“L-Lord Ariakas,” he stammered, stuffing his shirt into his pants and hurrying down the stairs. “This is an-err- unexpected honor.”
“Not unexpected, I believe?” Ariakas said smoothly, his voice sounding strangely metallic coming from the depths of the dragonhelm.
“Well, perhaps not,” Garibanus said with a weak laugh.
Ariakas continued climbing, his eyes fixed on a doorway above him. Realizing the lord’s intended destination, Garibanus interposed himself between Ariakas and the door.
“My lord,” he began apologetically, “Kitiara is dressing. She-”
Without a word, without even pausing in his stride. Lord Ariakas swung his gloved hand. The blow caught Garibanus in the ribcage. There was a whooshing sound, like a bellows deflating, and the sound of bones cracking, then a wet soggy splatter as the force of the blow sent the young man’s body into the wall opposite the stairs some ten yards distant. The limp body slid to the floor below, but Ariakas never noticed. Without a backward glance, he resumed his climb, his eyes on the door at the top of the stairs.
Lord Ariakas, commander-in-chief of the dragonarmies, reporting directly to the Dark Queen herself, was a brilliant man, a military genius. Ariakas had nearly held the rulership of the Ansalon continent in his grasp. Already he was styling himself “Emperor.” His Queen was truly pleased with him, his rewards from her were many and lavish.
But now he saw his beautiful dream slipping through his fingers like smoke from autumn fires. He had received reports of his troops fleeing wildly across the Solamnic plains, falling back from Palanthas, withdrawing from Vingaard Keep, abandoning plans for the siege of Kalaman. The elves had allied with human forces in Northern and Southern Ergoth. The mountain dwarves had emerged from their subterranean home of Thorbardin and, it was reported, allied with their ancient enemies, the hill dwarves and a group of human refugees in an attempt to drive the dragonarmies from Abanasinia. Silvanesti had been freed. A Dragon Highlord had been killed in Ice Wall. And, if rumor was to be believed, a group of gully dwarves held Pax Tharkas!
Thinking of this as he swept up the stairs, Ariakas worked himself into a fury. Few survived Lord Ariakas’s displeasure. None survived his furies.
Ariakas inherited his position of authority from his father, who had been a cleric in high standing with the Queen of Darkness. Although only forty, Ariakas had held his position almost twenty years-his father having met an untimely death at the hands of his own son. When Ariakas was two, he had watched his father brutally murder his mother, who had been attempting to flee with her little son before the child became as perverted with evil as his father.
Though Ariakas always treated his father with outward shows of respect, he never forgot his mother’s murder. He worked hard and excelled in his studies, making his father inordinately proud. Many wondered whether that pride was with the father as he felt the first thrusts of the knife-blade his nineteen-year-old son plunged into his body in revenge for his mother’s death-and with an eye to the throne of Dragon Highlord.
Certainly it was no great tragedy to the Queen of Darkness, who quickly found young Ariakas more than made up for the loss of her favorite cleric. The young man had no clerical talents himself, but his considerable skills as a magic-user won him the Black Robes and the commendations of the evil wizards who instructed him. Although he passed the dreadful Tests in the Tower of High Sorcery, magic was not his love. He practiced it infrequently, and never wore the Black Robes which marked his standing as a wizard of evil powers.
Ariakas’s true passion was war. It was he who had devised the strategy that had enabled the Dragon Highlords and their armies to subjugate almost all of the continent of Ansalon. It was he who had insured that they met with almost no resistance, for it had been Ariakas’s brilliant strategy to move swiftly, striking the divided human, elf, and dwarven races before they had time to unite, and snap them up piecemeal. By summer, Ariakas’s plan called for him to rule Ansalon unchallenged. Other Dragon Highlords on other continents of Krynn were looking to him with undisguised envy-and fear. For one continent could never satisfy Ariakas. Already his eyes were turning westward, across the Sirrion Sea.
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