange stare, he flushed deep red and looked down at his boots. The other knights and squires had taken to calling him Sword flinger after the battle.
Though Cathan had been only slightly older when he first became a knight, Tithian still looked little more than a boy.
“This war,” he said, scuffing the ground with his foot. “It never will end, will it, sir?”
Damid would have laughed at the question, in his infectious way. Just remembering it made Cathan chuckle. Seeing Tithian’s flush deepen, he laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“This is no war, lad,” he said. “We fight the battle every pious man fights, to rid himself of evil-only we fight it for the empire. Our task is to keep the darkness at bay, not to destroy it utterly.”
In its early days, the Divine Hammer had sought to eradicate all evil in Istar. It remained the knighthood’s stated policy, even now. The Kingpriest still spoke of his promised kingdom of eternal light, where the sun would burn so brightly there would be no need for shadow. After so many years, however-so many lives lost-Cathan had found that as weak as the servants of darkness grew, there were always more of them. Perhaps there always would be.
Tithian coughed again, still studying his toes.
“What is it?” Cathan asked.
The squire squirmed beneath his stare. “Well, sir. I mean. It …” He stopped, took a deep breath. “The men say I’m to be knighted for … for what happened.”
Cathan scowled. Those dolts, he thought. I’d been hoping to keep it a surprise.
“Of course,” he said reassuringly. “You don’t do what you did and just get a pat on the head, lad. When we get back to the Lordcity, Grand Marshal Tavarre will dub you himself.”
He paused, frowning as he studied the boy’s grimacing face. “You’re supposed to be happy about that news, Tithian.”
“I know, sir,” Tithian said. “And I’m glad. But…well, I’d hoped you would…”
Pride surged in Cathan’s breast. He’d had four squires before Tithian-all of them knights now, two already dead and burned-but none had asked such a thing of him.
Rightly so, too: the code of the Divine Hammer was clear that the only men who could confer knighthood were the order’s Grand Marshal and the Kingpriest himself. There was something different about Tithian, though. The boy doted on him. He’d been an orphan when the order first took him in, had never known his father, didn’t even have a family name. If Damid had been almost a brother to Cathan, Tithian was nearly his son — and as close as anyone would be, since as a holy order, the Divine Hammer demanded chastity of its members.
Cathan smiled. “Kneel, then.”
Grinning like a kender, Tithian obeyed. His mail rattled as he lowered himself to the rocky ground.
“You understand this isn’t the official ceremony,” Cathan said. “Tavarre will still take care of that. You’re not getting out of your vigil that easily.”
Tithian nodded, still beaming. Chuckling, Cathan reached across his body and drew Ebonbane. The rasp of metal drew the other knights’ attention, and they looked on in surprise as he raised the blade, then set it down on his squire’s shoulders in turns-left, then right, then left again.
“All right,” Cathan bade, sliding his sword home again. “Get up. You’re not a true knight yet, lad, but you’re one in my eyes.”
Any wider and Tithian’s smile would have split his head in two. Leaping to his feet, he clasped Cathan’s arms. “Thank you, sir,” he gushed. “Thank you!” He dashed off, back toward the other squires, who were eyeing him jealously.
Cathan shook his head, watching him go. Then his gaze drifted along the bluff, taking in the two pyres, and his smile faltered. He signed the triangle. Tucking the talisman back into his belt, he turned and stared out to sea once more.
The sky was filled with jewels. Diamond and ruby stars sparkled on black velvet. The two moons, disks of chalcedony and sard, glided over constellations Cathan knew well: the Valiant Warrior, horned Kiri-Jolith, the five- headed Queen of Darkness, and still others, each the sign of a god of light or darkness. There, amid it all, was the greatest gem of all: a globe of turquoise, fringed with wisps of cloud. The world. Krynn.
Cathan winced in his sleep, groaning. He knew this dream. It had plagued his sleep since the night before his dubbing. Not a month went by when he didn’t find himself floating here, among the stars. Every time, it was the same.
Small wonder it’s happening tonight, he thought. Once the pyres guttered out, the cultists’ ashes scattered and the knights’ gathered into a golden urn to be brought back to the Lordcity, his company had ridden inland, away from the Hullbreaker and the fierce sea winds. When they camped at nightfall, in a copse of swaying birches, the men of the Divine Hammer had all but fallen from their saddles. Cathan had forced himself to stay awake until the fires were lit and the watch set, then had climbed into his bedroll and fallen asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.
Now in his dreams he looked upon Krynn from high above, marking the continent of Ansalon amid the ocean’s blue. He saw each of its realms: Ergoth, Solamnia, Kharolis…the woods of the elves and the mountain fastnesses of the dwarves…the meadows where the kender dwelt, and the frozen barrens of Icereach…and there, larger than any, Istar the Holy, the Kingpriest’s glorious Lordcity shining at its heart.
Now something else. Something behind him, coming closer.
He turned, knowing already what he would see. The burning hammer was as much a part of the dream as the stars and moons, a great flaming mass streaking across the night.
It had been there the first time the dream came, the eve of his dubbing. The Divine Hammer took its name from the vision. As Cathan watched, it grew larger and larger against the night. Closer, closer…then streaking past him in a silent rush, close enough that its heat seared him, its light made his eyes sting.
Still he watched it go, fire trailing in its wake, diving now toward the turquoise orb.
Toward Istar. It was the god’s justice, come down to crush evil from the world. He ground his teeth, tensing as he waited for it to strike, the terrible roar of noise as it fell upon the empire….
“Sir? Sir, wake-”
Cathan’s eyes snapped open at once. A dark shadow loomed over him, a hand touched his arm. He sat up, reached for Ebonbane beside him, and had the sword halfway out of its scabbard before the shape resolved into Tithian. The boy straightened up, taking a step back, unafraid. This wasn’t the first time he’d woken his master from the throes of the dream.
It was dim out, and cool-it never got truly cold this far north. Fine rain, almost mist, dripped down through the boughs. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was trying, the sky and everything beneath it gray. The campfires had burned down to cinders, and most of the other knights were still asleep in their bedrolls. Off in the shadows, the
