PROLOGUE by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

TEN

“I never believe anything told to me by bards or historians,” Lord Soth said. “For every sentence of truth they proffer, they demand you accept a dozen lies.” He marched off down the rain-washed road, his boots leaving no prints in the muddy ground.

Magda sighed with exasperation and hurried after the death knight. The boots she’d taken from one of the dead men at the tavern were soaked with water and covered in muck. “The tales told by Vistani storytellers are different,” she said when she reached the knight’s side. “Not every word is true, of course, but often they hold more truth than fiction. There might be some fact that could aid us in defeating the guardian and passing through the portal.”

Without even bothering to look at his companion, the death knight said, “Where I come from, I am the subject of many tales. I have been told, too, that historians often chronicle my life in great detail.” He shook his head. “Never have I revealed my soul to a storyteller or a scribe, and long dead are any who shared of the adventures I lived when the heart still beat within my chest. How, then, can anyone claim to know my story?”

“There are ways for stories to pass from father to son,” Magda noted, her voice full of resolve. “And if you were once a mortal man, you likely shared a tale or two with friends or fellow knights. You—”

The death knight stopped. “Yes, I once shared stories of my knightly adventures with my fellows,” he rumbled. “In fact, my order required knights seeking advancement not only to achieve a feat of great heroism, but to relate that worthy deed before his peers.” Laughing bitterly, he added, “If one story out of ten told by warriors seeking higher rank in the Knights of Solamnia were true, Krynn would have been a paradise beyond compare from their great works.”

Magda was quiet for a time, seemingly cowed by the death knight’s cynicism. At last, though, she gathered her courage and asked, “Was there no truth in the tales you told?”

It was Soth who now fell silent. The exchanges between the death knight and the young woman had been marked by such sparring since early the previous day. The discovery of the wolves’ carcasses had put them both on edge. A full day and a night had dragged past since they had discovered the corpses in the death knight’s snares, and neither he nor Magda had seen any further sign of the foe or benefactor who had slain the beasts.

As Soth and Magda walked on, the late morning sun appeared from behind a thundercloud, covering the landscape with a blanket of bright sunshine. A few mammoth, gray-hued knots still rolled across the sky, threatening to plunge the day into the half-darkness of a storm. In the gnarled trees lining the path, a few small birds took up their songs, though the throaty cawing of crows was a more frequent sound along the trail.

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