Williams - Galen Beknighted

UNEASILY, I HELD THE PIECE OF JEWELRY UP TO CANDLELIGHT. It had been scarcely a week since I had taken the stones from the old leather pouch, in which they had resided since they were given to me, and sent them to the local jeweler to have them set in a brooch. It had cost a pretty sum, but it seemed worth it: At night of late, when the high wind raced down from the hills into the castle, whipping about the battlements and through the window, my belongings would shake on their perches and shelves and places of storage. On those nights, I could swear I heard the opals click together in the darkness, as though they were trying to speak.

As though on cue, again the wind rose suddenly. The candle sputtered and went out.

I have heard of drafty castles, I muttered, but this

I could not complete the feeble sentiment, for a cold mist followed in the wake of the wind, smelling of old water and ice and cavernous gloom. Somehow it carried upon it a terrible loneliness and sadness, so that as the mist passed over me, I wanted to cry out, to moan and blubber for no reason I could name or understand.

The whole chamber tensed, as though it awaited some monstrous change.

It was then that the shapes appeared.

HEROES SERIES

THE LEGEND OF HUMA
Richard A. Knaak

STORMBLADE
Nancy Varian Berberick

WEASELS LUCK
Michael Williams

KAZ THE MINOTAUR
Richard A. Knaak

THE GATES OF THORBARDIN
Dan Parkinson

GALEN BEKNIGHTED
Michael Williams

GALEN BEKNIGHTED
D RAGONLANCE Heroes II Volume Three
1990 TSR, Inc.
2004 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

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Cover art by: Duane O. Myers

eISBN: 978-0-7869-6316-4
640-A1473000-001-EN

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www.DungeonsandDragons.com

v3.1

For my mother and father

P ROLOGUE

There were six of them, the Namer began, leaningto scratch the sleeping dog at his feet. Seated around him beside a hundred campfires, the People looked up expectantly. His voice floated over them, clear at even the farthest fires, drawing the listeners deep into his story.

* * * * *

There were six of them, moving silently amid the wind-tilted shades of the vallenwoods.

Even the most vigilant and experienced scouts would have been surprised to find a band of Plainsmen this far north. They were wanderers, capable of great endurance and greater journeys, but Abanasinia was their home, months south of Solamnia and the Vingaard Mountains.

In the rising night, their shoulders were slumped and their steps shuffling and slow. Above them, high to the west amid the Vingaard Mountains, dark clouds settled like ravens and lightning flickered between the peaks. Wearily the Plainsmen wrapped blankets and furs more tightly about their shoulders, as if in their bones and memories they already felt the approaching rain.

One of them, a man almost unnaturally tall, his black hair braided and dappled in shadows, motioned silently at a clearing among the trees. In unison, with a sigh scarcely audible above the rustle of wind through the leaves, the rest of the Plainsmen sat, knelt, fell overmost of them in the very spot over which they had been walking or standing.

With his comrades lying still and silent around him, the big man crouched in the center of the clearing, his hands busy at some hidden task. Suddenly light burst from between his long, slender fingers, and, setting his hands to the ground in front of him, he sat back on his heels and watched the fire, smokeless and fueled by nothing more than the air.

Its red flames rose higher, and the light spread to illumine the faces of all the company. In unison, as though they had practiced it for years, they rose with the creak of leather and rattle of beads, arranging themselves in a semicircle behind their leader, their eyes on the scarlet fire.

They inhaled, and the light rose. Exhaled, and it sank. Attuned to their breathing, the firelight pulsed and wavered, and the leader reached high upon his left arm, upon the arm that steadies the bow, where a leather band that was adorned with five black stones rested.

Now, the big man proclaimed expectantly as the red light bathed the crags and wrinkles of his face, glittered on the beads knotted into his hair, and glowed on the dark paint encircling his eyes.

Those eyes were green. They were odd, sometimes even ominous to a brown-eyed people, but no accident of nature. To a Plainsman, there are no accidents. Those eyes had marked him from birth as a vision catcher.

Now is the time for the going inward, for the weaving of water and wind, he continued, drawing the leather band from his arm. His company breathed a measured breath, and the red fire pulsed like a heart beating. For the wind and the water have risen, here in these mountains, and soon the Sundered Peoples will be joined once again, as legend and prophecy swore to their joining.

Then this is the time, Longwalker? The time we have looked for? piped a voice from the encircling tribesmen. It was the voice of a young girl, quickly stifled by a hiss from an older man beside her. About her, the others stared at the fire, breathing in and out together.