"Of all the magic unleashed here in times past. Sometimes, when dragons fight and die in a place, the battlefield remembers, and such phantoms and echoes can be dangerous. Perhaps we would do well to fly to the castle. We might avoid some of the hazards, anyway."
"Or attract the notice of other guardians," Raryn said. "I"d rather walk and be careful."
Brimstone flipped his wings in a shrug. "So be it." He started out of the tunnel, and a dark, vast form, pa.s.sing over the mountain at their backs, glided into view.
For a moment, Taegan thought it was a black dragon. The color was essentially right, but it had a stippled pattern of lighter scales running through the dark. Its wings were so torn and perforated it seemed unnatural that it could fly as well as it was manifestly capable. The entire body had a gaunt, shriveled look, not just the flesh on its head. The fangs and talons, moreover, were as black as obsidian.
Praying the reptile hadn"t detected him, Taegan shrank back into the pa.s.sage. His companions did the same.
With a lazy beat of its ragged pinions, the dark wyrm flew onward. It gave an eerie, screeching cry, and from other points around the valley, the voices of other drakes responded in kind.
Will reflected that, for a fellow who lacked any taste for soldiering, he was spending far too much of his time in the midst of armies. Though it was mildly interesting to note the differences. Gareth Dragonsbane"s host had been the very definition of chivalry, with scores of knights, paladins, and men-at-arms encased in plate and mounted on towering destriers. By contrast, the Sossrim army, or at least the part of it encamped in this particular vale, had a more rustic, yeoman-ish feel to it. Virtually no one wore plate. A warrior was lucky if he had mail, or a nag bearing any resemblance to a genuine war-horse. Most people looked like the archers, scouts, and skirmishers who const.i.tuted an important but ancillary part of the Damaran military.
Still, they had an air of sober competence about them, especially the officers who"d crowded into the gray canvas tent to hear what the travelers had to say. Pavel did most of the talking, while Dorn withdrew into brooding silence.
When the priest finished a greatly abridged account of their adventures, Madislak, the bald, scrawny old druid who seemed to be in charge, shook his head. "Can the Ice Queen truly be dead?" he asked.
"Dead as a weasel"s breakfast!" Jivex declared, clinging upside down to one of the poles supporting the tent.
"We saw her die," Pavel said.
"And of late," Stival said, "she hasn"t cast her image into the sky to encourage her troops and demoralize us. I wondered why."
"Then why is it still so cold?" groused a warrior, fair of skin and silvery blond of hair like most of his folk, with a bronze hawk-shaped brooch securing his woolen cloak. He punctuated the question with a rattling sniffle.
Madislak shrugged. "Winter is nearly upon us. Even with Iyraclea"s power broken, we"re likely stuck with the snows till spring."
"What I want to know," said a burly man with a broken nose and a couple missing teeth, "is why, if the b.i.t.c.h is gone, Sossal"s still overrun with giants and such."
"Sun and rain," the druid snapped, "use your head. Because Zethrindor and the lesser wyrms have decided to claim the realm for themselves."
"I"m certain you"re right," Pavel said. "The chromatics expect to conquer all Faerun in the months to come. Sammaster convinced them it"s their destiny."
"Sammaster," Stival said. "I think I"ve heard one or two bogie stories about a necromancer of that name. But he disappeared a long time ago, didn"t he, and never bothered folk in this part of the world even when he was around."
"Well," said Will, "he"s bothering you now. He"s found a way to bother everybody."
"Yes," said Pavel, "and if somebody doesn"t foil his schemes, it may not even matter whether you Sossrim defeat Zethrindor or not. Your land, and all the world, could still go down in ruin. That"s why you have to help us get back to Thentia."
The fellow with the runny nose snorted. "These wild stories ... no offense, outlander, but we have our own problems, real problems, to concern us."
"When you can talk with the wind and the forests," Madislak said, "maybe your opinions on mystical matters will be worth hearing." He turned his gaze, fierce as an eagle"s, on Pavel. "I believe you, son of the Morninglord, more or less. The signs corroborate your tale. But we Sossrim can"t give you as much aid as you might like. We do indeed have a war to fight."
"We"ll be grateful," said Pavel, "for any help you can provide."
"The early days of the invasion went against us," the old man said. "Zethrindor attacked in the south, where our princ.i.p.al settlements are, decimated our army, and put the survivors to flight. We separated into several companies, to make it easier to hide and forage, and started preparations for a counteroffensive. We"re ready now. We"ll march south, uniting as we go, and you can travel with us. When the time comes, I"ll point you to hidden paths that, with luck, will enable you to sneak past Zethrindor"s forces and westward into Damara. How"s that?"
"It sounds good to me," said Will.
The meeting broke up shortly thereafter. Outside the tent, the air was cold, the day, gray and cheerless. Still, it came as a relief after the claustrophobic press inside, scented as it had been with the sour smell of humans in need of baths. Will"s belly grumbled, and he looked around in hope of finding a cook fire and breakfast.
Dorn, however, turned without a word and stalked away through the dirty, much-trodden snow. It looked as if he was heading out of camp to avoid curious eyes, or to sulk in private. Frowning, limping slightly, Pavel hurried after him. Will sensed something was happening, and he too gave chase, running outright to match the longer strides of his friends. Platinum wings shimmering, Jivex brought up the rear.
Pavel reached out and gripped the shoulder on the half-golem"s human side. "Hold on," he said.
Dorn turned and scowled. "What?"
"We need to talk," the priest replied. "Earlier this morning, when you woke us by shouting at Stival, you weren"t in our campsite anymore. You were on higher ground some distance away."
"So?"
"You were about to desert us. If you hadn"t spotted the patrol stealing up on us, we would never have seen you again."
"Nonsense!" said Will. "Charlatan, from the hour we met, you"ve been wrong about everything, wrong as a hog in a wedding dress, but this beats ..." Then he noticed the way Dorn"s mouth had twisted on the fleshy side of his face. "By the silent dirk! It"s true? Why?"
"It won"t happen again," said Dorn.
"My friend," Pavel said, "I know it"s all but unbearable. Kara was wonderful. You yearned your whole life for a love like that, never dreaming you"d find it, then had it torn away from you. But Lathander teaches-"
Dorn slammed his human fist into Pavel"s jaw. The punch flung the blond man backward and he landed on his rump in the snow.
"I said," the big man growled, "I won"t sneak off again. You don"t have to nag me about it." He turned and trudged away.
Brimstone regarded his companions, and took some slight solace in the fact that none of them appeared panicky or demoralized. They might be his inferiors, and an aggravation much of the time, but they had a toughness that made them useful p.a.w.ns.
"The drakes are called Tarterian wyrms," he whispered, keeping his voice even lower than usual. He and his comrades had retreated a goodly distance back down the tunnel, but he a.s.sumed the creatures outside heard as well as dragons generally did. "They dwell in the Abyss and certain other parts of the dark worlds. Archdemons and the like employ them as jailers, sentinels, and coursing beasts."
Taegan arched an eyebrow. "I trust you aren"t saying the elves built their stronghold in Baator or someplace similarly uncongenial, and we"ve landed there now."
"No," Raryn said. "We"re in the far north of Faerun, just as we expected. I only caught a glimpse of the sky and stars before we had to scurry for cover, but I could tell that much."
"Sammaster stationed the Tarterian dragons here," Brimstone said, "as he left a Styx dragon in Northkeep, and used shadow wyrms to mount a guard over King Gareth"s soul. His primary concern was always the drakes of our own world, but he also had an interest in wyrms native to other levels of existence. He learned to command some varieties, and negotiated covenants with others."
"And here they are," sighed Karasendrieth, slumped, ashen, and generally haggard-looking, her makeshift bandages spotted and giving off the enticing scent of blood. The smell wore away at Brimstone"s self-restraint. "I suppose the Tarterians were a better choice than chromatics, since he doesn"t want the latter learning anything about the source of the Rage. But still, by all the stars and every melody they sing, how many barriers did he put in our way?"
"We"ve known from the start," Taegan said, "that he has a penchant for intricacy and elaboration. It was manifest in his cipher, so complex that even Firefingers and the other scholars couldn"t unravel it. But we"ve outplayed him so far, and will again. Though I confess, I"m uncertain as to how."
Raryn scratched his silvery goatee. "I see two choices. We four can try to find and destroy the heart of the Rage without running afoul of the Tarterian dragons and whatever other dangers are lurking about. Or, someone can go for reinforcements."
"The latter," Brimstone said, "is the wiser course, and I"m best equipped to do it. I can fly, I command the most potent magic, and I emerged from our recent battles relatively unscathed. I am, moreover, impervious to the cold. I believe a fading enchantment like the one protecting the site in the Novularonds still warms the valley to some degree, but none of you could bear the chill that prevails beyond the mountains."
Raryn smiled. "I could, but I don"t see how I"d manage if I was riding you and you had to turn into smoke. Anyway, I"d rather bide here, because I think we should try both plans. You go for help, and the three of us will try to sneak into the castle."
Taegan nodded. "With time slipping through our fingers-or talons as the case may be-I agree."
"So be it." Brimstone rose and stretched. Twinges shot through his body as if he were a mortal creature. "You"ll want to find a different hiding place, and keep your heads down for a while. If the Tarterians spot me, they may think to search for other intruders, and a tunnel leading to a magical gate is the first place they"ll check."
Kara said, "You could rest before you venture forth."
Brimstone sneered. "I"ve already recovered about as much of my vigor as can be expected until I slake my thirst. So, unless one of you is volunteering his or her blood, I see no use in delaying."
He turned and crept down the tunnel to the exit. Then he invoked his gift for transformation. For a moment, nothing happened, or rather, nothing but a fresh stab of pain, but then his body dissolved into smoke and embers.
Though a sentient cloud, he could see and hear as clearly as before. Crouching in the mouth of the pa.s.sageway, he peered about. As far as he could tell, none of the Tarterians was in the immediate vicinity, so he skulked out and up, hugging the rocky, snowy slopes as he drifted, snaking through fissures in the stone whenever available, making himself as inconspicuous as possible.
Twice, he froze and waited while one of the dark, gaunt Tarterians glided overhead. But he ascended to the gap between two peaks without Sammaster"s sentinels detecting him, and from there, he could survey the country beyond.
It was endless desolation, mile after mile of ice and stone, where nothing stirred but the moaning wind, and here on the threshold of it, where the ancient wizards" enchantment of warmth began to fail, the temperature plummeted. It caused Brimstone no distress, but it was cold enough to stop Taegan"s heart in a matter of moments. He doubted even Karasendrieth could endure it for any length of time, certainly not in her current injured and debilitated state.
That might have its positive side, if it meant that even the Tarterians were averse to venturing far beyond the zone of relative warmth. If such was the case, once he put some distance between himself and the mountains, he"d be safe.
Encouraged, he flowed onward, until, without warning, the world whirled and tumbled. Silvery light flashed and glimmered around him. Then, when the vertiginous spinning stopped, he found himself hovering in a corridor of milky translucent crystal, or possibly curdled light. The pa.s.sage forked ahead of him, and doglegged out of sight behind.
Taegan, Raryn, and Kara crept through the scree and litter of bones at the base of the mountains, looking for hollows in the rock. According to the dwarf, since there was one cave, there were almost certainly more.
He, naturally, led the procession, and Taegan served as rearguard, leaving the middle position, the safest spot, to Kara. The bladesinger supposed the arrangement was paradoxical, considering that she was the most formidable. But primarily in dragon shape, and that close to the heart of the Rage, it was more important than ever that she keep to her womanly form as much as possible.
It was a nerve-wracking trek. Periodically, one of the Tarterian wyrms screeched or glided near, and the seekers ducked undercover until it pa.s.sed. They also spotted the vague, semitransparent semblance of a dragon stalking along the ground. For a moment, Taegan wondered if it was Brimstone, back already and congealing from vapor. Then he realized it was a ghost, still haunting the battleground where the ancient elves had killed it.
Such obvious menaces were alarming, but in essence, they were the same sort of horror he"d been fighting for the better part of a year, and perhaps for that reason, they didn"t daunt him quite as much as they would another. It was actually the bizarre manifestations of enchantment gone to rot that he found most disquieting, even though the majority didn"t appear particularly dangerous. A stone spoke to him in a language he didn"t recognize. His mother"s face formed and dissolved in a trickle of water pattering down the escarpment. Fragrant black lilies sprouted from the frozen earth, rubbed and twined together in an exploratory kind of way, then exploded into furious motion, tearing at one another with barbs concealed among their petals.
With such wonders to distract him, it was a while before he actually registered what he was picking his way through. What he even trod on and crushed occasionally. But when he finally did notice, he froze.
Perhaps he made a sound as well, for Kara and Raryn turned around. "What is it?" whispered the bard.
"The bones," he breathed.
Raryn stooped to examine one of the skeletons. Took hold of a bone and lifted it up. For a heartbeat, the armature of a bird-like wing hung revealed, then the structure crumbled.
"I"ve never actually seen the skeleton of an avariel before," the white-haired hunter said, "but I a.s.sume this is one."
Taegan swallowed. "And there"s another, and over there, another. Sune"s ruby comb, they"re all around us, everywhere!" He paused, studying their faces. "Do you see what it means?"
"Keep your voice down!" Raryn said.
"Yes, my friend," Kara said. She took Taegan"s hand. "I do understand."
"It could have been any breed of elf wizards who created the Rage," he said. "But it was avariels who defended this place. Who died by the hundreds, perhaps the thousands, protecting it when the wyrm lords and their minions attacked."
"Interesting," Raryn said, "but now"s not the time to stand and chat about it."
Taegan struggled to regain his composure. "Yes, of course. Pray, pardon my foolishness."
As they skulked on, he did his best to keep watching for trouble, but found it considerably more difficult. He couldn"t wrench his thoughts away from his discovery.
The avariel race, his own race, whom he"d spent his life disdaining, had been instrumental in overthrowing the dragon kings. His ancestors had fought and died so Faerun could be free. They hadn"t been cowards then, nor later, he was certain, when they"d withdrawn into the wilderness. With so many of their kindred slain, and probably, vengeful drakes intent on slaughtering the rest, reclusion had been their only hope of survival.
Taegan started to cry.
Brimstone resumed solid form. If he couldn"t escape the snare that had caught him, he"d likely find himself facing one or more of the Tarterians in the very near future, and they probably commanded magic capable of hurting him even in his guise of sulphurous vapor. Better, then, to wear a shape that would allow him to strike back.
He supposed that Sammaster, aided by the Tarterians, who reportedly favored magical traps such as that, had laid the enchantments throughout the ring of mountains. Though the labor involved in such an endeavor must have been considerable, particularly in light of the fact that the only conceivable purpose was to catch folk who somehow learned of the ruined castle"s location, traversed a trackless, frigid wilderness to reach it, then tried to climb over the peaks.
Only mad, brilliant Sammaster, endlessly obsessive and wary of Mystra, the Chosen, and the other foes who"d foiled his previous schemes, would have bothered. Brimstone had never hated the lich more than he did at that moment.
But hating wouldn"t help him. He had to think. He lacked the power to cast enchantments like that, but had learned of them in the course of his studies. None of his counterspells would set him free, but supposedly, an exit existed somewhere, just as if the extradimensional prison were an ordinary maze.
So he scuttled along, seeking it, the edges of his wings brushing along the pearly, featureless walls and ceiling. He took one turn, another, reached a dead end and doubled back, meanwhile striving to construct a map of the labyrinth in his mind.
Still, before long, he was all but certain he"d blundered down a blind alley he"d explored before. With every surface flat and blank, the maze was more like an abstract exercise in geometry than an actual place, and that made it easy to become confused.
But he had to get out, and quickly. It wouldn"t help him to escape back into the mundane world if he found every Tarterian in the valley already waiting to pounce on him when he did.
If, somewhere, an opening connected the maze to normal s.p.a.ce, then perhaps air was flowing. In or out, it didn"t matter, he could still use the breeze to orient himself. He tried to feel a draft, but couldn"t.
He spewed a cloud of his hot, smoky breath, then studied the billowing fumes. They hung in the air for what felt like a long while, then started to waft in one direction.
Or at least he hoped they had. The drift was so subtle, it was impossible to be sure. No creature with vision less acute than a dragon"s could have observed it, and it was possible that even he was only imagining it.
Instinct prompted him to dash against the current instead of with it. When he reached a choice point, he spewed more smoke. At that rate, he"d have no breath weapon left for fighting when he emerged onto the mountainside, but he"d just have to manage without it.
Soon his chest started to ache with the effort of generating so much vapor, and only a thin haze emerged when he expelled it. He lost track of how many turns he"d taken, and started to fear that, somehow, his plan was flawed, or else no egress existed. Then a rectangle of dark sky and stony earth appeared in the whiteness ahead.
He was so relieved to see it, he nearly flung himself heedlessly through, but remembered caution just in time. He stuck his head out, twisted his neck, peered, and spotted the Tarterian wheeling overhead.
He scrambled through the doorway, and with a magician"s heightened awareness, felt the maze, deprived of its prisoner, wither from existence. He focused his attention, however, on the enemy above. He couldn"t look up, because he didn"t want it to know he"d sighted it, but trusted his hearing to tell him what it was doing.
Hide rattled and creaked as it furled its wings and dived. Brimstone waited until it was plummeting too fast to change course easily, then sprang. The Tarterian slammed down into the s.p.a.ce he"d just vacated. Brimstone lashed his pinions and took to the air.
For the moment, he possessed the advantage of height, but it wasn"t enough. Across the valley, other Tarterians shrieked and hissed as they raced in his direction. He had to end the confrontation quickly and get away.
Eyes burning like green fire, his foe glared at him, and power whined through the air. Brimstone tilted his wings and spun himself to the side. A bubble of shadow shimmered into existence where he"d been a split second before.
He riposted by conjuring darts of flame, which streaked at the Tarterian, splashed against its dorsal surface, but didn"t seem to cause it any pain. It c.o.c.ked back its head, opened its jaws, and spewed expanding ripples of something akin to pure force. Brimstone tried to dodge, but the breath weapon still clipped him, snapping the end of one pinion. He plummeted and smashed down hard.
The Tarterian sprang on top of him and pressed him against the cold, rocky ground. Its talons punctured his scales, and its jaws sought his neck.
All but immobilized, Brimstone frantically twisted his head into position to gaze into his adversary"s luminous emerald eyes. Stop, he thought, stop fighting me. I"m your master, and you"re my slave.
For a moment, it didn"t seem as though it was going to work, and small wonder if it hadn"t. The Tarterian had a dragon"s strength of mind. But then it stopped tearing at him and cringed. Brimstone plunged his fangs into its throat. The Tarterian writhed for a moment, then went limp.