Epilogue

The tales were right, after all: the water was red. Bron had first heard of it a year ago, in an inn near Solanthus—a rough, crowded alehouse where the beer tasted like piss and someone took a knife in the gut almost every night. There were many taverns like it in Ansalon these days: places where folk could gather and trade stories of the world’s many woes. It had been a skinny, brown-skinned man who’d spoken of the red waters—a man with beads in his beard, marking him as Seldjuki by birth.

“I sailed it myself,” he’d said, taking a grim pull from a mug of something that smelled like lamp oil. “Not through the middle, mind—only madmen go that way, and they don’t come out again. But you don’t have to get out far from shore to see it, plain as the burning mountain. Red as blood… they say that’s what it is, the blood of drowned Istar.”

The others in the tavern had scoffed at him, or glared. More than a few had cursed the Kingpriest, and all of the damned Istarans—then the talk had turned to the gods, and it grew worse. The things men said these days would have gotten them arrested for blasphemy in an eyeblink, just a few years ago. Now, everyone hated the gods, dark and light alike.

Bron had listened to the people’s vituperations, his grip on his tankard tight, but he’d done nothing to stop the grumbling. He was one—the other knights had long since scattered—and they were many, bolstered by drink and anger. He’d learned, in the months after the Cataclysm, not to try to defend Paladine against the masses.

It was the same all over. Men reviled Beldinas as much as they’d once adored him, calling him Fumofiro—Doombringer—instead of his old epithets, but their hatred for the gods was much worse. Where was Paladine now? With cities in ruins, forests burned to ashes, new seas where land had been, and new land where seas had roiled… with all the plague and drought and famine rampant… with brother turning against brother the world over, where were the gods?

There could be only one answer, in the people’s minds. The gods had turned their backs on Krynn.

Bron didn’t believe that, but neither did he say so. He’d discarded his armor long ago, to eliminate all evidence of his former life. He’d seen more than one village where the corpses of priests swung from trees while ravens dug at their eyes. He’d seen churches ransacked and pillaged. He’d come to one town in time to find a band of screaming men and women dragging three bodies through the streets—bodies wearing the white surcoats of the Divine Hammer. He’d watched the mob cheer as they threw the corpses on a raging pyre, to burn as the Hammer itself had once burned evildoers. He’d watched them spit on the flames.

And he’d done nothing to stop them. That was why he was still alive.

There were plenty of tales these days, and while many were true—Bron had seen firsthand that Tarsis was land-locked now—many more rang false. But Bron had heard of the red waters again and again. In Palanthas, now Ansalon’s grandest port, every inn buzzed with talk of it. And so, after lingering in the west for two whole years, Bron had resolved at last to see for himself.

It had been a hard journey, for flesh and spirit alike. The world had become a dangerous place since the Cataclysm. Maps were all but useless; most of the old cities were gone, much of the terrain changed. Folk were suspicious of outsiders, and offered no hospitality. Bandits waited to prey on lone travelers, and goblins and ogres and even worse things had returned to the land. The winter, in particular, had been horrendous: Bron had been forced to hole up in a cave in the Khalkists for nearly four months, before emerging half-starved in the spring, into a homeland he no longer knew—an empire that was dead. He’d passed the bones of Micah—a city of ghosts now, its fabled glass towers nothing more than glittering dust—and found the Tears of Mishakal pounded flat. He’d crossed the Sea of Shifting Sands, now a morass of muck from near-constant rain and hail. And finally, this morning, he’d heard it for the first time: the distant roar of the ocean.

It was a strange sound in a place where farms and vineyards had once stretched for countless leagues, and horror gnawed deeper into his belly the closer he got. When he first saw gulls wheeling overhead, the truth hit him fully for the first time: the land of his birth, the land he’d sworn to protect from evil, was gone forever. The empire, the church, the knighthood—all vanished in one terrible day. He’d stopped, standing very still with his head bowed, and hadn’t moved for more than an hour.

He’d come this far, though, and in the end he’d had to go farther. His heart filled with dread, he’d walked the last mile, climbed a grassy hill… and stopped when it ended, suddenly, in a jagged cliff overlooking the sea.

The water that stretched out before him was the usual gray-blue near the shore, and for a long way out. But the cliff was high, and Bron’s eyes were still sharp with youth. The change in color, a league or so out, was obvious. The water wasn’t rusty, or the ruddy brown of clay, as he’d expected to see; it was bright, ghastly crimson. It was the Blood Sea of Istar.

Looking out upon it, Bron thought of the other tales he’d heard, in Palanthas and elsewhere. The crimson waters were unquiet, the mariners said, heaving and foaming as if stirred by some leviathan below. The skies above were darkened a sickly brown—dust still choked Ansalon’s skies, and there hadn’t been a blue sky in years—and dotted with the seething green-black of stormclouds. The tempest had hung over the Sea ever since the Cataclysm, and beneath it a great maelstrom swirled. No ship could escape the maelstrom, once caught in its pull. Demons danced in the waves, waiting to swallow the souls of those who drowned there.

Bron had seen many things in the last three years. He’d watched Xak Tsaroth collapse into the earth from the safe distance of only a mile away. He’d found whole towns laid waste by disease, bodies lying black in the streets. He’d watched men murder each other for a scrap of food, or for no reason at all. But none of it compared to this. He sank to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed.

“Paladine,” he wept “Oh, my god, forgive us for what we have done…”

He didn’t sense the three men stealing up behind him… didn’t hear the scuff of their footsteps on the dusty ground… didn’t see the cudgels in their hands. By the time he noticed, it was too late; they swarmed in his tear-blurred vision, already on top of him. He turned, reaching for Ebonbane—the sword was the one thing he’d kept from before the Cataclysm—and started to rise. But they were too close: he’d only half-drawn the blade when the leader, a scraggly youth whose blue eyes were dark with hate, brought his club down on Bron’s wrist.

Bone snapped. Pain bloomed. Bron fell, screaming. He never saw the second man’s face; only the club as it caught him under the chin, driving his teeth through his tongue. Blood flooded his mouth as his head snapped back, then darkness swarmed over his vision. He slumped, stunned, onto his side.

He felt a tug as one of them took Ebonbane from him, then another stole his purse. Dimly, he saw legs moving, and heard voices that sounded like they were coming from the bottom of a pit. Something wet and sticky hit his face. Spit.

“Bloody god-lover,” snarled one. “You heard him praying, didn’t you, Tarlo?”

A foot struck his side, bringing new pain. “Damn sure I did. Knew he was one o’ them the moment I saw the bastard.”

Bron understood, then, dimly. He’d passed by a small village early this morning—the sort of place where desperate men gathered to protect themselves from other desperate men. These three had followed him, probably hoping to rob him, and he’d been so intent on what lay ahead, he hadn’t noticed them. He cursed himself for not noticing them. He was a trained knight—or had been, anyway—and a gaggle of peasants had gotten the best of him.

“Only a few silvers and coppers,” said a third voice, thick with disgust. Bron guessed it was the boy who’d broken his arm. “What do we do with him now?”

“Toss him over the cliff,” growled the first. “Damned god-lovers don’t deserve any better.”

Rough hands seized his shoulders, shoved him forward. Panic flared in his mind, and he struggled to fight back, but his body refused to respond. The pain paralyzed him, and consciousness was draining away.

“Hold on,” said the one named Tarlo. “Look at this.”

They stopped, and dropped him on the ground again, on his back. His wrist-bones ground together, nearly making him pass out, but he fought through the pain. Bile burned in his throat as he fought to keep his eyes in focus.

They were gathered in a knot. In the middle, a scar-faced balding man—Tarlo—held Ebonbane. “This ain’t no ordinary Scata’s blade, Uvar,” he said.

“It’s a fine weapon,” agreed the leader, a huge Dravinish brute who smelled like ripe cheese. He took it from Tarlo, turned it to catch the dim sunlight “A nobleman’s weapon.”

“Or a knight’s,” said Tarlo.

The youngest of the three raised his club. “A Hammer? Gods’ fists! We ain’t seen none o’ them for near six months. I thought they were mostly all dead.”

“So did I,” agreed Uvar. Then he peered down and laughed, one of the unfriendliest sounds Bron had ever heard. “He must be one, though. Look at how scared he is, Tarlo.”

The scarred man crouched down, cupped Bron’s cheek with his hand. “Hah! No doubt, Uvar. He’s one of them. Stupid of you to come here, Sir Knight,” he snarled, then let go, and cracked the back of his hand across Bron’s face. Stars exploded.

“We ain’t dumping him now, are we?” whined the boy.

The others laughed. “No, lad, we’re not,” said Tarlo.

“Dumping’s too easy for him,” Uvar agreed. Now he bent down over Bron, his breath reeking. “Hear that, Hammer-lad? You’re gonna be sorry you came here. You’re gonna be sorry you were born.”

Bron tried to answer, to show defiance, but the only thing that got past his thick lips and bleeding tongue was a stream of bloody drool. Then Uvar’s meaty fist slammed into his eye, and that was all.

Later, the pain came rushing back: The peasants had trussed Bron like an animal. Heedless of his broken arm, they’d dragged him all the way back to their village—a squalid, grimy cluster of thatch huts, the charred skeleton of a Mishakite hospice looking down upon it from a hilltop. It was drizzling and cold, but a crowd had gathered anyway, jeering and hissing as the three peasants hauled him into the patch of mud that served as the town square. There was a post in its midst, with a rusty iron hook pounded into the top. Bron guessed its purpose well before they looped a rope through his bonds, then flung the other end up and over.

He gritted his teeth, but it did no good. He still howled like a babe when they hauled on the rope, hoisting him up off the ground. He vomited, and nearly choked on it as they tied off the top, leaving him swaying fifteen feet above the ground.

Then the torment began.

The children were the worst. He could endure the rage of the men, the scorn of the women. He could handle the mud and rotten vegetables they hurled, even the odd stone. He weathered their cries of “God-lover!” and “Thrice-damned Hammer!” But when a little girl—she couldn’t have been more than six summers old—stepped to the front of the mob and lobbed a handful of muck at him, his heart wrenched. That child, and all children from now on, would grow up loathing Istar, the Kingpriest, the Divine Hammer, and the gods. They would never know, never understand, the glories of what had been—what might have been. They would know all of the bad, and none of the good. There was hate in her eyes.

It lasted all day long. Even when the sun went down, the villagers didn’t disperse; they kept at him by torchlight, hurling abuse and rubbish long into the night. It was past Midwatch when the crowd finally began to thin. By then, there wasn’t a part of him that wasn’t smeared with blood and filth, not a part that didn’t sing with pain. When the last villagers finally departed, his mind turned to the day to come, and what would happen then. Would they kill him? Or would it be like yesterday, more abuse? How long would the punishment go on?

He prayed for a quick death, and not just because the alternative was more pain and humiliation. Could he really go on in this world, with all he’d ever known and loved vanished or destroyed? Could he stand it any longer, pretending to be a different man from the one he’d been? Could he face the knowledge that Istar would be long remembered as an empire of fools and villains?

Let it end here, he begged. Let it be soon.

They left Uvar as a guard. In the ruddy moonlight, Bron couldn’t make out much more. The village was dark, quiet. A half-starved dog rooted through the refuse until the big Dravinishman lobbed a rock and sent it yelping away. In the gloom, neither man saw the shadowed figure until it was standing right in front of the pole.

Uvar started, reaching for his cudgel, then relaxed. “Oh,” he said, stepping forward. “It’s you. What in the Abyss are you doing up so late? Want a go at him?”

Bron tried to make out the newcomer’s face, but he couldn’t see anything: just a gray cloak and hood, dark and sodden with rain. Whoever it was walked up to Uvar, saying nothing, and stopped when the two of them were face to face.

“Go ahead, have at him,” the brute continued cheerily. “You won’t have another chance, come morning. Just grab—”

Suddenly, Uvar fell silent. Then he stumbled back, staring dumbly at his chest. The hilt of a dagger was lodged there. He grunted, looking at the stranger with an absurd expression of surprise, then pitched backward into the mud.

The cloaked newcomer wasted no time. Reaching down, he pulled the knife from the big man’s body, then went to the rope and began to cut through. Bron watched in amazement… then suddenly he was falling, landing in the mud with a splat and a sob of relief and pain. He gasped for breath, got a mouthful of sludge, and gagged while the stranger hurried forward to cut his bonds.

“Quickly now,” she said—a woman’s voice. “On your feet.”

Bron groaned. “I don’t think I can walk.”

“You’d best try. Tarlo will come to check on this one soon.” She kicked Uvar’s body. “We’d best be gone when he does.”

Bron peered at her, still trying to make out her face. “Who are you?”

The woman paused, then reached up and pulled off her hood without a word. Bron stared, stunned. The face was familiar, one he’d seen before. It was older now, worn by more than just years. There was fathomless sorrow in her eyes, and her hair was silver-white now. But still, there was no mistaking who she was.

“I don’t…” he began, then trailed off and tried again. “I don’t believe it.”

“You don’t have to,” said Wentha MarSevrin, pulling on his unbroken arm. “Just come on.”

Bron somehow found a way to haul himself along beside the Weeping Lady, limping and lurching and falling more than once as they fled the village and took to the wilds. Gray, leafless trees loomed around them like bony hands. There was no road, not even a game-trail he could make out, but Wentha made her way through the gloom with quiet certainty, stopping now and then to look behind, in case someone followed them. No one did.

The eastern sky had brightened to the dull gray of lead by the time they stopped at last, at the remains of some large, stone building. Its walls were crumbled stubs, its roof long gone, but there was a staircase leading down into a cellar. Wentha led the way down, out of the rain. When she reached the bottom, she lit a candle, illuminating her face. Bron slumped to the earthen ground, groaning.

“Don’t get comfortable,” she said, ripping a strip of cloth from the hem of her cloak. She found a piece of broken wood, and used it to splint his broken wrist. “Tarlo and the others aren’t going to let you get away easily. They know this place, and they’ll be looking here before long. We’ll be moving again in a couple of hours.”

Bron nodded: he’d expected that much. But that wasn’t foremost on his mind. He looked at the woman in disbelief. “How in the Abyss—”

“How did I survive?” she asked, and smiled. “I was in Karthay when the burning mountain hit. The city was destroyed, but those of us who fled quickly lived through it. I got out, and after a year or so I found passage back to land. It’s just an island now, Karthay—the same with Lattakay, and a few other places.

“I’ve been living back there, in Flotsam, ever since. They don’t know me there. Not like they know the Hammer, anyway.” She eyed him grimly. “They were going to press you to death, in case you’re wondering. Pile stones on you until they crushed you.”

Bron shuddered at that savagery. A shudder ran through him.

“Now,” Wentha said, “suppose you tell me about this.”

Reaching beneath her cloak, she pulled out Ebonbane. The candlelight glistened on its blade, reflecting the chips of porcelain on its hilt Bron stared at it.

“This was my brother’s blade,” she went on. “How did you come by it? Who gave it to you?”

Bron blinked. No, of course she wouldn’t know. Hardly anyone alive knew the final fate of the Twice-Born. He shut his eyes, moaning… then opened them again when he felt the cold steel of Ebonbane’s edge against his skin. Lady Wentha stood over him, her eyes like stormclouds.

“Tell me,” she said.

And he did.

Her face was covered with tears by the time he finished. They were both silent for several minutes, afraid to speak. Finally, she drew a hand across her eyes, and took a deep breath.

“So you left him there. In Xak Tsaroth.”

Bron nodded. “For all the good it did. I saw the city disappear. He couldn’t have survived.”

She was silent for a long time again. “No” she murmured, “but maybe he wasn’t meant to. He needed to be out on that lake, with the Disks, when the mountain hit. He had a purpose in mind.”

“But what?” Bron demanded. “Why would he do such a thing?”

Lady Wentha shook her head. “I don’t know. I doubt we ever will. But be sure of this, Sir Bron… my brother died working the god’s will.”

“Did he?” Bron shot back, his voice bitter. “And what stories will people tell of Cathan Twice-Born? What songs will they sing?”

“None,” she answered. “But the forgotten hero is a hero still.”

Bron shook his head. “I envy your faith.”

“It is all I have left.”

They were silent for a time. Rainwater dripped into the cellar.

“Now you’ve seen the Blood Sea,” she said at length. “Where will you go next?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Far from here. What about you?”

Wentha pursed her lips, glancing up the stairs. “I’ve heard Taol survived the Cataclysm. Do you know if it’s true?”

Bron nodded. “Parts of it. Though the land is much changed, from the tales men tell.”

“What land isn’t, these days?” she asked. “I will go there, then. Changed or not, I would like to see the land of my birth again.”

“You’re lucky to be able to ” Bron said. “I was born in Edessa.”

His home. Gone, lost beneath the red waves.

“I will go with you,” he offered. “If you will let me.”

Wentha MarSevrin looked at him gravely for a long moment. Then she smiled, tears in her eyes—but she shook her head at the same time. “No,” she said. “I travel alone. So must you.”

He should have begged her to reconsider, he told himself in the hard times to come, when he yearned for a companion on the road. But he only returned her smile, and watched as she extended Ebonbane, hilt-first, toward him.

“I don’t know how to use it, anyway,” she said.

He took the sword from her hand. “Thank you, Efisa. Palado tas drifas bisat.”

Paladine guide thy steps.

“E tas,” Wentha said.

And thine.

She bent down, pressed her lips against his forehead. Then, rising, she drew her hood back over her head, turned to the steps, and raced up them, two at a time.

He never saw her again.