The Fallen Fortress Read online

  “I fear no monsters,” she explained, defensive, for she alone understood the pains the young priest had endured to get their quest underway. “But the land here is treacherous, and the wind uncomfortable at best. A slip on the ice could send one of us tumbling down the mountainside.” Danica looked up the slope to their right and continued ominously, “And the snow hangs thick above us.”

  Cadderly didn’t have to follow her upward gaze to understand that she referred to the very real threat of an avalanche. They had passed the remnants of a dozen such disasters, though most were old, probably from last year’s spring melt.

  Cadderly took a deep breath and reminded himself of his secret purpose in being up so high, and he remained adamant. “The snow here is seasonal,” he replied, calling ahead to Vander. “Except for the very tops of the mountains, where we shall not go.”

  Vander started to protest—Cadderly expected the firbolg to argue that the fearful snow creatures might easily come down from the mountaintops when the snow lay so deep. He had barely uttered the first syllable of protest, though, when Cadderly interrupted him with a telepathic message, a magical plea that the firbolg lead on without further argument, that standing and talking only delayed the time when they could go back down to more hospitable climes.

  Vander grunted and turned around, flipping his white bearskin cloak back over one shoulder to reveal to the others that his huge hand rested uneasily on the sculpted hilt of his giant-sized sword.

  “As for the wind and the ice,” Cadderly said to Danica, “we shall be careful with our steps and hold fast to our resolve.”

  “Unless we get plucked off by a passing bird,” Ivan grumbled.

  “It was only an eagle,” Cadderly insisted again, turning on the dwarf, his anger flaring. Ivan shrugged and walked away. Pikel, seemingly oblivious to all the arguing and quite willing to go wherever the others led him, bobbed happily at his brother’s side.

  “Ye ever seen an eagle with four paws?” Ivan snarled over his shoulder when he and Pikel had moved away. Pikel considered the question for a long moment before he stopped in his tracks, his smile melting away, and let out a profound, “Oooo.”

  Then the green-bearded dwarf skittered quickly to keep pace with the stomping Ivan. Together they walked right behind the firbolg and moved to Vander’s sides when the trail was wide enough to accommodate them. The firbolg and the dwarves had become fast friends over the last days, continually trading tales of their respective homelands, places somewhat similar in rugged terrain and wicked beasts.

  Cadderly came next in the procession, alone with his thoughts, still trying to reconcile his magical attack on Thobicus and contemplating the trials he knew he would soon face, both at Castle Trinity and after. Danica allowed Cadderly to get some distance away before she resumed the march, her eyes revealing a mixture of contempt and pain at the way Cadderly had rebuked her.

  “He is scared,” Shayleigh said to Danica, coming to her side.

  “And stubborn,” Danica added.

  The elf maiden’s sincere smile was too infectious for Danica to hold her grim thoughts. Danica was glad that Shayleigh was beside her once more, feeling an almost sisterly bond with the spirited elf Given Cadderly’s recent mood and secretive actions, Danica desperately needed a sister.

  For Shayleigh, the trip was both a debt repaid and an act of sincere friendship. Cadderly, Danica, and the dwarves had come to the fighting aid of Shilmista’s elves, and during their time together, Shayleigh had come to like all of them. More than one of Shilmista’s haughty elves had joked, at Shayleigh’s expense, at the thought that an elf could so befriend a dwarf, but Shayleigh took it all in without complaint.

  A little while later, on an exposed section of trail where the mountain to their right sloped up at a gentle angle, though the drop to their left remained steep, Vander pulled up short and put his great hands out to the sides to halt the dwarves. It had begun to snow again, the wind whipping the icy flakes so that the companions all had to keep their traveling cloaks tight over their faces. In such poor visibility, Vander was unsure about the unusual shape he noticed on a wide section of trail up ahead.

  The giant took a tentative step forward, drawing his massive sword halfway from its sheath. Ivan and Pikel leaned backward and looked at each other from behind the firbolg. With simultaneous nods, they clutched their weapons, though they had no idea what had put Vander on the alert.

  Then Vander relaxed, and the dwarves shared another shrug and tucked their hands back under their thick cloaks.

  Two steps later, the shape, which Vander had identified as a snow bank, coiled up like some huge serpent and lashed out at the giant, brushing against his outstretched fingers.

  Vander cried out and leaped back, grabbing at his suddenly bloody hand.

  “The damn snow bit him!” Ivan yelled, and rushed up, chopping with his double-headed axe. The blade passed right through the weird monster, clanging against the bare stone underneath, cutting nearly a quarter of the creature’s bulk away.

  But that quarter was just as alive, and just as vicious, as the main bulk, and so there were two monsters to fight.

  Vander rushed in, chopping with his sword in his one good hand.

  Then there were three monsters.

  Ivan felt an agonizing burn along one arm, but blinded by the whipping wind and battle frenzy, the dwarf failed to realize the results of his actions. He brought his axe to bear repeatedly, unwittingly multiplying the monstrous ranks.

  Cadderly had only just noticed the frenzied movements when Shayleigh’s cry from behind turned him around. The young priest’s eyes widened considerably when he saw the truth of Ivan’s “eagle”—a leonine beast taller than Cadderly and with a wingspan fully twenty-five feet across. The swooping creature didn’t come in close to Shayleigh and Danica, but instead abruptly broke the momentum of its dive, rearing in the air and whipping its tail over one muscled shoulder.

  A volley of iron spikes shot out at the two. Danica pushed Shayleigh to the side then contorted her own body somehow, miraculously avoiding any serious hits, though a line of blood, stark red against the white background, appeared immediately along the side of one arm.

  Shayleigh was quick to ready her bow, but the leonine creature swooped away, and her shot was a long one, lost in the wind and the driving snow.

  Up ahead, Vander got hit again and shrieked as Cadderly would never have believed the stoic and proud giant ever could. The young priest stumbled forward to discern the cause of the fighting, squinting and shaking his head, for he couldn’t believe that his friends were fully surrounded by some sort of animated snow. And their repeated blows had no effect—other than to create more monsters.

  Cadderly fell into the song of Deneir, the logic that guided the harmony of his universe. He saw the spheres, not just the celestial spheres, but the magical spheres of elemental and energy-based powers. The simple and evident truths led Cadderly quickly to the conclusion that snow would best be battled with fire, and hardly thinking about the movement, the young priest lifted his fist toward the largest section of creature between himself and his friends, and uttered, “Fete!” the Elvish word for fire.

  A line of flames shot out from Cadderly’s gold and onyx ring, engulfing several of the snow monsters in a sizzling blaze. Animated snow became insubstantial steam and gases, blowing away on the wind.

  Then something struck hard against Cadderly’s back, hurling him to the ground. Fear told him that the leonine monster must be back and he swung around, his clenched fist out in front.

  He saw Danica standing protectively behind him and realized that it was she who had struck him. She faced the newest beast that had entered the fray, a beast that had apparently been intent on the distracted young priest.

  “Chimera?” Cadderly asked as much as stated when the winged, three-headed monster rushed in at Danica. Its central head and its torso were, like the other beast, those of a lion, but it also had the orange-scaled neck and head
of a small dragon flanking it, and a black goat’s head behind.

  The creature reared in midair, and the dragon head breathed forth a line of flame.

  Danica jumped to the side away from Cadderly then leaped up and caught a handhold on the stone above her, tucking her feet up high and somehow escaping the searing blast. She came back to the ledge after the fires had expired, but found no safe footing, for the flames had melted away the snow and weakened the integrity of that section of ledge. Ice reformed almost immediately in the freezing temperatures, and the young monk fell down hard onto her back.

  Dazed, Danica slipped out over the ledge.

  Cadderly’s world seemed to stop.

  Farther down the trail, Shayleigh put her bow to deadly use, firing arrow after arrow at the leonine monster. Even with the powerful winds, many of her shots hit the mark, but the beast was resilient, and when its spike-throwing tail whipped around once more, Shayleigh had nowhere to run.

  She grimaced at the dull thuds as several missiles blasted her to a half-sitting, half-leaning position on the mountain slope. She felt the sudden warmth of her own lifeblood flowing from several wounds. Stubbornly, the elf maiden put another arrow to her bowstring and let fly, scoring a solid hit in the monster’s thick-muscled chest.

  Cadderly dived flat to the stone and reached out desperately for Danica, who had gained a tentative handhold several feet below the ledge. She couldn’t possibly climb up the ice in the driving wind and snow, and Cadderly, for all his training, couldn’t reach her.

  The priest sang along with the song of Deneir, again seeking out an elemental sphere, searching for answers in the realm of air.

  Danica heard his singing and looked up plaintively, knowing that her one hand would not keep her in place for very long.

  Moments later, Cadderly ended the song, looked back at Danica, and commanded her in magically enhanced tones to jump up at him. She did, trusting in her lover. Their hands brushed, just for a moment, but in that instant Danica heard Cadderly utter an arcane rune, a triggering word to a spell, and she felt a tingle as some power passed between them.

  Then Danica plummeted away.

  Cadderly had no time to watch her descent, had to trust fully in the revealed truths of his god. He looked around and was relieved to see that the strong wind was working for them, forcing the two winged monsters to take long runs to get near the ledge.

  Up ahead, Vander had used the break caused by Cadderly’s fire to get out of the encircling monsters, and had taken Ivan with him, holding the dwarf in midair with a hand that seemed almost skinless.

  Pikel had moved up a rock, but was again surrounded, beating the many vicious creatures back wildly with his tree trunk club.

  Cadderly lifted his onyx ring, but saw no clear angle. He fell into the song instead, entering the realm of fire.

  “Me brother!” Ivan wailed, pulling free of Vander’s grasp.

  The yellow-bearded dwarf expected Vander to rush in beside him, but when he glanced at the firbolg, he realized the awful truth. The snow creatures had hit Vander several times, on both hands and forearms, and once, probably when the giant had stooped to hoist up Ivan, on the side of his face. In each of these places, Vander’s skin had simply dissolved, leaving garish, brutal wounds.

  The firbolg was beyond comprehension, swaying from side to side as he barely managed to stand.

  “Oo, ow!” came a cry from ahead.

  Pikel needed help.

  Ivan took a running stride toward his brother then fell back in absolute shock as a ring of flames erupted around Pikel and rolled down the rock.

  “Me brother!” Ivan cried again, above the sudden roar. He wanted to go forward, was willing, in spirit at least, to throw himself through the unexplained fiery curtain and die beside his dear brother. But the heat was too intense as the flames continued outward, the curtain fully twenty feet high. Steam mixed with the fire as snow and ice—and the creatures—were fully consumed.

  Above his despair, Ivan heard a cry of hope, heard Cadderly shout out for Pikel to, “Stand fast!”

  A goat head butted Ivan hard on the shoulder, and a lion’s paw swatted the dwarf’s head, launching him backward. He cracked into Vander’s knee, his deer-antlered helmet tearing firbolg skin, and his momentum knocked the stunned giant’s feet out from under him. Down came Vander, on top of Ivan.

  Blood had filled one of Shayleigh’s clear violet eyes. She saw Cadderly, though, lying on the ledge, and saw the chimera strike the dwarf then swoop away, caught by the mighty wind.

  Cadderly drew out something small, fumbled with the heavy belt strapped diagonally across his chest, and began to sing. From the desperate look in the young priest’s eyes, Shayleigh guessed that the leonine beast had returned.

  It was barely visible, perhaps thirty feet out from the ledge. Shayleigh could see that its target was Cadderly, and possibly the fallen dwarf and giant not far from the young priest’s flank. The monster darted in suddenly and reared, its deadly tail snapping forward.

  “No!” the elf maiden cried, readying her bow. Looking back fearfully to the trail, she noticed a slight shimmer appear in the air before the priest. Shayleigh dismissed it as an optical trick of the snow and wind—until the mutant manticore’s spikes entered that area and somehow reversed direction, shooting back out at the surprised beast.

  Gouts of blood exploded against the leonine chest, driving the beast backward in the air. Shayleigh looked back to see Cadderly poised, hand crossbow steadied across his free wrist. She quickly put an arrow into the monster’s flank, thinking that Cadderly’s tiny crossbow would be of little use.

  The crossbow dart raced out at the monster. The lion roared—then roared louder as the quarrel stung its nose. For a moment, the bolt seemed a puny thing against the sheer bulk and strength of the beast, but then it collapsed on itself, crushing the vial of oil of impact. The resulting explosion sent bits of the monster’s face and teeth scattering to the winds and drove the front end of the dart through the beast’s thick skull.

  Four paws flailing wildly, the dying monster dropped from sight.

  Cadderly looked back to his ring of fire, confident that it had dispatched the snow creatures. All that remained was the chimera, floating somewhere out on the winds behind the blinding snow.

  “Behind!” Shayleigh cried suddenly, spinning around and firing two quick arrows. The swooping chimera shrieked, and its dragon head came in line with Cadderly, ready to loose its fiery breath once more.

  Cadderly countered with a quick and simple magic, pulled from the element of water. A gusher erupted from his hands at the same time as the dragon head breathed, the fiery breath dissipating into a cloud of harmless steam.

  The chimera burst through the gray veil right above the young priest, foreclaws slashing at Cadderly and knocking him to the ground.

  “Ye mixed up bag o’ body parts!” Ivan hooted, finally extracting himself from under the fallen giant. Two running steps put the infuriated dwarf alongside the soaring monster, and he leaped up, grabbing a horn of the black goat’s head and pulling himself astride the beast.

  Shayleigh followed their swooping path, ready to let fly another arrow, but she pulled up suddenly, stunned.

  Danica had come back up to their level. She was walking in midair!

  The chimera, all three heads looking back at those it had left behind on the ledge or at the furious dwarf scrambling around on its back, never saw the monk. Danica’s spinning kick cracked the leonine jaw and nearly sent the five-hundred-pound monster tumbling headlong. Then agile Danica was up beside Ivan before the chimera could begin to react.

  She drew out a silver-hilted dagger from one boot, wrapped its sculpted dragon head with her free hand, and went to vicious work on the leonine head. Even more furious was Ivan Bouldershoulder, hands clasped around the goat horns, wrestling the thing back and forth.

  The chimera banked in a steep roll, coming alongside the ledge so that Shayleigh managed another two shots
before the snowstorm swallowed the beast and her friends.

  The chimera came around again a moment later, and the elf prepared to fire. But Ivan popped up and regarded her incredulously, one of Shayleigh’s arrows splintered and hanging from his deer-antlered helmet.

  “Hey!” the dwarf bellowed, and she lowered the bow.

  Ivan’s distraction cost him, though, for the goat’s head broke free of his grasp momentarily and butted hard against his face and forehead. Ivan spit out a tooth, grabbed the horns in both hands, and butted back. It seemed to Shayleigh that the dwarf’s attack had been by far the more effective. Then they were gone again, behind the blinding sheets of snow. All was suddenly silent, save the howl of the wind.

  Vander stirred and propped himself up on his elbows. Cadderly’s enchanted wall of fire came down to reveal Pikel sitting comfortably on the stone, munching a leg of mutton he’d opportunistically pulled from his pack and roasted in the magical flames.

  “Oo,” the green-bearded dwarf said, hiding the meat behind his back when he noticed Cadderly’s amazed expression.

  “Do you see them?” Shayleigh asked, limping to Cadderly’s side and directing his gaze back to the empty air.

  Cadderly peered through the snow and shook his head.

  When he looked back to Shayleigh, though, all thoughts of his monster-riding friends were replaced by the immediate needs of the wounded elf maiden. Several spikes had struck Shayleigh, one grazing the side of her head and opening a wicked gash, another deep into one thigh, a third driven into her wrist so that she couldn’t close her hand, and a fourth sticking from her ribs. Cadderly could hardly believe that the elf was still standing, let alone firing her bow.

  He listened for the song of Deneir, bringing forth magic that would allow him to begin the mending of Shayleigh’s wounds. Shayleigh said nothing, just grimaced stoically as Cadderly slowly drew out the spikes. All the while, the elf maiden held fast to her bow, and kept her gaze out to the wide winds in search of her missing friends.

  Moments slipped past. Cadderly had the worst of the wounds closed, and Shayleigh signaled that to be enough for the time being. Cadderly didn’t argue, turning his attention back to the search for Danica and Ivan.