The Seventh Sentinel Read online

  More than three centuries after the Cataclysm, Krynn still bears scars from the wrath of the angry gods. In this land where fear prevails, magic is as mysterious and mighty as the legendary dragons. The Defenders of Magic trilogy is the story of powerful mages who daily defend their beloved Art against those who would corrupt it or see it abolished.

  Bram—The new lord of Thonvil discovers that one of his parents is not his blood relative. His newfound magical heritage may be all that can stand against Lyim Rhistadt’s obsession to destroy magic.

  Kirah—Guerrand DiThon’s sister has helped to restore Thonvil’s prosperity, but she has never lost her longing for Lyim Rhistadt.

  Lyim—The renegade mage is possessed by an ambition to destroy the magic he feels has betrayed him. Now he possesses an artifact that promises to bring that destruction about.

  DEFENDERS OF MAGIC

  Night of the Eye

  Volume One

  The Medusa Plague

  Volume Two

  The Seventh Sentinel

  Volume Three

  DRAGONLANCE books by Mary Kirchoff

  Kendermore

  Flint, the King

  (with Douglas Niles)

  Wanderlust

  (with Steve Winter)

  The Black Wing

  THE SEVENTH SENTINEL

  Defenders of Magic • Volume Three

  ©1995 TSR, Inc.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Hasbro SA, represented by Hasbro Europe, Stockley Park, UB11 1AZ. UK.

  DRAGONLANCE, Wizards of the Coast, D&D, their respective logos, and TSR, Inc. are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Cover art by: Larry Elmore

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-6351-5

  640-A1854000-001-EN

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  www.DungeonsandDragons.com

  v3.1

  To Hayden and Alexander,

  the two greatest kids this side of Krynn

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books in the Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Bram’s hand trembled as he held the burning torch to the kindling beneath his father’s body. Custom dictated that the son who would inherit the dead man’s estate light the pyre. He licked the sweat from his upper lip when the fire from the oil-soaked straw leaped to the dry timber. A gust of wind caught the small flame and sent sparks skyward with a loud crackle, forcing Bram back. With the back of his forearm, he shielded his eyes from the growing heat and the sight.

  Cormac DiThon had died of a sudden heart attack six days before. A serving wench had found him slumped over his porridge. Now, the old cavalier’s body, wrapped in his heavy military cloak, his shield laid across his barrel-shaped breast, was engulfed in yellow flames that jumped above a vivid sunset. Through the haze of smoke, Bram’s mind escaped to the detached thought that the red sky boded well for the morrow.

  When the old shaman began chanting, Bram snapped back to the enormous fire that was consuming his father’s body. The shaman recited the Ceremony to the Sky from an ancient scroll:

  “Flame of life becomes flames of death;

  Ashes of man and oak and pine

  Mingle and soar in the painless night;

  Follow the sun and find thy peace.”

  The old Ergothian custom of burning the dead instead of interring them had not been invoked around Thonvil for centuries, not since the Cataclysm had split Ergoth into two island nations. If the task was unsettling to Bram, it intrigued the small crowd of curious villagers. Even fewer of Cormac DiThon’s subjects would have attended a typical serge-draped wake. Bram suspected his father had specified the unusual arrangements for just that reason. Cormac may have lost his wits, but never his pride in his full-blooded Ergothian heritage, nor his standing as a cavalier. His subjects’ last thoughts of Lord Cormac DiThon would not be of his ineptitude and inebriation. They would remember that he went in a blaze of glory, a flash of fire in the night sky, as the ancient cavaliers had done.

  Every aspect of the pyre was dictated by old Ergothian custom, remembered by few. In fact, a search of the whole fiefdom had turned up only one wise, long-lived elf who could still perform the ritual for the dead, established by the first barbarian tribes who settled the nation of Ergoth. The building of the pyre had begun two days before the Ceremony to the Sky. Only dried vallenwood was used, to symbolize the cavalier’s stature. The old elf had instructed two of Bram’s best workmen to layer the wood in alternating directions to a height of seventeen hands, upon which Cormac’s body had been placed.

  Watching through eyes stung by smoke, Bram recalled his mother’s reaction to Cormac’s wishes.

  “It’s barbaric!” Rietta DiThon had shrieked when Cormac’s will had been read. “Even in death he spites me!”

  “I doubt Father was thinking about you when he formalized his wishes,” Bram had said, foolishly thinking to calm her.

  “That’s just my point!” She gave her son a look that would have withered the quills off a porcupine. “I’m the one who’ll suffer the stares and pointed fingers of his thoughtless folly. I’ll certainly not condone it by attending. Old Ergothian tradition, indeed. It’s as delusional as the notion that cavaliers are the equivalent of true Knights of Solamnia. But then, Cormac was never anything but a peasant in his heart.”

  Bram had never appreciated or understood his mother’s idea of propriety. Bram’s sister had been notified in distant Solamnia of their father’s death. Honora had dispatched the messenger with a hastily scrawled note, conveying the proper amount of sympathy but declining to attend. Though Rietta had been insulted, Honora’s absence suited Bram just fine. His sister had too many of their mother’s bad traits and not enough good ones to make her presence worth suffering.

  Stiff-legged and dry-eyed, Bram stood alone by his father’s pyre until dawn, long after the curious had lost interest. By then the flames had turned to glowing coals and the last ashes of Lord Cormac D
iThon had flown into the purple sky of morning.

  Though his heart wasn’t in it, Bram walked alone to Castle DiThon and the joyous ceremony that awaited him.

  Succession. The ceremony was about him, but not for him. It was a formality as far as he was concerned. Bram had been the lord of Castle DiThon in all but name for more than three years—ever since he’d accepted King Weador’s challenge to restore Thonvil. He’d not accomplished that goal alone, though. Weador’s faerie folk, the tuatha dundarael, had played a significant role in bringing prosperity and trade back to the region.

  Trade needed roads that were reliable and safe, built and patrolled by able-bodied workers. Those workers needed food and clothing, but they couldn’t work the land and spin the cloth while hauling stone to surface a road, even with magical help from Bram’s uncle, Guerrand. That’s where the tuatha came in.

  Those diminutive folks’ affinity for the land and for all living things amazed Bram. He believed they could coax crops to grow out of gravel, if they were inclined to. Their reward seemed to be nothing more than the hope that followed on the heels of prosperity.

  Bram and Guerrand had agreed with Weador that it was wisest to keep the tuatha’s presence in the village a secret. Though the villagers who’d benefitted from Guerrand’s gifts had a new appreciation for magic, most humans were not open-minded enough to coexist with faerie folk, which suited the typically aloof tuatha just fine. Weador’s legions worked under cover of darkness, tilling the ground and tending the crops. Because of them, Thonvil’s fields were more productive, the livestock contented; everything flourished beyond reasonable expectations. Yet the tuatha’s influence was so subtle, few of the townsfolk even suspected they were receiving special help from the faerie world.

  But no one could miss the changes that had occurred in Thonvil. Surplus crops and new roads meant trade, and with the traders came craftsmen. Laws and peacekeepers were needed. The village established a central warehouse for grain in case of lean times. New homes were being constructed at the rate of three a week. Old homes had been repaired, gardens neatened. Even the castle was under renovation after years of neglect.

  Bram believed that only a portion of the new prosperity could be credited to the tuatha. The faeries tended gardens and animals; they never touched brick or mortar, shingle or shutter. Most of the repair and construction had been done by the people of Thonvil themselves. They had regained their will to succeed and prosper, thanks to the tuatha’s toils and Bram’s leadership.

  And Guerrand’s magical guidance. Magic-wielder, spiritual advisor, Rand had been indispensable to Bram in his efforts to revive Thonvil’s economy. Bram’s initial exposure to magic had been witnessing his uncle’s battles against a deranged wizard and his struggle to eradicate a deadly, magical affliction. The experience left him with tremendous respect for the power of sorcery, but the false impression that it had little practical application to the world of normal men and women. In the years since, Rand had demonstrated countless times that his magic could be applied to almost any problem.

  Bram left most of the day-to-day particulars of running the estate to Kirah and Guerrand. In fact, Bram had relied on his uncle to find reasons to cancel his mother’s less practical arrangements for the morning ceremony.

  Bram blinked. Scores of people were waiting just for him. The realization hastened his steps as he crossed the inner courtyard, scarcely noticing the stands and banners there for the occasion. Bram pressed, unrecognized, through the unfamiliar throng of retainers and servants milling in the small foretower.

  Rand’s was the first familiar face he saw when he thrust himself into the entrance hall. Free from the prejudice once suffered in Castle DiThon, Guerrand wore his red mage’s robe with ease. Today his garb was edged in gold in honor of the occasion of Bram’s succession. Reassured by Rand’s presence, Bram smiled for the first time in many days and crossed over to his uncle.

  To Bram’s surprise, concern pulled at the lines around Guerrand’s eyes. “Are you well?” he asked, peering closely at his nephew. “I was worried when you didn’t return last night.”

  Bram straightened his clothing self-consciously. “I’m fine, considering I just burned my father’s body.”

  Guerrand frowned darkly. “I wish you had not forbidden Kirah and me to attend the funeral with you.”

  “There was no love lost between you two and my father. It would have been dishonest for you to feign grief, no different than those who gathered from the village out of curiosity.”

  “You know that’s far from true,” Guerrand said, eyes flashing hurt. “We would have grieved for you, with you.”

  “I needed to grieve alone.” Bram’s shoulders slumped. “Now it’s done.”

  Guerrand said nothing, but laid a reassuring hand on his nephew’s tight shoulder. Just then a serving woman rushed by with arms overflowing, jostling both men. In the woman’s wake came Kirah, Bram’s aunt, blowing back wisps of hair from her face.

  “There you are!” she breathed. “We were getting worried about you, Bram.”

  No one could ever have guessed the horrors his aunt had bested just three short years before, when a plague had struck Thonvil. Kirah had suffered more than most, since she’d thought the villain who had inflicted the virus to be her friend. Snakes had once writhed where there were now shapely arms and legs. Her survival was only partly due to her stubborn streak. Kirah, as well as the other afflicted villagers, owed her life to Guerrand, who had discovered that the plague could be stopped by using his magic to turn the black moon, Nuitari, on its side.

  With no lessening of her scrappy temperament, Kirah had grown since then into the mirror image of her mother, Zena, Bram’s vaguely remembered step-grandmother. With her shining corn-silk-yellow hair, vivid blue eyes, and skin as pale and smooth as milk, Kirah glowed against the backdrop of tanned farmers and dark-skinned, full-blooded Northern Ergothians. She had taken on the office of seneschal rather than marry, as she had yet to meet a man worth the effort.

  With an odd mix of sympathy and disapproval, her eyes ran over Bram’s mourning togs. “Hadn’t you better get dressed for the ceremony?” she asked. “I hear Mercadior arrived within the half-hour and is anxious to perform the ceremony so that he can return to Gwynned immediately.”

  “Yes,” Rand cut in. “I nearly forgot! His chief counselor, a wizard I might add, was looking for you. When he couldn’t find you, he informed me that the emperor desires you to accompany him on a brief tour of Thonvil before he returns to Gwynned.”

  Bram rubbed his face wearily. “I can’t fathom why my mother chose this opportunity to act the lady of the manor and request the presence of the emperor of Northern Ergoth. What’s more, why would Mercadior Redic bother to attend a ceremony in such a minor holding?”

  “Thonvil is no longer a minor holding, Bram,” returned Kirah, arms crossed mannishly. “I’m certain the courtiers in Gwynned have wasted no time in apprising the emperor of that. He very likely wished to assess Thonvil and its new lord for himself.”

  “Whatever the reason for his presence, Mercadior’s opinion of you won’t be high if you keep the ruler of all Northern Ergoth waiting.” Guerrand spun Bram around and pushed him toward the staircase that led to his chamber. “I’ll send up Delby, the young squire, to help you.”

  With the manservant’s aide, Bram dressed in his father’s heavy, enameled breastplate. He refused the rest of the armor as it was offered by Delby, caring little how shocked the boy or anyone else might be by this departure from local tradition. Bram might be lord, but he was no cavalier; on him the armor was strictly ornamental. Even his father had worn it only once in Bram’s memory. It was bulky and uncomfortable, especially for Bram, who had never trained much in arms, despite his mother’s wish that he become a Knight of Solamnia. Fortunately for him, there had never been enough money for the training.

  Bram returned to the entrance hall, thankfully empty now, in time to hear the swell of trumpets through the enorm
ous double doorway. He moved through it on stiff legs and stopped just inside the inner courtyard. Past the hundreds of assembled guests, he could just make out the platform upon which he would officially become Lord DiThon.

  Perhaps it isn’t such a bad thing to have the emperor here, he thought. In addition to diverting unwanted attention from himself, the emperor’s presence was a proud occasion, a formal recognition of the hard work that had gone into restoring Thonvil. The people deserved their moment in the sun.

  And sun they would have. Though early, the sky was as bright blue and clear as the previous evening’s red sunset had promised. Even his mother could not have hoped for better when she’d set the event outside. Because Bram cared nothing about pomp, he had allowed his mother to stage the event, heavily monitored by Guerrand.

  Bram spotted Rietta seated on the raised platform at the far end of the courtyard. Even in a smile meant to encourage him, her thin lips were pinched, her arms crossed tightly over her small bosom.

  Bram took a deep breath, walked through the parting crowd, and ascended the platform. His last thought before he became lord was that the breeze still carried the acrid scent of burning wood from the funeral pyre.

  * * * * *

  “I’m sorry to take you away from your feast,” Mercadior declared, “but I’ve heard so much good about Thonvil during your stewardship. I desire greatly to see these things for myself.”

  Bram and Guerrand, responding to a request from Redic, had quietly excused themselves from the feasting that followed Bram’s public oath of fealty to the emperor. Sounds of celebration drifted down from the castle to the dusty road at the edge of Thonvil. There, the newly installed Lord DiThon and his uncle met the hale emperor and an elderly but robust man who, judging from his red robe, was a wizard.

  Redic had the naturally dark skin of an Ergothian blue blood. He was the fifth in a line of rulers stretching back to well before the Cataclysm, to the establishment of Ergoth as a nation. Beneath his gem-studded circlet, Redic’s salt-and-pepper hair was cropped short at the nape of his neck, where a whisper-thin braid trailed down to his thick waist. His beard and mustache were full, surrounding perfect white teeth that flashed infrequently in a calculated smile.