Dragons of Spring Dawning - Margaret Weis [137]
The hooded draconian, ignoring the stammering jailor who was trotting along behind him like a fat dog, grabbed a torch from the wall and came over to stand directly in front of the companions’ jail cell.
“Get me out of this place!” Caramon shouted, elbowing Berem to one side.
But the draconian, ignoring Caramon, reached through the bars of the cell and laid a clawed hand on Berem’s shirt front. Tas darted a frantic look at Caramon. The big man’s face was deathly pale. He made a desperate lunge at the draconian, but it was too late.
With a twist of its clawed hand, the draconian ripped Berem’s shirt to shreds. Green light flared into the jail cell as the torchlight illuminated the gemstone embedded in Berem’s flesh.
“It is he,” Gakhan said quietly. “Unlock the cell.”
The jailor put the key in the cell door with hands that shook visibly. Snatching it away from the hobgoblin, one of the draconian guards opened the cell door, then they surged inside. One guard struck Caramon a vicious blow on the side of the head with the hilt of its sword, felling the warrior like an ox, while another grabbed Tika.
Gakhan entered the cell.
“Kill him”—the draconian motioned at Caramon—“and the girl and the kender.” Gakhan laid his clawed hand on Berem’s shoulder. “I will take this one to Her Dark Majesty.” The draconian flashed a triumphant glance around at the others.
“This night, victory is ours,” he said softly.
Sweating in the dragon-scale armor, Tanis stood beside Kitiara in one of the vast antechambers leading into the Great Hall of Audience. Surrounding the half-elf were Kitiara’s troops, including the hideous skeletal warriors under the command of the death knight, Lord Soth. These stood in the shadows just behind Kitiara. Though the antechamber was crowded—Kitiara’s draconian troops were packed in spear to spear—there was, nevertheless, a vast empty space around the undead warriors. None came near them, none spoke to them, they spoke to no one. And though the room was stifling hot with the crushing press of many bodies, a chill flowed from these that nearly stopped the heart if one ventured too near.
Feeling Lord Soth’s flickering eyes upon him, Tanis could not repress a shudder. Kitiara glanced up at him and smiled, the crooked smile he had once found so irresistible. She stood close to him, their bodies touching.
“You’ll get used to them,” she said coolly. Then her gaze returned to the proceedings in the vast Hall. The dark line appeared between her brows, her hand tapped irritably upon her sword hilt. “Get moving, Ariakas,” she muttered.
Tanis looked over her head, staring through the ornate doorway they would enter when it was their turn, watching in an awe he could not hide as the spectacle unfolded before his eyes.
The Hall of Audience of Takhisis, Queen of Darkness, first impressed the viewer with a sense of his own inferiority. This was the black heart which kept the dark blood flowing and—as such—its appearance was fitting. The antechamber in which they stood opened onto a huge circular room with a floor of polished black granite. The floor continued up to form the walls, rising in tortured curves like dark waves frozen in time. Any moment, it seemed, they could crash down and engulf all those within the Hall in blackness. It was only Her Dark Majesty’s power that held them in check. And so the black waves swept upward to a high domed ceiling, now hidden from view by a wispy wall of shifting, eddying smoke—the breath of dragons.
The floor of the vast Hall was empty now, but it would soon be filling rapidly as the troops marched in to take up their positions beneath the thrones of their Highlords. These thrones—four of them—stood about ten feet above the gleaming granite floor. Squat gates opened from the concave walls onto black tongues of rock that licked outward from the walls. Upon these four huge platforms—two to each side—sat the Highlords—and only the Highlords. No one else—not even bodyguards—was allowed beyond the top