Epilogue

From the Archives of Nightlund, Volume XXII
Penned by the Red Robe Pelander

Three years have passed since the last of my vivid dreams of the lands across the sea. Many nights have I lain awake, wishing that they would return. In my mind, much remains unanswered. The bloodshed wrought by Maladar surely changes the face of Taladas to this day, and I yearn to discover more, but the gods, if gods it was that gave me the visions in the first place, evidently have had better things to do. There have been no more dreams, and I begin to believe they will never return.

Perhaps, in time, a lord or lady with the mind and the means will read this account and voyage over the seas of Krynn, to make contact with those who live there. If so, I do not know what such an expedition may find. It will surely be a long time before the continent recovers, and it will never be what it was. Such is the way of things.

With that said, I commit the last of my dreams of Taladas to this chronicle. It came to me on a stormy autumn night, long months after I last beheld our friends—Forlo, Shedara, and Hult. It does nothing to illuminate their fates, but I believe it is important to any who might seek, one day, to set foot upon Taladas. And with it, I bid you, my honored readers, farewell.

Far away from the Rainward Isles, on the other side of Taladas, a minotaur commander crests a hill, leading a company of soldiers, both his kind and men. His name is Bolgash, and he is young, newly elevated to the rank of Centurion in the Third Legion. There are many young officers in the League’s armies these days: the wars of ascension, following Emperor Rekhaz’s assassination by the traitor Forlo, have taken a deep toll. But there is a new emperor on the throne now, who has taken the name of Ambeoutin XIII in hopes of restoring the old peace to the war-torn land. He has commanded the Third to travel north, to the Tiderun’s shores, and investigate the village of Kharto, which rumor says has been destroyed.

Both Ambeoutin and Bolgash’s superiors suspect bandits, preying on the weak in the aftermath of war. But when Bolgash looks down from the hilltop, he sees something else.

“Khot,” he swears.

“Sir?” asks his shield-bearer, a dark-skinned, shaven-headed human named Tarl. He peers down toward the water. “What is that?”

Bolgash strokes his black muzzle, his eyes narrowing. He hears his men muttering, for they, too, have spotted what he has seen.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But we’d best see, up close.”

The soldiers follow him down the hillside, axes and spears at the ready. Kharto lies in ruins, bodies scattered everywhere. The fires have long since burned out, and the crows have eaten their fill. All is silent in the town. Even the birds refuse to sing.

It isn’t the village that worries Bolgash, though. It’s what’s in the water.

The sun is high, its light making the Run glisten like a band of gold, the distant shores of the Tamire a faint shape in the haze of springtime. The ships moored there are mere shadows against that gleaming vista. Even just beholding their silhouettes, though, Bolgash knows they’re like no vessels he’s seen before. They have an ancient look, like the Aurish vessels of old. He has seen their like in mosaics and tapestries that the men of the League rescued from the fallen empire. No one has built ships like them in more than four hundred years.

As he and his men make their way toward Kharto’s docks, however, the sun passes behind a cloud, and he knows they are not true Aurish ships. Aurim was a realm of wonders, but nowhere in history or lore has it ever been said that its shipwrights made their boats out of stone.

One of the ships wallows in the shallows; the moons are waning, and though the Run won’t drain this month, the tides are very low. Bolgash slogs through the muck to the boat and touches its hull. It is indeed stone, pumice to be specific—volcanic. It is a type not found in these parts or anywhere west of the Steamwalls. He glances toward the jagged, cloud-shrouded mountains, rising only two days’ march away.

“Who could have built these?” asks Tarl, standing shin-deep in the muck. He raps the hilt of his sword against the ship’s flank. The stone doesn’t chip. “Dwarves?”

Bolgash shakes his head. “Even the Fianawar don’t make their boats out of rocks. Maybe the gnomes… but there aren’t any machines aboard. I don’t—”

“Sir! Come quickly!”

Bolgash turns back toward shore. It’s one of the other minotaurs yelling. From where he stands, he can see a crowd of soldiers gathering at the western edge of the town. They’ve tightened into a knot, staring at something on the ground. The minotaur who shouted, a veteran named Kranthal, is standing on a hunk of charred rubble, waving his mace in the air.

Sloshing through the mire, Bolgash reaches shore again. By the time he and Tarl reach the crowd, it has trebled in size. “Back to your duties, you louts!” Bolgash shouts at them. “We’re supposed to search the whole town, not just this one… small…”

His voice trails off when the crowd parts to let him see. There, in pieces on the ground, is a statue, the likes of which he has never seen. It is huge, taller even than the largest of the minotaurs, and made of dark gray stone. Its head, tumbled face-up against the soot-covered husk of an elm, is carved into a shape that is neither man nor bull. It is the sneering visage of a dragon, with glittering rubies for eyes.

“Sir,” murmurs Tarl. “Look at its sword.”

Bolgash looks, already knowing what he will see. When he spies the rusty stain that covers the obsidian blade, he snorts, but is not surprised.

Stone ships. Stone men. A hard lump forms in his throat.

“Double the search!” he bellows. “Shout if you find more of these things!”

They do: three more, broken to pieces, surrounded by stinking, fly-covered bodies. Every one is identical to the rest.

Then Bolgash sees something else, and his bad feeling about things gets worse. To the east, the ground is torn, clots of turf gouged from the soil. He bends down, Tarl at his side.

The human runs a hand over his bald head, chewing on his mustache. “It’s a footprint,” he says.

“I know,” Bolgash replies.

The track is huge and deep: much deeper than any man could make… unless the man were made of stone. And there are more of them, many more, leading away from Kharto. When his men are done searching, there are many guesses as to the size of the company: scores, certainly; hundreds, likely. A thousand or more? Possible.

“Find a messenger,” Bolgash tells Tarl. “He must go to Marshal Ekhor’s camp at once. Tell him bandits had nothing to do with Kharto, and he must come here at once.”

“Sir,” Tarl replies and hurries off.

When he is gone, Bolgash stares at the tracks. They lead east, in a straight line, through thickets and creeks, up steep hillsides and down into deep vales. Nothing seems to steer them from their course, on toward the rocky mass of the Steamwalls. Bolgash knows, in his heart, that whatever the stone men are, they have gone to the mountains.

He stares at the peaks, a hand shading his eyes, and though he tries to hide it from his men—even from himself—he is afraid.