The Fallen Fortress Page 7

  “A volcano,” Vander reasoned, remembering his own rugged home, tucked among many lava-spewing peaks.

  “A dragon,” Danica corrected. “An old red, according to the legend.”

  “Older still since the tales date back two centuries or more,” Shayleigh added. “And not just a legend,” she assured them. “Galladel, who was King of Shilmista, remembered the time of the dragon, remembered the devastation Old Fyren brought to Carradoon, and to our forest.”

  “The damned fool boy is thinking o’ waking a dragon?” Ivan bellowed, storming up to join the circle around Cadderly. In the intrigue, no one had noticed that the dwarves’ rhythmic snoring had ceased.

  “Uh-uhhh,” Pikel said to Cadderly, waggling one finger back and forth in front of his face.

  “Do you wish the Ghearufu destroyed?” Cadderly asked, aiming the question at Vander, whom he considered his best prospect for an ally against the rising tide of protest.

  The firbolg seemed truly torn.

  “At what cost?” Danica demanded before Vander could sort out his thoughts. “The dragon has slept for centuries—centuries of peace. How many lives will it need to satisfy its hunger upon awakening?”

  “Let a sleeping wyrm lie, me Pappy always said,” Ivan piped in.

  “Yup,” added Pikel, nodding eagerly.

  Cadderly gave a resigned sigh, scooped the Ghearufu into his pack, and hoisted the pack over one shoulder. “I have been directed to destroy the Ghearufu,” he said, his voice full of resignation. “There is only one way.”

  “Then it must wait,” Danica replied. “The threat to all of Erlkazar—”

  “Is a temporary danger in a temporary society,” Cadderly finished philosophically. “The Ghearufu is not temporary. It has pained the world since its creation in the lower planes many millennia ago.

  “I’ll not force this upon you,” Cadderly went on calmly. “I have been directed by the precepts of a god that you do not worship. Go and speak among yourselves, come to a decision together or individually. This quest is mine, and yours only by your own choice. And you’re right,” he said to Shayleigh, seeming sincerely apologetic. “I erred in not revealing this to you all when first we left the library. The situation was … difficult.” He looked at Danica as he ended, knowing that she alone understood what he’d gone through to “convince” Dean Thobicus.

  The others moved across the cavern floor slowly, each of them glancing back at Cadderly many times.

  “The boy’s daft,” Ivan insisted, loudly enough so that Cadderly could hear.

  “He follows his heart,” Danica replied.

  “I, too, do not doubt Cadderly’s sincerity,” Shayleigh added. “It is his wisdom that I question.”

  Pikel continued to nod his eager agreement.

  “To wake a dragon …” Vander said grimly, shaking his head.

  “A red,” Danica pointedly added, for red dragons were the wickedest and most powerful of all the chromatic dragons. “Perhaps an ancient red by now.”

  Still Pikel nodded, and Ivan slapped him on the back of his head.

  “Oo,” the green-bearded dwarf said, glaring at his brother.

  “Ye don’t go waking wyrms,” Ivan put in, again loud enough for Cadderly to hear.

  “There is something else I fear,” Danica said. “Is Cadderly being correctly guided by his god, or is the Ghearufu wrongly leading him to where it might find a powerful ally?”

  The thought made the others rock back on their heels, brought profound sighs from Shayleigh and Vander, and a drawn-out “Ooooooo” from Pikel and Ivan, who then, apparently realizing that he was mimicking Pikel, snapped his head around to regard his brother suspiciously.

  “What do we do?” Shayleigh asked.

  They stood quietly for many moments before Danica dared a decision. “The threat now is Castle Trinity,” she declared.

  “But the Ghearufu does not come along with us,” Vander insisted, barely able to keep his giant voice quiet. “We can bury it here, in the mountains, and return for it when the other business is completed.”

  “Cadderly will not agree,” Shayleigh reasoned, looking at the resolute young priest.

  “Then we won’t ask him,” Ivan replied with a sly wink. He looked Danica’s way and nodded, and Danica, after a plaintive look at the man she loved, returned the nod. Alone, she moved toward Cadderly, and Ivan figured the young man would be in the bag in a moment.

  “You will not go along to Nightglow,” Cadderly stated, not asked, as Danica approached.

  Danica said nothing. Unconsciously, she clenched and unclenched a fist at her side—a movement that Cadderly did not miss.

  “The Ghearufu is paramount,” the young priest said.

  Danica still did not reply. Cadderly read her thoughts, though, saw that she was struggling with her decided course and understood that course to be one hinting at treachery. He began to sing under his breath as Danica moved in at him. Suddenly her manner became urgent. She tried to grab him, but found that he’d become something insubstantial.

  “Help me!” Danica called to her friends, and they rushed over, Ivan and Pikel diving for Cadderly’s legs. The dwarves knocked their heads together, locked in a wrestling tumble, and it took them a few moments to understand that they had grabbed on to nothing more than each other.

  For Cadderly’s corporeal form was fast fading, scattering to the wind.

  SIX

  ON THE PATH

  Druzil sat on a broken stump, clawed fingers tapping anxiously against his skinny legs. The imp knew the way to the Edificant Library from there, and knew that the malignant spirit had veered off in the wrong direction and was headed into the wild mountains.

  Druzil wasn’t too disappointed—he really didn’t want to go near the awful library again, and doubted that even that powerful spirit would last very long against the combined strength of the many goodly priests living there. The imp was confused, though. Was this spirit guided by any real purpose, as Druzil had initially believed, and as Aballister had led him to believe? Or would the wretched thing wander aimlessly through the mountains, destroying whatever creatures it accidentally happened upon?

  The thought did not sit well with the impatient imp. Logically, Druzil realized that there must be some important connection between the monster and the library, probably a connection concerning Cadderly. If not, then why would Aballister have dispatched him to keep a watch over the uncontrollable thing?

  Too many questions assaulted the imp, too many possibilities for Druzil to consider. He looked at the monster, tearing and slashing its way along a northern trail, frightening animals and ripping plants with seemingly endless savagery. Then Druzil looked inward, brought his focus into that magical area common to extraplanar creatures, and sent his thoughts careening across the mountain passes, seeking a telepathic link with his wizard master. For all the urgency of his call, he was nevertheless surprised when Aballister eagerly responded to his mental intrusions.

  Where is Cadderly? the wizard’s thoughts came to him. Has the ghost caught up to him?

  Many of Druzil’s questions had just been answered. Aballister’s mental interrogation rolled on, and the wizard prodded Druzil’s thoughts with a series of questions so quickly that Druzil didn’t even have time to respond. The conniving imp realized that he held the upper hand, that Aballister was desperate for answers.

  Druzil rubbed his clawed hands together, enjoying the superiority, confident that he could get all the information he needed by bargaining answer for answer.

  Druzil opened his eyes moments later, having a new perspective on the situation. Aballister had been nervous—Druzil could sense that, both from the intensity of the wizard’s telepathic responses and from the fact that Aballister had left little unanswered. The wizard was a cryptic sort, always withholding information that he did not believe his lessers needed to know. But the wizard had flooded Druzil with information about the ghost and Cadderly.

  Given the imp’s unde
rstanding of his master’s demeanor, there could be no doubt that Aballister teetered on a very dangerous edge. Ever since the wizard had called Druzil to his side, the imp had longed to see Aballister’s power revealed in full. He’d seen Aballister strike down a rival with a lightning bolt, literally frying the man; he’d seen the wizard engulf a cave of upstart goblins with a ball of fire that had scored the stones and killed every one of the beasts; he’d traveled to the far northland with the wizard, and had watched Aballister wipe out an entire community of taers, shaggy white beasts.

  But those were just hints, Druzil felt, tantalizing tastes of what was yet to come. Even though he’d never truly respected the wizard—Druzil had never respected any being from the Prime Material Plane—he’d always sensed the man’s inner power. Aballister, nervous and edgy, outraged that his own son would be the one to threaten his designs on the barony, boiled like a pot about to blow.

  And Druzil, malicious and chaotic in the extreme, thought the whole thing perfectly delicious.

  He gave a flap of his wings and set off in pursuit of the ghost. Following the creature’s trail—a wide swath of near-total destruction—was easy enough, and Druzil soon had the creature in sight.

  He decided to try to contact the creature, to solidify his alliance with the ghost before it caught up to Cadderly, and before Aballister could lay claim to its destructive powers. Still invisible, the imp flew around in front of the marching ghost and perched on a low branch in a pine tree farther up its intended path.

  The ghost sniffed the air as Druzil passed, even took a lazy swing that was far behind the fast-flying imp. As soon as Druzil had moved beyond its reach, it seemed to pay the unseen disturbance no more heed.

  Druzil materialized as the ghost approached. “I am a friend,” he announced, both in the common tongue and telepathically.

  The creature snarled and came on more quickly, a blackened arm leading the way.

  “Friend,” Druzil reiterated in Abyssal, the growling and hissing language common to the lower planes.

  Still the advancing creature, focused on Druzil as though the imp was simply one more thing to be destroyed, did not respond. Druzil hit the ghost with a telepathic barrage, every thought signifying friendship or alliance, but the monster remained unresponsive.

  “Friend, you stupid thing!” Druzil shouted, hopping to his feet and snapping his knuckles against his hips in a defiant stance. The creature was only a few yards away.

  A snarl and a leap brought the monster right up to Druzil, its one unbroken arm coming around. The imp squeaked, suddenly realizing the danger, and gave a frantic flap of his wings to lift away.

  Ghost ripped the branch right from the tree, hurled it aside, and smashed on viciously. Druzil, caught within the canopy of thick evergreen boughs, scrambled for his very life, wings beating and claws tearing, trying to force some opening where he could slip through to the open air. He willed himself invisible again, but the monster seemed to sense him anyway, for the pursuit remained focused and relentless.

  The creature was right behind him.

  Druzil’s whiplike tail, dripping lethal venom, snapped into the creature’s face, blowing a wide hole in its hollowed cheek.

  The creature didn’t even flinch. Its powerful arm came around again, tearing away a large branch, opening up the tangle enough so that its next attack couldn’t be deflected.

  Druzil clawed and kicked, fighting against the canopy. Then he was through, bursting into the air where a few wing beats brought him far from the snarling monster’s reach.

  The undead monster emerged from the battered tree a few moments later, stalking along the path, apparently giving no more concern to the latest creature that had fled from its terrifying power.

  “Bene tellemara,” the thoroughly shaken imp muttered, finding a perch on a jutting stone overlooking the trail and watching the uncontrollable monster’s steady and undeniable progress.

  “Bene tellemara.”

  Waist-deep in snow, Cadderly looked up the high, steep slope to the fog-enshrouded peak of Nightglow. Even using his magical spells to ward off the cold, the young priest felt the bite of the blasting wind and a general numbness creeping into his legs. He considered calling upon his most powerful magic then, as he’d done to escape his misinformed friends, so he could walk along the wind up the mountainside.

  Cadderly quickly reconsidered, though, realizing he couldn’t afford to expend any more magical energy—not with an old red dragon waiting for him. He shook his head determinedly and trudged on, step after step, hoisting one leg out of the deep, bogging snow and setting it firmly ahead of him.

  One step at a time, higher and higher.

  The sun had risen, the day bright and clear, and Cadderly had to squint constantly against the stinging glare of the rays reflecting off the virgin snow. Every now and then a section would shift under his weight and groan, and Cadderly would hold very still, expecting an avalanche to tumble down around him.

  He thought he heard a call on the wind, Danica perhaps, shouting out his name. It wasn’t impossible. He’d left his friends not so far behind, and had told them where he was headed.

  That thought made Cadderly realize again how vulnerable he must seem, a black dot on an exposed sheet of whiteness, climbing slowly, barely moving. Were more chimeras or other winged beasts circling the area, hungry for his blood? he wondered. Right before he’d begun the climb op the last slope, he’d mentally searched for any signs of scrying wizards. None were apparent, but Cadderly had put up a few wards anyway.

  He pulled his cloak up tighter around his neck and considered again what magic he might call upon to facilitate the brutal climb.

  In the end, though, he used only sheer determination. His legs ached, and he found a deep breath hard to come by in the thin air. He came to an area of bare stone again higher up, under the foggy veil. Surprised at first, he soon realized why it seemed so much warmer. Using the warmth as a guiding beacon, Cadderly worked his way around a jutting hunk of stone and found a cave opening of good size, though certainly not large enough for the likes of an adult dragon.

  The young priest knew he’d found Fyrentennimar. The lair of only one type of creature could emanate enough warmth to melt the snow atop wintry Nightglow.

  Cadderly unwrapped some of his heavy clothing and sat for a moment to catch his breath and rest his weary limbs. He considered again the mighty foe he would soon face and the repertoire of spells he would need if he was to have any chance at all in his desperate quest.

  “Desperate?” Cadderly whispered, pondering the sound of the grim word. Even the determined young priest had begun to wonder if “foolhardy” might be a better description.

  SEVEN

  AWE

  Cadderly couldn’t believe how warm the air grew as soon as he moved through the opening in the mountainside. He was in more of a tunnel than a cave, its walls running tight and uneven, gradually making its worm-hole way down toward the heart of the mountain.

  The young priest removed his traveling cloak, bundled it tight, and put it in his pack, carefully wrapping it around The Tome of Universal Harmony. He considered leaving the great book and some of his other most prized possessions by the entrance, fearing that even if he somehow survived his encounter with Fyrentennimar, some of his items might be burned away.

  But with a defiant shake of his head, Cadderly replaced the pack over his shoulder. It was no time for negative thinking, he decided. He took out a cylindrical metal tube and popped off the end cap, loosing a concentrated beam of light from a magical enchantment placed on a disk inside the tube. Then he set off, recalling the song of Deneir as he went, knowing that he might have to call on its divine energy in an instant’s notice if he was to have any chance at all against the great dragon.

  Some time later he was still walking, creeping down a loose-packed slide of rocks. The heat was more intense, and even after Cadderly dispelled his cold-protecting magic, the sweat beaded on his forehead and stung
his gray eyes.

  He passed through several larger chambers as he moved down the tunnels, and he felt vulnerable indeed with only a small area illuminated in front of him and thick darkness looming to both sides. A twist of the outer metal shell of his device retracted the tube, somewhat widening the light beam, but still Cadderly had to fight the nervous urge to call upon his magic and brighten the entire area.

  He breathed easier when he went back into a narrow tunnel, too narrow, certainly, for any dragon to squeeze through. The floor sloped downward at an easy, gradual angle for more than a hundred feet, but then suddenly turned vertical, a crawl hole dropping away into the darkness.

  Sitting on the lip, Cadderly secured his gear and strapped his light tube under the bandoleer so that it aimed down below him. Then he eased himself over, picking his way carefully.

  The air was stifling, the rocks pressed in on him, but Cadderly continued the descent, moving until he found the hole suddenly opening wide below him. For an instant, his feet kicked free in empty air, and he nearly fell through.

  Somehow he managed to secure his position, hooking one elbow over a jag, and getting his feet back up so that he could press them against the solid wall. With his free hand, the young priest tentatively reached for his light tube, angled it down and out from him to find that he’d come to the ceiling of a wide cavern.

  Cadderly was afraid. The light revealed no floor below him. For the first time since he’d entered the tunnels, he wondered if his path would actually get him anywhere near the dragon. Obviously, the small cave opening in the side of the mountain was not the huge dragon’s doorway, and Cadderly had failed to consider that perhaps the cave network was more intricate, even impassable.

  Stubbornly, the young priest tightened the beam’s focus, the sliver of light reaching far below. He then made out the subtle hue shift, the darker stone of the floor, twenty or so feet beneath him. He considered dropping—for the moment it took him to remember that he was wearing a bandoleer full of vials of volatile oil of impact.