sighed raggedly. 'It doesn't matter which, so long as it happens before the lord of Nedragaard decides to sweep us from his stoop.'
'To me, my knights!'
From the gallery overlooking the main hall, Lord Soth watched the thirteen undead warriors arrive from their various stations around the keep. The first to enter was Wersten Kern, most loyal of his men in life. He was the most loyal, too, in death-if loyalty was a trait these shuffling skeletons could possess. The shadow of that quality lingered in them at the very least. For Soth, that was enough.
Farold, Valcic, and Vingus, the inseparable Knights of the Sword, arrived together. Meyer Seril took up his usual station beside the main doors. As if pulled away from some other, more important task, Derik Grimscribe straggled in last. Once, the Sword Knight had been a master of words. His explanations for his tardiness would have amused the gathered knights no end. Now his jaws moved soundlessly, his tale trapped on the remnants of his rotted tongue.
The thirteen gathered warriors turned their eyeless skulls to their liege. Before Soth could speak, though, another voice sounded in the hall.
'How goes the siege, mighty lord?'
The skeletal knights looked to the shadow-shrouded dais. They hesitated, then dropped to one knee. Soth leaned over the gallery's rail. He had to look straight down the wall to see the Vistani girl perched upon a heavy wooden box set next to his throne. Long ago, another chair had been positioned there, the one belonging to the mistress of the keep, Soth's wife.
'My knights mistake you for someone else,' Soth said coldly. 'You mistake yourself for someone other than a guest.' The death knight's harsh tone made it clear that he did not readily dismiss such improprieties.
'No insult was intended,' Inza replied. 'I thought it best to speak to you of my concerns before you sent your troops anywhere.'
'You have nothing to fear. I will keep my word to your mother. You are safe in my-'
The crash of stone against stone resounded through Nedragaard as the bombardment, which had stopped for nearly half an hour, finally resumed. The missile had not struck the keep itself, though; it had crashed into the rocky ledge to the north. The aim of the engineers directing the catapults had not improved in the five hours they'd been directing sporadic fire against the keep. Far from offering Soth relief, their ineptitude only infuriated him.
The death knight gestured in the general direction of the besieging army. 'You would have nothing to fear from them were you alone in this place. This is no assault. It is an annoyance-one I intend to silence before another moment passes.' Inza stood and walked toward the center of the hall. As she stepped from the shadows, the skeletal warriors rose from their deferential stances. ' Annoyance,' ' she mused aloud. 'Perhaps. This assault most definitely offers no threat to you. Unless…'
'Out with it, woman,' Soth rumbled. 'You do not play coy well.'
'This hopeless siege provides a distraction from the deeds of some great power,' she replied bluntly, 'an enemy more worthy of your attention.'
Soth began to descend the curved stair from the gallery to the hall. 'I do not lack in enemies,' he said as he came. 'I see all of their hands in this- Aderre, the White Rose, that treacherous cur Azrael.'
'Azrael. He must be the one who set your own people against you,' Inza said. The clatter of a missile finally striking the castle underscored the comment.
'He is the one who foolishly heaped gold on Aderre's raiders, paying them to join in this inept siege,' Soth added. 'He is no 'great power,' just a traitor with an inflated estimation of his own cunning.'
The death knight had reached the hall now, and Inza bowed to him respectfully as he approached. 'There is the White Rose to consider, mighty lord,' the Vistana said. 'When I read your fortune in the tarroka cards, her presence loomed large. Come, let me show you.'
She led Lord Soth to the dais. There, upon the seat of the throne itself, lay nine cards arranged in a cross. They were large and crammed to the borders with intricate drawings. Soth could see the red tinge to the ink, even in the gloom shrouding the platform. This deck had been crafted with pigments mixed with blood.
The card at the center of the cross was a knight outfitted in plate armor, roses and kingfishers graven upon the breastplate. There could be no mistaking the figure for anyone but Soth, though the rendering depicted him before his damnation. 'It was my mother's deck,' Inza explained. 'Who else would she portray upon the master card of swords? It is the suit of warriors.'
The Vistana pointed to the two cards arrayed below the Warrior. The first depicted a ghost rising from a crypt. 'This is your near past,' Inza said. 'A force arises to collect an old debt, to remind you of old obligations you have forgotten. The card below it is your distant past: the Innocent.'
'There are no innocents in my past,' Soth said.
'The card can signify someone who was powerless to defend herself at a particular moment in time, someone you might have taken advantage of,' Inza noted. 'She might have been quite formidable otherwise. Both these cards depict the Rose, I think. From what my mother told me, you think she is some warrior from your past, someone with a score to settle.'
'Kitiara,' Soth said.
While no innocent, Kitiara had been helpless, dying, when the death knight took her body from the Tower of High Sorcery. She feared him then, feared that he would raise her from the grave as his eternal consort. That had been his intent, of course. Had he not been dragged from Krynn into this nether-realm, it was an intent he would have fulfilled.
'Perhaps,' Soth murmured. 'Perhaps.'
'Your adversaries are easier to identify,' Inza said. She gestured to the first card on the Warrior's right. 'The Traitor. It can be only Azrael. Behind him is the Charlatan. This woman is your real foe. See the picture-she hides behind a mask, a false identity like this White Rose of yours.'
Soth indicated the rest of the cards with a sweep of his hand. 'Do these tell me what they plan or how I may stop them?' he asked.
Inza suppressed a smile. She had arranged the cards with just that purpose in mind, to direct Lord Soth as she required. But when she looked down at the remaining four-the cards revealing Soth's allies and his future-a wave of fear washed over her. They were not the ones she had so carefully chosen.
'Well?' Soth said impatiently.
'These cards to the Warrior's left are the forces that fight on your side,' she said, desperately trying to forge a suitable meaning for them in her thoughts. 'Though you may not recognize their actions, they are important to you.'
She lifted the first card, the two of coins. 'The Philanthropist. Someone who gives unselfishly, seeking no return but the act itself.' Another card, stuck to the first, dropped onto the ground. It was the eight of glyphs, the Bishop. 'This person is bound by some rigid code. Or perhaps there are two allies who are connected somehow, one who gives, the other who enforces a code.'
The next card, the one that revealed Soth's most important ally, was supposed to have been the four of stars, the Abjurer. The connection of the card's image-a raven-haired woman with a crystal ball-to Inza herself would have been obvious, even to Soth. But the card laid out was the Myrmidon. The unarmed, unarmored figure faced three men shrouded in mist, uncertain of their identity as friend or foe.
'Your other ally seems to be me,' she lied. 'The figure is helpless, surrounded by threatening figures: my situation in the forest before you came to my aid.'
The remaining two cards foretold events to come. The near future was dominated by the Beast, symbolizing anger and fury. The Donjon, with its lone figure trapped within a moonlit tower ^resembling Nedragaard Keep, indicated the distant future. Were Inza trying to interpret the fortune correctly, she would have suggested that anger might continue Soth's imprisonment. Instead, she told him just the opposite. 'If you give in to your fury and slay the Beast,' she announced solemnly, 'you will break free from your prison.'
'Then your cards confirm the course upon which I have already decided.' Soth turned and strode from the dais. 'I want them slaughtered to the last man,' the death knight told his skeletal minions. 'The banshees will ride alongside us. Let them ready their chariots of bone.'
