“My son,” she murmured, “it seems your Kerian has become an enemy of your enemy.”

“She has,” Gil said, “and her head is no safer now than her brother’s. She’s a headlong fool, mother.”

Laurana raised a brow. Her lips moved in a small smile, and Gil was reminded that the same had once been said about her by his father.

Laurana took a sip of water, another taste of the cooling peach muffin. “Let’s give Nayla a chance to rest and eat, then let’s see if we can find Kerian before Thagol does.”

The glint in her eye, sudden and keen, was like that of sunlight on dangerous steel.

On the misty plane where Skull Knights can roam, what was fresh news to the royal family of Qualinesti was old news to Thagol Dream Walker. He wandered the dangerous roads between consciousness and dreams, listening to the sounds of death-the scream, the whimper, the moan. He listened for the sigh, the bittersweet acceptance, and the final silence. In him, his dream, his heart, his chilly soul, were the strains of a dark, descending symphony.

He knew the very moment when Sir Barg died, the Knight who in better times, older days, would not have been so much as a groom in the stable of the lowliest Knight of Takhisis. He knew the murderer, who was a slave in the house of Senator Rashas. It had often been she who ran messages between the Lord Knight and the senator. Kerianseray, her name. Kerianseray. In his mind, he tasted the Knight’s death, knew all the bitterness of his dying, felt the shock of it, the knife scraping on ribs, sliding into the beating muscle that was his heart. Like ice, he felt what rushed in as Barg’s blood rushed out.

By the time Gilthas had begun his meeting with the elf woman Nayla, Lord Thagol had left his dreamwalking and completed a meeting of his own with Senator Rashas. The two spoke only briefly, then the Lord General was standing before his assembled garrison, dark-armored warriors like pieces of night come to life.

In the minds of the men was only one thought-each knew he must stand well before the Skull Knight, never moving, his breathing hidden inside the shell of his armor, his eyes straight ahead, hands still. They might wish the sweat didn’t run on them, the small motion of a salty bead sliding down a cheek, something to draw the Lord Knight’s attention.

He had but two things to impart to his garrison, and Lord Thagol did that swiftly. One was the command that the elf woman Kerianseray be brought back to Qualinost for killing. His thought leaped from his mind to theirs. In their minds they saw the woman, the golden mane of her hair, the tattoos that marked her as a Kagonesti. They saw the killer as though in a flash of lightning. They saw a murdered Knight as though his body lay at their feet. With one motion, ten Knights stepped forward to volunteer for the work. Thagol wanted more Knights than those. He commanded that those ten take patrols of four and range the roads of the elf kingdom, stopping in every town of note, every waycross with a tavern.

The other thing Sir Eamutt Thagol told his men was that the watch rotations on the four bridges would double, and in short order no Knights would be required to keep post at the doors to his headquarters, the ugly stone building that so irritated the Qualinesti.

Like a storm come out of season, Lord Thagol’s Knights flashed along the roads of Qualinesti. The hard hooves of war-horses tore the earth, trampling. Their voices lifted in laughter and cursing, for these Knights had been too long away from battlegrounds, too long consigned to the backwater of the green dragon’s conquered lands. Out upon the roads, each patrol like a dark-shining blade, they sang battle songs, they recounted deeds brave and terrible. Blood-lusty they rode, each patrol upon its mission, each with a leader who spoke words of proclamation before the doors of taverns, inns, and hostels, in the squares of villages, on the streets of towns. These words they’d gotten from Thagol himself, not from his lips but words graven into their own minds in flashing bolts. No one of the messenger Knights, speaking, changed so much as the rhythm of their lord’s speech.

It is commanded! By order of my lord Sir Eamutt Thagol, he of Neraka and lately of the Monastery Bone …

Elves would stand in perfect stillness, some caught like rabbits in terror, most of them taking care to keep their truest feelings from these Knights. They were not stone, these farmers and shopkeepers, the gods had made them of flesh and bone, and they had true hearts that stirred at the darkness of Knights. They had learned over the years of occupation that an elf could die of a resentful glance, a perceived arrogance. They kept quiet, they kept still, and they listened as the war-horses snorted and danced and Knights laughed in scorn.

The Knights gone, the elves would gather and speak of anger. Some spoke resentment, and when they did the name of the outlawed woman sprang to their lips.

Who is this Kerianseray of Qualinost? Who is this woman who brings down a plague of Knights upon us?

They would argue among themselves, quietly as elves do, their passion seen only in the glinting of their eyes. They would remind themselves that they must not let the Knights change them, they must not let these dragon-days become the days of their undoing. They had never tolerated murderers among them. Should they now because the killer killed a Knight?

Some among them did not agree, and they were always the youngest, the farm lads, the girls who must hold themselves still under the leering eyes of a Knight. These, in the privacy of their hearts or souls, didn’t consider the killing of one of the occupation force a murder.

On the morning of the first true day of autumn, four Knights of Takhisis sat their tall battle steeds in front of the place where the trouble began. Armed as for war, encased in mail and plate, faceless in their casques, each held a flaring torch. The light of their fire ran on the shining steel blades. It slid down the arcs of breastplates, on knee guards, glinted from bridles and bits and shone like blood in the fierce eyes of war-horses. The four ranged around a fifth, the Knight known among his fellows as Headsman Chance. Sir Chance sat the tallest of the steeds, and all the Knights stood darkly behind him against the gold and red of the falling season glowing warmly in the forest beyond the edges of the road.

From out of the morning mist came muffled cries, emanating from nearby, the village proper. Hearing those cries, Bueren Rose glanced at her father, thinking Jale looked like a ghost standing in the dooryard of his beloved tavern, his Hare and Hound. A small breeze wandered by, tugging at her red-gold hair. The sign above the tavern door swung wearily, bolts creaking. Beside her, her father Jale looked terrified. She thought-a stray thought, like a stray curling of mist-that her father had run this tavern all his life. When he was only a child, he’d started out as a potboy in the tavern, his duties no more than those of young Firthing who held that job now, a scrubber of pots and dishes, emptier of slops from the guest chambers. In time he became the cook’s boy, learning how to prepare dishes he’d become known for along road from Sliathnost to Qualinost. He’d been taught to cook by his mother. From his father, an old Forest Keeper retired from service after too many wounds, Jale had learned how to tend bar and toss out troublemakers. Since before the coming of green Beryl with her fangs and her Knights, there had been the Hare and Hound. Since before the Chaos War, this tavern had stood.

The breath of Sir Chance’s horse steamed in the cold morning air. Bridle and bit jingling, the battle-beast tossed his head. Bueren thought the horse’s eyes looked wild, red and eager. Worse, though, his rider’s eyes shone winter-gray and cold.