Dragons of Winter Night - Margaret Weis [1]
Chapter 9 - Tanis captured.
Chapter 10 - The High Clerist’s Tower. The knighting.
Chapter 11 - A kender’s curiosity. The Knights ride forth.
Chapter 12 - Death on the plains. Tasslehoff’s discovery.
Chapter 13 - The sun rises. Darkness descends.
Chapter 14 - Dragon orb. Dragonlance.
The Funeral
About the Authors
The winter winds raged outside, but within the caverns of the mountain dwarves beneath the Kharolis Mountains, the fury of the storm was not felt. As the Thane called for silence among the assembled dwarves and humans, a dwarven bard stepped forward to do homage to the companions.
Song of the Nine Heroes
From the north came danger, as we knew it would:
In the vanguard of winter, a dragon’s dance
Unraveled the land, until out of the forest,
Out of the plains they came, from the mothering earth,
The sky unreckoned before them.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
One from a garden of stone arising,
From dwarf-halls, from weather and wisdom,
Where the heart and mind ride unquestioned
In the untapped vein of the hand.
In his fathering arms, the spirit gathered.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
One from a haven of breezes descending,
Light in the handling air,
To the waving meadows, the kender’s country,
Where the grain out of smallness arises itself
To grow green and golden and green again.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The next from the plains, the long land’s keeping,
Nurtured in distance, horizons of nothing.
Bearing a staff she came, and a burden
Of mercy and light converged in her hand:
Bearing the wounds of the world, she came.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The next from the plains, in the moon’s shadow,
Through custom, through ritual, trailing the moon
Where her phases, her wax and her wane, controlled
The tide of his blood, and his warrior’s hand
Ascended through hierarchies of space into light.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
One within absences, known by departures,
The dark swordswoman at the heart of fire:
Her glories the space between words,
The cradlesong recollected in age,
Recalled at the edge of awakening and thought.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
One in the heart of honor, formed by the sword,
By the centuries’ flight of the kingfisher over the land,
By Solamnia ruined and risen, rising again
When the heart ascends into duty.
As it dances, the sword is forever an heirloom.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The next in a simple light a brother to darkness,
Letting the sword hand try all subtleties,
Even the intricate webs of the heart. His thoughts
Are pools disrupted in changing wind—
He cannot see their bottom.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The next the leader, half-elven, betrayed
As the twining blood pulls asunder the land,
The forests, the worlds of elves and men.
Called into bravery, but fearing for love,
And fearing that, called into both, he does nothing.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The last from the darkness, breathing the night
Where the abstract stars hide a nest of words,
Where the body endures the wound of numbers,
Surrendered to knowledge, until, unable