The Ruin (18 page)

Painted and stinking with blood, Dorn spat. “I don’t want to get away. I promised to keep Kara safe. I failed. But at least I’m going to avenge her.”

“You can’t. beat Zethrindor,” said Pavel, “certainly not with all these other wyrms ready to back him up.”

“You go if you’re going.”

“Lathander teaches that suicide’s a sin.”

“Then bugger Lathander and you, too.”

“We’re all sad about Kara,” said Will, “but she’d want us to go on, and wreck Sammaster’s plans. The way I see it, he’s the one who really killed her, and pissing in his tea kettle will be our true revenge.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Dorn retorted. “The search failed. We discovered nothing here. We just lost Kara—and Raryn, and the others.”

“We did find something,” Pavel said. “Unfortunately, Zethrindor destroyed it, but perhaps just hearing about it will help our friends in Thentia solve the puzzle. We need to return and tell them.”

“You go,” said Dorn. “You’re the scholar, fit to help with mysteries and such. As I just proved, I’m useless.”

“Damn it!” said Will. “With Raryn gone, you’re the best hunter, forager, and pathfinder. Pavel and I don’t have a rat’s chance in a dog pit of getting off the glacier unless you help us. I know you loved Kara, but was she really the only one you ever cared about? Don’t the rest of us mean anything?”

Dorn closed his eyes as if at a pang of headache. “We’ll get off the ice if we can.”

“Then what’s our next move?” Pavel asked.

“We climb down the other side of the mountain. When the wyrms think to hunt us, they’ll do it along the trail.”

Pavel frowned. “Are you sure the climb is possible?”

“How could I be? We’ve never seen the ground. Now get rid of the shining mace. We can’t have it floating along behind us like a firefly attracting attention.”

Zethrindor had imagined that once he became a dracolich, he’d never experience pain or weakness again. Iyraclea had disabused him of that notion. He felt sore from snout to tail, and it was an effort just to raise his head to regard his followers with the proper imperious demeanor.

He managed, though, despite the throb of his torn neck, and gave Ssalangan a glower. “Has anyone discovered anything of note?”

“No,” said the living drake, “not yet, but everyone’s still searching.”

Zethrindor was aware of that. He could hear the crashes as dragons forced their way through openings and into spaces too small to accommodate them, and their gleeful cries as they made a game of the destruction. Their victory had left them in high spirits. Because, dunces that they were, they evidently didn’t realize that by the foulest of luck, the prize they’d fought to win had slipped through their talons.

“Tell them to stop,” Zethrindor said. “They won’t find anything. The plaza itself was the secret. I started casting my spell of annihilation an instant before it became apparent, not that I could have avoided destroying it even if I’d known. I had to defeat Iyraclea. But the magic is lost. Curse it, anyway!”

“At least,” Ssalangan said, “Iyraclea will never take possession of it. Sammaster’s plans will move forward without her interference. We’re all going to be dracoliches and the lords of Faerűn.”

This cheery assessment so irked Zethrindor that for a moment, his aches and weariness notwithstanding, he considered rearing up and giving the lesser white a taste of his claws. Then, however, it struck him that, in his own witless way, Ssalangan might have stumbled within hailing distance of a valid point.

“It is true,” the larger wyrm rumbled, “that I’ve freed us from the indignity of serving a human, and Sammaster won’t even be able to reproach me for it.” He leered. “For I killed to preserve his secrets, did I not?”

“Of course,” Ssalangan said. “So what do we do next?”

“Complete the conquest of Sossal for our own benefit. I’ll be the first of the new dragon kings, and you lesser wyrms, my barons. But before we fly east, bring me Iyraclea’s prisoners, the ones who didn’t disappear. I want to question them.” He supposed he might as well make one last attempt to probe the hidden aspects of Sammaster’s grand design before putting the matter behind him.

Ssalangan hesitated. “I don’t think we have them.” “Did they die in the fighting’?”

“It’s certainly possible, but I haven’t seen the bodies. To be honest, I don’t think anyone’s given them a lot of thought.

They were just a pair of humans, a halfling, and some sort.

of winged lizard. Surely the song dragon was the important one, and we know what became of her.”

Zethrindor glared, and Ssalangan cringed.

“Find the corpses,” the dracolich growled. “If someone’s already eaten the meat, identify the bones, and the cripple’s iron parts. If you can’t locate them, it likely means they’ve fled. Choose members of our company to hunt them down. Make it clear: The hunters can kill three of the four, but I want one alive to interrogate.”

“By the silent dirk!” said Will, his voice shaking with the cold. The halfling was only a few feet. above Pavel, but the

darkness reduced him to a shadow. “If I hadn’t already figured out you were a fake, pretty boy, this so-called ward you cast on me proves it. It isn’t doing anything!”

“The spell I used on you,” Pavel said, stammering in his turn, “protects the recipient from fire and such. I knew you wouldn’t want to become overheated.”

“Shut up!” snarled Dorn from farther down the slope. It was the first time he’d spoken in a long while. “Keep moving!”

Pavel obeyed. He groped with his foot for the next toehold, and the one after that, even though everything about the descent was hellish.

He was weary unto death, and felt as if he could scarcely suck in an adequate breath of the thin mountain air. The moaning wind shoved and tugged at him, trying to dislodge him from the steep, icy rock, and despite the protective enchantment he’d cast on himself, the cold soaked into his bones.

He didn’t have any more such spells ready for the casting. If the ones currently in place failed before night’s end, he, Will, and Dorn might well freeze to death.

Though not if Zethrindor’s minions caught them first. Earlier, Pavel had heard a great rattle of leathery wings from the mountaintop. The wyrms roared and screeched to one another as they took flight. He’d cringed in fear that the entire horde was going to descend on the fugitives forthwith, but that hadn’t happened. To the contrary, most of the drakes had evidently departed the vicinity. But he suspected at least one had remained to hunt for his friends and him.

If so, it had every had advantage at the moment, including the ability to see in the blackness. If not for Jivex flitting about scouting the steep slopes and sheer drops, his wingless companions would have had no hope of finding a way down.

Dorn’s iron hand grated and clashed as he clawed handholds in the rock. Pavel suspected that he’d hear that rhythmic crunching in his nightmares, assuming he lived long enough to experience any more. He shoved his toe into another of

the gouges the half-golem had torn in the mountainside.

Or at least he thought that was what it was, and perhaps that was why, in his misery and exhaustion, he forgot to test it before entrusting it with his weight. Rock crumbled beneath his foot, and he plummeted down the precipitous incline. He snatched, but found nothing to grab.

As they crept from the ancient stronghold, he and his friends had plundered the bodies of dead tribesmen, collecting all the gear they could. One of the barbarians had carried the sturdy braided leather line they’d used to rope themselves together. In theory, it might have enabled Will to arrest Pavel’s fall. But when the line jerked taut, it tore him loose, and they both were sliding and spinning down the slope.

As he hurtled past Dorn, Pavel tried again to grab something solid. His fingers only closed on a lump of snow. A bulge in the stone bounced him into empty air, and he fell.

Something jabbed into his shoulder. For an instant, he didn’t understand what, then glimpsed a blur of pale wings from the corner of his eye. Jivex had caught hold of him and fangs bared in a snarl of strain, was trying to hold him up. It was to no avail. The reptile was deceptively strong, but not strong enough to cope with so much weight.

Stone cracked, the rope jolted Pavel to a stop, and Dorn cried out. Will tumbled past the priest, and the line gave another painful jerk as he, too, abruptly stopped falling to dangle below his friend.

Pavel looked upward, at the spot where Dorn clung with his talons driven deep into the rock. The inhuman strength of his iron arm had served to anchor them all. Though, to judge by his contorted features, not without strain to the flesh-and bone half of his body.

“Get off me!” Pavel gasped. “Your weight makes it that much harder for him.”

Jivex spat. “Try to help and what thanks do you get?” He sprang clear.

Will swung himself against the slope and grabbed hold of it. Pavel stretched out his arms and accomplished the same

thing, relieving Dorn of the last of his burden. Then the three of them simply clung to their perches for a time. Pavel shivered, and his heart hammered.

When he felt able to speak, he wheezed, “We have to rest for at least a little while. Otherwise, we’ll make mistakes.”

Will snorted. “Well, plainly, the imbecile among us will.”

Jivex flew up from the well of darkness beneath them. “There’s a ledge not too much farther down.”

They climbed on down to the shelf, then collapsed there, shapeless, silent, shivering lumps in their layers of loose, thick clothing. Pavel looked to the east, through the vaguely discernible gap between two mountains, hoping to see a first hint of dawn lightening the sky. It wasn’t there.

But the sun will rise, he insisted to himself. Lathander sheds his grace on the world every morning, without fail, and when he does, everything will be better. The air will grow warmer, we’ll be able to see our way, and I can prepare new spells. We’re going to survive.

Such being the case, they’d need to drink. He fumbled scoops of snow into a waterskin.

Perhaps his display of activity helped his companions shake off a bit of their own lethargy. Jivex, who’d been lying coiled and motionless, wings spread to cover him like a blanket, lifted his head and said, “Explain again about the paving stones.”

“All right.” Pavel resealed the waterskin and stuck it beneath his bearskin mantle and the garment beneath, where his body heat would thaw the contents. “My guess is, the elves built their true stronghold, the actual source of the Rage, somewhere even more remote than the Novularonds. Someplace they thought the dragon kings couldn’t possibly find it, or march an army against it even if they did. But because that site was so far away from their own lands, they had to figure out a practical way to go back and forth themselves. To supply it with laborers, guards, building materials, provisions, and what have you. The outpost we discovered was their solution. The plaza was a kind of magical door. Open it, and people

and goods could travel between the two citadels.”

“What did open it?” asked Will, face shadowed by his hood with its white fur trim.

“I imagine,” said Pavel, “Brimstone figured it out, and invoked the magic to whisk himself, Raryn, and Taegan away. Perhaps he thought it was their only hope of escaping the giants and Icy Claws of Iyraclea. Or else he realized Zethrindor was about. to unleash a power that would obliterate everything in its path.”

Jivex nodded. “So our friends did get away.”

Pavel hesitated. “It’s possible. I pray they did. But they were still visible, still in a state of transition, when Zethrindor’s power sliced into the stones and disrupted the old enchantments. That means the sending could easily have gone wrong, and if it did…” He spread his hands.

“Even if they did make it out the other side,” said Will, “the gate’s gone now. They can’t come back through, and we can’t follow. Curse it! Do you think Brimstone’s enough of a sorcerer to quell the Rage by himself?”

Pavel shrugged. “Maybe, but we must also ask, are he, Raryn, and Taegan, by themselves, able to withstand whatever guardians and traps Sammaster left to protect the place? We wondered why we didn’t encounter such things on the mountaintop. I’m reasonably certain they were waiting on the other side of the portal.”

Jivex snorted. “Well, you warmbloods can whine and hang your heads, but I say, it’s going to be all right. Taegan’s not very clever—that’s part of the reason he needs me, to do the thinking—but he’s good at chopping things with a sword.”

Pavel dredged up a smile. “Well said. We won’t despair.”

“What we had better do,” said Will, “is give some hard thought to our own situation, and I have. Jivex, at first light, you need to strike out on your own.”

The drake shook his head. “That’s stupid.”

“No,” Pavel said. “it’s likely the first sensible thing the simpleton’s ever said. Flying, you can travel faster than we can. You can carry word to Thentia faster.”

“Forget it,” Jivex said. “We’ve lost some of our friends, and that’s bad. If we split up again, things will be worse. Don’t you understand, you people need me.”

“We don’t matter.” Will grinned. “I can’t believe I just said that. But maybe we don’t, compared to stopping S am master.”

“We’ll stop him together,” Jivex said.

“But—”

“No!” the faerie dragon snapped. “I’ve made up my mind.”

With that, they all lapsed back into their cold, exhausted silence. Except, Pavel realized, for Dorn, who’d never emerged from it in the first place. Who, filthy with dried blood, simply slumped staring out at the night.

Once again, Pavel wondered what he could possibly do to comfort Dorn in his grief and despair. He was a priest of the Morninglord, and the big man’s friend as well. He ought to be able to think of something. But he was still stymied some time later, when Jivex abruptly sprang to his feet. The little wyrm’s head swiveled this way and that, and his nostrils flared.

“What is it?” Pavel whispered.

“I was right,” Jivex said. “Zethrindor did leave somebody behind to hunt us, and he’s not ranging along the trail, not anymore, anyway. He’s on our side of the mountain. Don’t move, or make any noise.” The reptile faded into invisibility, then, with a telltale flutter of wings, took flight.