Welcome to DragonLance Saga Readings. Today I am reading The Siege by Donald Allen Jones from Dragons of Ash and Twilight. Originally distributed on May 6, 2026. You can pick up a copy here: https://dlsaga.com/dragons-of-ash-and-twilight/
About Dragons of Ash and Twilight
Step into a world where the echoes of ancient wars collide with the desperate struggles of a new age. Dragons of Ash and Twilight is a pulse-pounding anthology of original short stories, exploring the raw edges of a realm defined by high stakes, dark magic, and the heavy price of destiny.
From the embers of a broken pantheon to the frontlines of a world at war, this collection pushes the boundaries of the DLSaga. Experience the grit of legendary battles, the brilliance of forgotten sorcery, and the untold stories of those living in the shadow of giants.
Epic in scope. Uncompromising in spirit.
Whether you are a devoted chronicler of high fantasy or a newcomer drawn to the flame, this is where the saga continues.
The Siege
By Donald Allen Jones
I, Astinus, chronicle here events from a time that diverged from our own, one of the many tributaries branching from the River of Time.
Twenty years have passed since the end of the War of the Lance ushered in the Age of Hope. In that time Ansalon has seen much change. The Whitestone Council, formed in the winter of 352 AC (Alt-Cataclius or After the Cataclysm), solidified their alliance in 354 when the leaders of the council officially founded the Whitestone Coalition, each realm either reaffirming the ancient Swordsheath Scroll or becoming new signatories to it. The islands of Ergoth, part of the Ergothian Empire prior to the Cataclysm, joined the Coalition but also formed a Confederation of their own. Daltigoth is once again the capital of a respected and growing policy, more concerned with economic growth and stability than the accumulation of territory.
The Coalition’s first true test came in the summer of 357 when Kitiara uth Matar, last surviving Dragon Highlord, laid siege to the Lordcity of Palanthas in what has been called both the Siege of Palanthas and the Blue Lady’s War. The Coalition passed the test, but only as a result of Kitiara’s death on 30 Paleswelt 357. A month later Ariakan Ariakas, son of the so-called Dragon Emperor Duulket Ariakas and—it is claimed—the Dragon Goddess Zeboim, and former Highmaster of the Red Dragonarmy, left the High Clerist’s Tower, where he had been imprisoned for two years after the War of the Lance and welcomed as a guest after his sentence was fulfilled.
Ariakan disappeared from the historical record for fourteen years until 25 Holmswelth 371, when his new order, the Knights of Neraka (erroneously called the Knights of Takhisis by some), swept out of the Khalkist Mountain range with their Khurish and Zhakar allies to wage war on western Ansalon. The conflict has been raging for nearly two years now, with no end in sight. At this moment one of the most critical battles of the war is taking place at the High Clerist’s Tower, which has been under siege since 7 Gildember 372.
— An Ongoing History of the Age of Hope, Astinus of Palanthas
4 Deepkolt 353 AC
Age of Despair
High Clerist’s Tower
Sigurd uth Gruber pressed himself against the cold stone of the Tower wall, snow whipping across the battlements. From this height, the chaos below was a blur of armor, banners, and wyrms. But his eyes were locked on the duel above Kingfisher’s Nest.
A lone knight stood atop the outcropping, sword in one hand and lance in the other, facing the Dragon Highlord on her mount. The blue dragon circled lazily, wings slicing the winter air. Sturm Brightblade’s sword glimmered in the weak sunlight—goldwinged crosspiece, hilt sculpted like a rose, catching the pale light with every arc and clash.
The duel was brief. Each strike rang against metal. Sparks scattered across the stone. Around them, the battle ebbed and flowed, Dragonarmies pressed back by the sudden madness of the Draconians, but Sigurd could only see the two figures above the walls.
His hands gripped his own sword hilt until the knuckles whitened.
Then the Highlord’s strike came. Sudden. Terrible. Sturm’s sword knocked aside—or perhaps he’d been too slow. In the next instant, Sturm himself fell, sliding from the outcropping, arms flailing before the world seemed to catch and hold him in suspended disbelief.
Sigurd wanted to scream. His throat was dry. His mouth refused sound.
Sturm Brightblade lay broken on the stone. The sword—the Brightblade itself—slipped from nerveless fingers and clattered below.
For a moment, Sigurd was twelve again, listening to his father’s tales of Bedal Brightblade, of Huma Dragonbane. The names of heroes. The weight of those names settled on his shoulders, and he couldn’t lift it.
The battle continued around him. Soldiers scrambled. Draconians faltered. The Highlord disappeared into the chaos, victorious.
Sturm’s body remained.
Sigurd would have to remember this. For those who had fought alongside Sturm. For those not yet born. For the line that would never falter so long as their names were spoken.
The Brightblade had fallen.
25 Frostkolt 372 AC
Age of Hope
High Clerist’s Tower
The cold had settled into Sigurd’s bones weeks ago. He sat in the corner of the barracks, close to the brazier but never quite close enough, working oil into the leather straps of his armor. Around him, other knights and soldiers did the same—the endless maintenance that kept them alive. Outside, snow fell steadily, muffling the sounds of the siege. Even the enemy seemed diminished by the winter.
“Did you hear about the knight?” Sigurd kept working his oil into the leather.
“What knight?” One of the Crown knights from Thelgaard asked, voice still breaking; Gods, the squires were being raised up too soon. This thrice-damned war.
“Nerakan. Three weeks back, the eastern approach.” Gareth had been at the Tower nearly as long as Sigurd. “Cut through two of our brothers like they were recruits.”
“The Dark Knights can fight. We know that.”
“Not that.” Gareth stared into his cup. “His shield. His arms.”
Now Sigurd looked up.
“What about them?” the young knight asked.
Gareth was quiet for a moment, staring into his cup. “Bore a sword. Silver on blue, I think. But there was something else—a black border, maybe? It was chaos, hard to see clearly. But I swear by Kiri-Jolith, it looked like—” He stopped.
“Like what?”
“Like Brightblade arms. But wrong.”
The barracks went quiet except for the pop and hiss of the brazier. Every man there knew the Brightblade arms. Every knight who’d been at the Tower twenty years ago had watched those arms fall with Sturm. Even the young ones knew the story—it was part of their training, their legacy.
“You’re mistaken,” someone said finally. “Lots of knights bear swords.”
“That’s what I told myself.” Gareth shook his head. “But then Mikhail saw him too, week after that. Said the field was black and the sword was silver.”
“Which is it then? Blue or black?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, it’s hard to see in battle. But Mikhail swore there was something about it that reminded him of the old arms. Said it made his skin crawl.”
Sigurd set down his armor strap carefully. “The Brightblade line ended with Sturm,” he said quietly. “There’s no one left to bear those arms, different or otherwise.”
“I know that.” Gareth met his eyes. “That’s what makes it wrong.”
The young knight from Thelgaard looked between them, confused. “Maybe it’s just someone who admires Sturm Brightblade? Even the enemy must have heard the stories.”
“The Dark Knights don’t admire us,” Gareth said. “They mock everything we stand for. Why would one of them bear arms that echo ours, even corrupted?”
No one had an answer for that.
Sigurd returned to his work, but his hands had stilled. He was thinking about that day twenty years ago—the blue dragon, the lance, the rose-hilted sword catching the light as it fell. He’d attended Sturm’s funeral—half of Solamnia had, it seemed. He’d watched as they laid the knight to rest with the Brightblade placed upon his chest, as was proper. A hero’s burial. An honorable end to an honorable blade.
He’d assumed it was still there, resting in the Chamber of Kiri-Jolith. Why wouldn’t it be?
But now, hearing Gareth’s words, an uncomfortable thought crept in. What if the sword hadn’t stayed in the tomb? What if someone had taken it, dishonored it, given it to their dark knights as some kind of twisted trophy? It should have shattered in a Dark Knight’s hands, according to the legends about only honorable knights being able to wield it. But, what if it hadn’t? What if the legends were false or….
He couldn’t finish the thought. It made him sick.
“Probably nothing,” someone said, trying to lighten the mood. “Just our eyes playing tricks. We’re all tired, seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Probably,” Gareth agreed, but he didn’t sound convinced.
The conversation drifted to other things—rations, the weather, speculation about when reinforcements might arrive. But Sigurd remained quiet, staring at the brazier’s flames.
Azure, a bastard sword argent, differentiated by a bordure sable.
Or was it the reverse? Black field, silver sword and border? It didn’t matter. What mattered was the creeping sense that something was deeply, fundamentally wrong. That somewhere out there in the darkness beyond the walls, someone was wearing a mockery of everything Sturm Brightblade had died for, that the House of Brightblade had stood for. Est Mithas oth Sularus, he thought. My Life is my Honor. The Brightblade words, as well known as the Brightblade itself or the heroes descended from that family. The inspiration for the knighthood’s own motto, Est Sularus oth Mithas, My Honor is My Life. That truth was in Volume One of the Measure. Chapter Two, Sigurd thought. Maybe Three. He misremembered.
He shook his head, told himself Gareth was mistaken. That exhaustion and fear made men see ghosts. That the enemy couldn’t possibly have…
But the thought wouldn’t leave him. It lodged in his mind like a shard of ice, cold and sharp and impossible to ignore. Rising abruptly, he left the barracks.
Outside, the snow continued to fall, and somewhere beyond the walls, the Knights of Neraka waited for their moment. Sigurd glanced around, then made his way toward the entrance to the Chamber of Kiri-Jolith. It had been sealed for years, carefully guarded, but the current sentry—young Otto—was asleep. Sigurd eyed the Knight of the Crown, but did not wake him to reprimand him for his lack of discipline. Quietly, he crept past and descended the worn stone steps.
The temperature dropped with each step. His breath misted in the air, visible even in the darkness. The stairway curved, and the sounds of the Tower above—the wind, the distant clank of armor, men’s voices—faded to nothing. Only his footsteps remained, echoing off stone.
The crypt’s entrance yawned before him. He hesitated, one hand on the cold wall, then stepped inside.
It was dark. The air smelled faintly of candle smoke and old stone. Dust motes drifted in narrow shafts of light from the small iron-grated windows. Along the walls, carved niches held the names and effigies of long-dead knights, their images frozen in solemn repose.
At the chamber’s far end rested the tomb of Sturm Brightblade. Sigurd crossed the floor slowly. His footsteps seemed too loud. He suddenly sensed what he would find—or rather, what he wouldn’t find—but some part of him needed to see it with his own eyes.
To be certain.
The tomb’s surface was cold marble, polished smooth, inlaid with the sigils of Solamnia and words from the Measure. A stone knight, his open eyes both sad and resolved, stared at him out of a face made so lifelike Sigurd would not be surprised if he had spoken. He examined the tomb thoroughly, his eyes going to the niche where Sturm’s relics had been placed after his funeral.
Where the Brightblade and the Starjewel should have rested, the marble was bare.
He knelt, his armor scraping the stone. The silence pressed against him. His hands rested on the marble edge, and he bowed his head. He said a silent prayer to Paladine, to Kiri-Jolith, and to Habbakuk. He called on the Triumvirate for guidance, for understanding, for anything that would make the loss of Brightblade make sense. Silence answered him.
Unbidden, words came: “Out of exile, out of shadow and vallenwood, vallenwood and shadow… now he rode, Crown Knight crowned in glory.”
Part of The Song of Sturm, composed days after the hero’s death in the same vein as the Song of Huma. He’d rarely sung it himself, but every knight knew it by heart.
He stayed there a moment longer, then rose. The emptiness of the chamber echoed his unease.
Without another glance, he retraced his steps up the stairs, past the sleeping Otto, and out into the snow-swept courtyard, the wind biting at his cheeks and blowing his tears away.
4 Deepkolt 373 AC
Age of Hope
High Clerist’s Tower
Sigurd stood on the battlements of the Tower, sword swinging as Knights of Neraka and their Zhakar allies swarmed the fortress, trying to gain entrance. The Knight of the Sword worked methodically, right arm aching as he swung and parried, sweat stinging his eyes and his armor—dented and scratched—weighing him down. He pushed past the fatigue, pushed the enemy off their scaling ladders, nearly was pulled off the walls by the grasping hand of a Half-Ogre.
It was not going well. The Whitestone Coalition was continuously surprised by the suddenness of Ariakan’s forces and continued to lose ground quickly: Nordmaar and Balifor had fallen. According to rumor, Silvanesti was nearly ready to capitulate and even Thorbardin, which could survive a siege better than the Tower, was seemingly teetering. The fighting in the eastern Solamnic provinces had finally solidified into a grim back and forth, neither side gaining ground, but neither losing either. In central Solamnia, on the Plains and in Gaardlund, Crownguard and Silverblade had mostly put aside their forty-three year long feud to defend their provinces.
More rumors: Tanis Half-Elven was dead, and Lauralanthalasa Kanan, Consul of the Coalition, was in the grip of despair. Other rumors: It was Laurana who died, and Tanis was leading a band of Wildrunners behind enemy lines; it was said he took no prisoners. But it was all rumors. Who knew the truth?
The only thing Sigurd knew was that he was grateful the commander of the Nerakans out there—Dogah Ironfist, by all accounts—had held back his dragons and Draconians. The enemy still remembered the impact a Dragon Orb could have on the wyrms and lizard men, it seemed. Sigurd had no doubt the Tower would stand. It had stood since the first siege during the Age of Dreams. It had stood during the War of the Lance. It would stand now.
Then, the flap of a standard—green dragon turtle on black, one he’d seen many times over the months—headed straight for the western wall. Snow whipped across his face, stinging, and his breath came in ragged bursts, fog curling in the freezing air. The breach had been there since the night before, jagged stones and splintered timbers marking the place where the defenders had barely held. Sergeant-brothers labored furiously, shoveling rubble, reinforcing beams, pressing chainmail and shields into service to patch every hole. Their tabards were soaked with blood and snow, faces streaked with dirt, grime, and exhaustion, hands raw from hammering, hewing, and hauling. They were doing their best.
Apparently, their best wasn’t enough. Sigurd’s stomach sank as portions of the wall groaned, then crumbled entirely, sending stones tumbling into the courtyard below. The Nerakan Talon surged through the breach, a tide of black armor and snarling crests, the green dragon turtle on its pole flapping menacingly as it wavered in the wind. Steel rang against steel around him as he braced his sword arm, sweat stinging his eyes beneath the helmet. He struck left, parried right, pushed back a charging half-ogre with a kick to the knee, and shoved a Dark Knight over the edge with a roar.
And then he saw it.
The Brightblade. Golden-winged crosspiece and ruby, its hilt sculpted like a rose. Twenty years, and here it was again.
“The Brightblade!” he shouted, the ancient cry carried by the wind. “The Brightblade Shines!” Around him, Solamnics raised their voices with his, the cry spreading along the wall.
He lunged forward, adrenaline coursing through him. Each strike felt guided by something beyond fatigue, beyond the ache in his shoulders. The sword flashed through the storm of battle, and around him other Solamnics took up the cry. Elves from Qualinesti and Silvanesti pressed forward. Thorbardin Dwarves rallied at the breach.
Then Sigurd’s eyes followed the wielder more closely.
Black armor, spiked and adorned with grinning skulls. The gauntlet that held the Brightblade was equally dark. And on the tabard, white on black—the Lily.
Then, the axe fell.
Coda
The Knights’ War lasted for two more years before ending in stalemate. Lord Ariakan, commander of the Knights of Neraka and ruler of what he would later style the Khalkist League, and Lauralanthalasa Kanan, Consul of the Whitestone Coalition, signed the Accords of the Tower at the High Clerist’s Tower on 27 Fierswelt 375. Ansalon was divided between them, with the eastern portion of the continent—Nordmaar, Khur, Taman Busuk, Balifor, and Silvanesti—falling under the sway of the knighthood while the Whitestone Coalition (Solamnia, Ergoth, Thorbardin, Qualinesti, and other realms) guarded western Ansalon.
Thus things stood, with only minor border skirmishes occurring between the two forces. The most immediate effects of the stalemate were the rise of hardliners among the Knights of Solamnia, who felt a laxity in adhering to the Measure had caused the stalemate, and the death of Ariakan Ariakas at the hands of a small group of similar-minded hardliners among his knighthood. These assassins were hunted down by the majority of the Nerakans, led by Mirielle Abrena, and brought to trial, conviction, and execution. Steel Brightblade, Knight of the Lily and former squire of Ariakan, departed the knighthood, taking with him his mother, Sara Dunstan, the Knight of the Skull Dhamon Grimwulf and the Knight of the Thorn Sandaryll Smokingwar. Together, they made their way to the Republic of Tarsis, where they took part in its defense alongside the former Knights of Solamnia Adara Shan (a former Knight of the Crown), Riva Silverblade (former Knight of the Sword) and Malak Ogrebane (former Knight of the Rose). A month later, the seven founded a new order, the Knights of Tarsis, to act as a bridge between and bulwark against the extremes of Solamnia and Neraka.
— An Ongoing History of the Age of Hope, Astinus of Palanthas
