Kern was not particularly surprised to find there wasn't one. All the emergency ladders had been removed, if any had ever reached the cross shaft. There wasn't even a way to call the lift back, not that he could see anyway. Ambrose had obviously planned this little ambush carefully.

"Come to think of it," Kern said, forcing a smile, "I've always wanted to see a big battle firsthand. You should too, Ogier. Broaden your perspective."

"It's far too late to change plans now," Ambrose said darkly. He moved behind Ogier and placed one hand conspicuously on the big man's shoulder. With the other he gripped a chunk of rock jutting from the wall. "We want to stay together, Kern," he noted. "This tunnel's a bit treacherous."

One squeeze, and the rock crumbled to dust.

Ogier spun around and whistled. "Hey, you're right. The walls are kind of quaky."

Scowling, Kern walked to the tunnel. "I think Ambrose had the better word for it," he said. " Treacherous.' "

Kern and Ogier went first, though Ambrose never let them get out of earshot. When the tunnel broadened into a smooth-floored hallway, he positioned himself between them, a falsely friendly hand on each man's back. Ogier trudged cheerfully along, oblivious to the danger that Kern had recognized long ago. If there was nothing to be done to save themselves, Kern hoped to keep his friend blissfully ignorant until the very end.

"This place is pretty," Ogier exclaimed, eyes wide with wonder at the statues lining both sides of the hall. He pointed up at the ceiling, carved to give the illusion of clouds and birds and open sky. "Why don't we ever come down here?"

Kern stopped just short of the arched doorway at the end of the hall. Torches had flickered to life in the room beyond, providing just enough light for him to glimpse the altar, the melted benches, the dark shapes flowing in a hideous, gleeful dance across the walls and floor. He'd never really believed the old miners' stories about the Black Chapel or the salt shadows that had been spawned in that unholy place. Kern realized now that he'd been wrong.

He realized, too, what Ambrose had planned for them.

The shopkeep stepped in front of Kern, blocking his view. "Down deep, I'm sure part of me is sorry for this," he said. An insane giggle bubbled from his lips. "But I'll be damned if I can find that part."

The shadows swarmed out of the chapel, flowing around and over Ambrose in a hissing torrent. Kern's scream finally drew Ogier's attention away from the hawks and butterflies on the ceiling. The big man wailed in horror. As that cry echoed through the hope-forsaken tunnels of Veidrava, it sounded for all the world like the bleat of a lost lamb.

It was known forever after as the Night of Skulls.

As the armies mustered at Veidrava and a half-dozen other places throughout Sithicus, Lord Soth and his thirteen skeletal warriors rode out from Nedragaard Keep. The hoofbeats of their undead mounts reverberated through the night, curdling dreams into nightmares. Their passing kicked up clouds of choking dust so thick they blotted out the face of Solinari.

The raiding party was already in full retreat when Soth's patrol caught up to them. The mercenaries were scrambling north through a steep-sided canyon in the Arden Valley, back toward the Invidian border. They'd obviously heard the thunder of the patrol's approach and fled without a second thought of meeting the charge. So, at least, they wished it to appear.

In his days as a Rose Knight, highest order of the fabled Knights of Solamnia, Lord Soth had ridden down a hundred such knavish bands. Their tactics inevitably hinged upon the same simple notion: Given a fleeing enemy, a soldier will always pursue. Soth had seen talented warriors do just that, their bloodlust stirred by their enemy's apparent weakness. He'd even laid ambushes himself that depended upon that sort of short-sightedness in his adversary. But he had never, in his years of life or unlife, been taken in by such a ruse.

As Soth and his warriors entered the canyon, he raised his sword and waved it twice. He and three of his skeletal soldiers charged ahead, hard upon the heels of the fleeing ogres and human mercenaries. The remainder of the patrol split into two bands of five. Without breaking pace, without the slightest hesitation, they stormed up the steep canyon walls.

The Invidian archers hidden atop the canyon, perched behind boulders and scrub trees, raised their bows. Most never fired a shot. The sight of the dead riders ascending the sheer rock cliffs was too much for them. They dropped their weapons and fled, turning the staged rout into an actual one.

The swords of the skeletal warriors ran red with Invidian blood. The dead men offered no mercy, untouched by the screams of the dying. They went about this grisly work as they did everything- dispassionately, with a murderous mechanical efficiency. The victory, the battle, it all meant nothing. Yet every one of those former stalwarts knew that it should stir his heroic heart. Such was their curse.

Soth, too, left a trail of corpses in his wake. Like his companions, he felt no exhilaration from the conflict. These sell-swords were feeble adversaries, unworthy of his blade. If these were the best troops Malocchio could muster, the war would be a short one.

The master of Nedragaard and his thirteen loyal retainers pursued the remainder of the Invidians until they were within sight of the border. Too many remained, and they were too widely scattered, for Soth and the others to kill them all before they crossed back to their homeland. The death knight reined in his horse. Sheathing his gore-spattered sword, he began to sing in a voice as deep as a bottomless chasm. His mournful dirge of oaths betrayed, destinies abandoned, filled the Sithican night.

The skeletal warriors ceased their pursuit, threw back their heads, and joined in the chant. Their voices rattled like ancient paper as they added the catalogue of their sins to their master's. Lust, greed, pride-they confessed to these and more. The worst of their crimes, the one that bound them forever to the Knight of the Black Rose, was idolatry. In life, they had honored Lord Soth above all else. In death, they shared his awful fate, forever damned alongside the one they had mistaken for a god among men.

Throughout Sithicus, others added to the song. They were, like Soth himself, unconscious of the things they confessed, unable to hear the secret vices their neighbors admitted. The dirge gathered at the border. There, the accumulated sins blossomed into a wall of spectral roses that touched the heavens.

Then the flowers withered and vanished.

The few surviving soldiers from the raiding party raced across the border to safety. Soth, sitting dazed upon his decaying steed, watched them go. He'd felt the song's undoing. More disturbing still, he'd also heard the dirge clearly in the instant before it was silenced. The awful weight of those confessions, the indisputable truth of those countless dark deeds, pressed down upon him still.

Slowly, the death knight approached the border.

From a distance the boundary resembled a low stone wall. As the death knight drew closer, he recognized it as a barrier of bloody human skulls. They were lined along the border in both directions as far as the eye could see. Small and large, ancient and recent, the skulls faced Sithicus. Their empty eye sockets regarded the land and its lord with the utter detachment of the truly dead.

Soth dismounted and warily approached the barrier. He saw now that the skulls were not simply smeared with gore but covered with words penned in blood. The script was cramped, but delicate. He lifted one of the skulls and began to read.