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  His gaze swept the assembled group. “You have witnessed the power of Chemosh. Take this message back to your wizards and your holy paladins: I can be destroyed, but the cost of my destruction will be so great that none of you will have the stomach to pay it.”

  Cam gave a grin and a cheerful wave, then turned and left them. He did not take the road back into town but headed east.

  “Do something, Paladin!” Gerard cried angrily. “Say a prayer! Throw holy water on it. Do something!”

  “I have done all I can, sir,” Dominique replied. “Hand me the torch.”

  He held the torch over the area where trampled and bloody grass marked the fight with the Beloved, and began searching. Finding what he sought, he picked up the holy medallion the Beloved had knocked from his grasp.

  Dominique regarded it thoughtfully, then shook his head. “I can feel my god’s rage. I can also feel his impotence.”

  Rhys knelt beside Jenna, who was crouched on her knees, staring in disbelief at the place where the Beloved had been standing.

  “Are you all right, Mistress?” Rhys asked in concern.

  “That spell should have reduced it to ashes,” said Jenna, sounding dazed. “Instead …”

  She held out her hand. A fine sifting of ash, which had once been the orange gemstone, drifted through her fingers and fell to the ground next to a puddle of red wax—all that was left of her candle. A thin trail of smoke spiraled up from the blackened remnants of the wick.

  “You’ve burned your palm,” said Rhys.

  “It is nothing,” Jenna returned, sliding her sleeve hurriedly over her hand. “Give me your aid, Brother. Help me up. Thank you. I am fine. Go see to your poor dog.”

  Rhys needed no urging. He hastened over to where Nightshade sat beneath the tree, holding fast to Atta. The dog was very still. Her eyes were closed.

  Tears trickled down Nightshade’s cheeks.

  His heart constricting in pain, Rhys knelt down. He reached out his hand to stroke her.

  Atta stirred in the kender’s arms, lifted her head and opened her eyes. Her tail wagged feebly.

  “I brought her back, Rhys!” said Nightshade in a tear-choked voice. “She wasn’t breathing, and she’d been so brave, and she tried her best to kill that thing, and I couldn’t bear to think of losing her!”

  He had to stop a moment to swallow some tears. Rhys’s own tears were sliding down his face.

  “I thought of all this, and how she and I shared a pork chop tonight, except that I didn’t really mean to share. I dropped it and she’s quick, when it comes to pork chops. Anyway, all this was in my heart and I said that little spell my parents taught me—the one I used to make you feel better that time we fought your brother. Everything that was in my heart just sort of overflowed and spilled out onto Atta. She gave a snuffle and then a snort. Then she opened her mouth and yawned, and then she licked my face. I think I must have some pork chop grease left on my chin.”

  Rhys’s own heart was so full that he could not speak. He tried, but no words would come.

  “I’m so glad she’s not dead,” continued Nightshade, hugging Atta, who was scrubbing his face. “Who would keep me out of trouble?”

  Atta wriggled out of Nightshade’s arms. Shaking herself all over, she sat down on Rhys’s foot, looking up at him and wagging her tail wildly. The kender stood and brushed himself off, then wiped away tears and dog slobber. He looked up to find Mistress Jenna standing in front of him, regarding him with wonder.

  She held out her hand—first removing all her rings.

  “I apologize, Nightshade, for casting aspersions on you earlier,” Jenna said gravely. “I want to shake your hand. You are the only one whose spell worked this night.”

  “Thank you, Mistress Jenna, and don’t worry about those aspersions you cast,” Nightshade assured her. “None of them hit me. I was up in the tree. As for your spell, it was a doozy! I still see blue spots dancing around in my eyes.”

  “Blue spots. That was all it was good for,” Jenna said ruefully. “I’ve used that spell against undead more times than I can count. It has never before failed me.”

  “At least the Beloved admits that it can be destroyed,” Rhys said in thoughtful tones.

  “Yeah,” Gerard muttered. “At a cost so great none of us will be able to stomach it.”

  “Of course there is a way to destroy it. Chemosh may promise unending life, but not even he can grant immortality,” Dominique stated.

  “Why tell us then?” Jenna asked, frustrated. “Why not keep us in the dark?”

  “The god hopes to frighten us from pursuing the matter,” Dominique surmised.

  “He’s taunting us,” said Gerard, wincing as he massaged his sore neck. “Like a murderer who deliberately leaves a clue near the body.”

  Mistress Jenna did not appear satisfied with these answers. “What do you think, Brother?”

  “The god knows that his secret has been revealed. From now on, every wizard and cleric in Ansalon will be looking for these Beloved. Word will spread. Panic will set in. Neighbor will accuse neighbor. Parents will turn on their children. The only way to prove a person is innocent will be to kill him. If he stays dead, he is not one of the Beloved. The cost of destroying these creatures will be high indeed.”

  “And Chemosh gains more souls,” Nightshade added. “That’s pretty smart.”

  “I think you underestimate us, Brother,” said Dominique, frowning. “We will see to it that no innocents suffer.”

  “Like your god’s clerics did in the days of the Kingpriest?” said Mistress Jenna sharply. “I daresay we wizards will be among the first to be accused! We always are.”

  “Mistress Jenna,” said Dominique stiffly, “I assure you that we will be working in close contact with our brethren in the Towers.”

  Jenna eyed him, then sighed. “Never mind me. I’m just tired, and I have a long night ahead of me.” She began sliding her rings back on her fingers. “I must return to the Conclave to make my report. It was good meeting you, Rhys Mason, former monk of Majere.”

  She laid emphasis on that word. Her eyes, shining in Lunatari’s red light, seemed to challenge him.

  Rhys did not take up her challenge. He did not ask her what she meant. He feared her mocking reply. At least, that’s what he told himself.

  “You, too, Nightshade. May your pouches always be full and jail cells always be empty. Dominique, my friend, I am sorry I spoke with such ill will. We will be in contact. Sheriff Gerard, thank you for bringing this terrible matter to my attention. Finally, farewell to you, Lady Atta.” Jenna reached down to pat the dog, who cringed under her touch but allowed herself to be petted.

  “Take good care of your lost master and see to it that he finds his way home. And now, friends and acquaintances, I bid you goodnight!”

  Jenna placed her right hand over a ring on her left thumb, spoke a single word, and vanished from their sight.

  “Whew!” Nightshade breathed. “I remember when we did that. Do you, Rhys? That time Zeboim magicked us off to the death knight’s castle—”

  Rhys rested his hand on the kender’s shoulder.

  Nightshade, taking the hint, fell silent.

  Dominique had been listening. He regarded Rhys gravely, not liking the reminder that Rhys followed an evil goddess. He seemed about to say something when Gerard interrupted.

  “A fine night’s work,” Gerard said grimly. “All we have to show for it is crushed grass, a few gouts of blood, and melted candle wax.” He sighed. “I’ll have to report all this to the mayor. I’d appreciate it, Sir Dominique, if you’d come with me. Palin’s bound to believe you, if he won’t me.”

  “I will be glad to accompany you, Sheriff,” said the paladin.

  “I don’t know what he’ll do, of course,” Gerard added, as they started off down the hill, “but I’m going to suggest we call a town meeting tomorrow to warn people.”

  “An excellent idea. You can hold your meeting in our temple. We will
end by praying for strength and guidance. We will send out messengers to all our clerics, as well as those of Mishakal and Majere—”

  “Speaking of Majere …” Gerard halted. “Where’s Brother Rhys?”

  He turned around to see Rhys, Nightshade and Atta still standing beneath the trees. “Aren’t you coming back to Solace with us, Brother?”

  “I believe I will remain here for a while,” Rhys replied. “Give Atta a chance to rest.”

  “I’m staying with him,” Nightshade added, though no one had asked.

  “Suit yourself. See you in the morning, Brother,” said Gerard. “Thanks for your help tonight, and thanks to Atta for saving my life. She’ll find a big beef bone in her dog dish tomorrow.”

  He and Dominique continued their walk and their planning and were soon lost to Rhys’s sight.

  The night had grown very dark. The lights of Solace had gone out. The town had disappeared, swallowed up in sleep. Lunitari appeared to have lost interest in them now that Jenna was gone. The red moon draped herself in a bank of storm clouds and refused to return. A few drops of rain spattered. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  “We’re not going back to Solace, are we?” Nightshade heaved a sigh.

  “Do you think we should?” Rhys asked quietly.

  “Tomorrow’s chicken dumpling day,” Nightshade said in wistful tones. “And Atta was going to get a beef bone. But I guess you’re right. The important people have taken over. We’d only be in the way. Besides,” he added, cheering up, “there’s bound to be chicken dumplings wherever we end up. Where are we going?”

  “East,” said Rhys. “After the Beloved.”

  Monk, dog, and kender set off down the long road just as the storm broke and rain started to fall.

  uitari arrived late to the Wizards Conclave that had been hastily convened in the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth. He found his two cousins, Solinari and Lunitari, already there. The expressions on the faces of the gods were grim, reflecting the grim expressions of the faces of their wizards. Whatever topic was under discussion did not bode well for the Robed mages of Ansalon, apparently.

  Nuitari had only to hear the words, “Beloved of Chemosh” to know the reason why. His cousins glanced at him as he entered but said nothing, not wanting to miss any of Jenna’s report to her fellows.

  This meeting of the wizards that formed the Conclave was not a formal meeting. Formal meetings of the Conclave, held at regularly scheduled intervals, were planned months in advance. They were lavish affairs, conducted by proscribed ritual and ceremony in the Tower’s Hall of Mages. This emergency meeting was hastily convened with no time to waste on formal rituals, and it was being held in the Tower’s library, where the wizards had ready access to reference books and scrolls dating back to ancient times. The wizards gathered around a large wooden table; Black Robes sat next to White Robes who sat next to Red Robes.

  An emergency summons from the Head of the Conclave was generally considered a life-or-death matter, requiring every member of the Conclave to drop whatever he or she was doing and immediately travel the corridors of magic to the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth. The penalties for not attending were severe and could result in the wizard being expelled from the Conclave.

  An ancient spell, known only to the Head of the Conclave, permitted the mage to issue such an emergency summons. On her return to her home in Palanthas, Jenna had removed a rosewood box from its hiding place within the folds of time. Inside the box was a silver stylus. She dipped it in goat’s blood and then wrote the words of the summons upon lamb’s skin. She passed her hand over the words left to right, and then right to left, and back again, seven times. The words vanished. The lamb’s skin shriveled up and disappeared.

  Within instants, the summons would appear to each member of the Conclave as letters of blood and fire. A White Robe, slumbering in her bed, was awakened by the bright light of fiery tracings blazing across the ceiling of her bedchamber. A Black Robe saw the words materialize on the wall of his laboratory. He left immediately, if reluctantly, for he had just finished summoning a fiend from the Abyss, who was undoubtedly smashing up the furniture in his absence. A Red Robe had been battling goblins when he saw the words emblazoned on the forehead of his foe. The Red Robe arrived bruised and out of breath, his hands covered in goblin blood. He’d been forced to leave behind a group of goblin-hunters, who were now looking about in baffled astonishment, wondering what had become of their magic-user.

  “There goes my share of the bounty,” he muttered as he took his seat.

  “Wait until my husband wakes up to find me missing,” said the White Robe at his side. “I’ll have some explaining to do when I go back home.”

  “You think you have problems,” said the Black Robe, who sighed as he thought of the mess the demon was making in his laboratory. Provided he still had a laboratory.

  All personal inconveniences were forgotten, however, as the wizards listened in shock to Jenna’s tale. She started at the beginning, telling Rhys’s story as he had told it to her. She ended with the ill-fated attack on the Beloved.

  “The spell I cast was ‘Sunburst,’ ” she told them. “I assume all of you are familiar with it?”

  There was a general nodding of hooded heads.

  “As you know, this spell is particularly effective against undead. It should have fried that walking corpse to a crisp. It had no effect on it whatsoever. The Beloved laughed at me.”

  “Since it is you, Jenna, who cast the spell, I must assume that there is no possibility that you made a mistake. That you mispronounced a word or used an impure spell component.”

  The speaker was Dalamar the Dark, Head of the Order of Black Robes. Although an elf and one who was relatively young by elven standards, Dalamar appeared older than the eldest human at the table. His black hair was streaked with white. His eyes were set deep within hollow eye sockets. His fine-boned face seemed carved of ivory. Though he seemed frail, he was at the height of his power and well respected among all the Orders.

  He should have been head of the Conclave but for a few regrettable mistakes in his past that had led both gods and wizards to oppose him and promote Jenna in his place. The two had been lovers many years ago and were still friends when they weren’t rivals.

  “Since I am the one who cast the spell,” Jenna returned coolly, “I can assure you that there is no possibility that I made a mistake.”

  Dalamar appeared skeptical.

  Jenna raised her hand to heaven. “As Lunitari is my witness,” she declared. “Let the god send us a sign if I miscast the spell.”

  “Jenna made no mistake,” said Lunitari with a frowning glance at Nuitari.

  “Dalamar didn’t say she did,” Nuitari returned. “In fact, he said she didn’t.”

  “That wasn’t what he meant.”

  “Stop it, both of you,” Solinari intervened. “This is a serious matter, perhaps the most serious we have encountered since our return. Calm your ire, Cousin. Dalamar the Dark acted quite properly in asking for reassurance.”

  “And he will get it,” said Lunitari.

  The library was suddenly suffused with warm red light. Jenna smiled with satisfaction. Dalamar cast a glance toward heaven and inclined his hooded head in deference to the god.

  “None of us doubts Mistress Jenna’s abilities, but even she must admit that there has to be some way to destroy these undead,” stated a White Robe. “As the paladin of Kiri-Jolith said, not even Chemosh can make a mortal indestructible.”

  “There is always a first time for everything,” returned Dalamar caustically. “One hundred years ago, I would not have said that a god could steal away the world. Yet it happened.”

  “Perhaps a sorcerer’s spell could destroy it,” suggested Coryn the White, the newest member of the Conclave. Although young, she was highly talented and reputed to be a great favorite of the god, Solinari.

  Her fellow wizards, even those wearing the White Robes, regarded her with disapproval. />
  Sorcerers were those who used the wild magic that came from the world itself, not the godly magic from the heavens. Sorcerers had been practicing magic on Krynn during the gods’ absence. Sorcerers were not bound by the laws of High Sorcery but operated independently. In the days prior to the Second Cataclysm, such free agents would have been deemed renegades and hunted down by the members of all three Orders. Many members of this Conclave would have liked to have done that now but did not for several reasons: godly magic had only recently returned to Krynn, the wizards were still finding their way back to the old practices, their numbers were small and they were not yet well organized.

  Mistress Jenna, as Head of the Conclave, advocated a policy of “live and let live,” and it was being followed for the most part. This did not mean, however, that wizards had friendly feelings for sorcerers. Quite the contrary.

  Coryn the White had been a sorcerer who had only recently given up the wild magic for the more disciplined magic of the gods. She knew how the other mages felt regarding sorcerers, and she took a rather mischievous delight in teasing them. She was not teasing this time, however. She was deadly serious.

  “Mistress Coryn has a point,” stated Jenna grudgingly. All the wizards regarded her in astonishment. A few Black Robes scowled and muttered.

  “I have several sorcerers who are customers of mine,” Jenna continued. “I will contact them and urge them try their skills against these creatures. I do not hold out much hope that their luck will be any better than ours, however.”

  “Hope!” a Red Robe repeated angrily. “Let us hope that these Beloved stomp the sorcerers into the ground! Do you realize what this would mean for us if a sorcerer could kill these heinous creatures and we could not? We would be the laughing stock of Ansalon! I say we keep knowledge of these Beloved to ourselves. Don’t tell the sorcerers.”

  “Too late,” said a Black Robe grimly. “Now that the clerics know about it, they will be holding prayer services with the faithful rolling about on the ground in hysterics and priests flinging holy water on anything that moves. They’ll find a way to blame this on wizards. Wait and see if they don’t.”