Kaz the Minotaur by Richard A. Knaak

Author:Richard A. Knaak [Knaak, Richard A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, sf_fantasy, Adult
ISBN: 9780786932313
Google: S-2TPwAACAAJ
Goodreads: 29186
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 1990-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

The day, like all other days he could remember, dwindled away. Nothing changed… ever. No end seemed in sight.

Lord Oswal sat in the central chamber, where he and his numerous predecessors, including his late brother, had held court. The throne room was a place of power, designed to accentuate the Grand Master’s status as supreme commander and voice of Paladine. The chair on which the Grand Master sat was a level higher than the next closest. Anyone seeking an audience would be forced to look upward. Behind the high-backed throne, further emphasizing who ruled here, was a great representation of the Solamnic symbol. The kingfisher was larger than a man.

Once guards would have stood on both sides of the throne. More would have lined the hall, and there would have been still more at the great doors. Now, as Oswal slowly raised his head, he saw but a handful of knights, little more than a dozen, he supposed, and it was questionable how much he could rely on them. These men were filthy, unbathed, hardly typical of the knighthood as once he had cherished it. They were mad, of course, and it was a madness forced on them by him. He was lucky that he himself had not fallen victim to the tremendous power of that one, though each day it grew a little harder to resist. Each hour it grew so much easier to just let one’s mind drift… to…

The bell sounded, snapping him from his reverie. His eyes widened, and a smile played across his cracked lips. Perhaps his men had thought it part of his madness when the Grand Master had ordered at least one man stationed at the bell at all times. Certainly his command that the bell be rung at random hours had been met with looks of pity from men who had once respected him. Lord Oswal knew what he was doing, however. The loud ringing of the bell stirred his mind whenever he was sinking too deep into madness. The ringing-and his own power as a cleric of Paladine, something that even most of his fellow knights did not know.

What was going on outside? he wondered. Where was Bennett? Where was Arak Hawkeye, head of the Order of the Crown? Where was Huma? Rennard? Where…

He cursed the one who traveled in the darkness as he realized with a jolt that some of the men he was waiting for were long dead. There were others, though…

“Contemplating your mortality, Grand Master?” a voice like a hiss asked him suddenly.

Oswal was well beyond the point of being startled when he manifested himself. “Come out from behind me, coward.”

A blur of darkness formed before the throne of the Grand Master, but none of the guards noticed. “Are you blind?” he wanted to scream at them. “The enemy is before you!”

The other knights continued to stare without reaction. They were caught in a bizarre world of fanaticism in which the performance of their duties was all they existed for.

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