The Fallen Fortress Read online

  Cadderly cursed his luck. If he had any intention of continuing along that course, he would have to call upon his magic—magic he knew he would need in full against the likes of Old Fyren. With a resigned sigh, he focused on the song of Deneir, remembering that part he’d sung to Danica when she’d tumbled from the mountain trail. Then he was walking down toward the cavern floor, walking in the empty air.

  Cadderly understood Danica’s ecstasy, understood the almost speechless excitement the young woman had felt when similarly enchanted. All logic told Cadderly that he should fall, and yet he didn’t. Using magic, he’d completely defied the rules of nature, and he had to admit, the sensation of air walking was incredible, better than stepping into the spirit world, better than lessening his corporeal form so that he might drift with the wind.

  He could have stepped down to the stone a moment later, but he didn’t. He continued along through the wide chamber and into the tunnels, marching a foot off the ground, justifying his enjoyment by telling himself that he was moving more quietly that way. In spite of the ever-present eeriness, in spite of the fact that he’d run away from his friends and gone off into such danger alone, by the time the enchantment wore away, the young priest was smiling.

  But the heat had intensified, tenfold it seemed, and what sounded like a distant growl soon reminded Cadderly that his path neared its end. He stood very still on the edge of yet another wide chamber for a few moments and listened intently, but couldn’t be sure if the rhythmic breathing he thought he heard was his imagination or the sounds of the dragon.

  “Only one way to find out,” the brave priest muttered grimly, forcing one foot ahead of the other. He started across the floor in a crouch, light tube and crossbow held out in front of him.

  He entered a rock-filled chamber and was curious about the fact that all of the stones seemed approximately the same size and were similarly reddish in hue. Cadderly wondered if they might be something created by the dragon, some remnant of the beast’s fiery breath, perhaps. He’d seen cats expel hair balls; might a dragon cough up rocks? The notion brought a nervous chuckle to Cadderly’s lips, but he bit it back immediately, eyes wide with surprise.

  One of the stones blinked at him!

  Cadderly froze in his tracks, trying to keep the beam of light steady on the creature. To the side, another “rock” shifted, forcing Cadderly’s attention. As soon as he brought the light around, he realized that they were not stones at all, but giant toads, red-skinned, with their uplifted heads higher than Cadderly’s waist.

  Just as Cadderly decided that he must not make any sudden moves, must try to ease his way beyond those weird creatures, a toad shuffled somewhere behind him. Despite his determination, Cadderly spun, bringing the light to bear and startling several other monsters.

  “I ain’t going up there to fight any damned wyrm!” Ivan protested, crossing his burly arms over his chest, which put them about three inches above the level of the deep snow. The dwarf pointedly looked away from the rising slope of Nightglow.

  “Uh-oh,” Pikel muttered.

  “Cadderly is up there,” Danica reminded the stubborn, yellow-bearded dwarf.

  “Then Cadderly’s stupid,” Ivan grumbled without missing a beat. A giant arm wrapped around him suddenly, and he was hoisted into the air, tucked in close to Vander’s side.

  “Hee hee hee.”

  Pikel’s mirth did little to brighten Ivan’s mood.

  “Why, ye thieving, dwarf-stealing son of a red-haired dragon!” Ivan roared, kicking viciously but futilely against the firbolg’s powerful hold.

  “We should scale straight to the opening,” Danica reasoned.

  “Right along Cadderly’s trail,” Shayleigh agreed.

  “Might we hurry?” Vander asked of them. “Ivan is biting my arm.”

  Danica was away in a moment, scrambling with all speed up the slope, following Cadderly’s obvious footprints. Shayleigh came right behind, the nimble, light-footed elf having little trouble managing the deep snow. She kept her bow out and ready, playing a watchful role while Danica tracked.

  Vander plodded along behind her, trying to resist the urge to cave in the vicious Ivan’s thick skull, and Pikel came last, bobbing easily in the cleared wake of the giant firbolg.

  They stood in the melted area before the cave entrance not too much later. Shayleigh peered in, using her elf vision, but she poked her head back out in a moment and shrugged helplessly.

  “Cadderly went in,” Danica said, as much to firm her own resolve as to the others. “And so must we.”

  “Nope,” came Ivan’s predictable reply.

  “The enchantment that Cadderly put over you last night will not hold for long,” Shayleigh reminded him. “The air is too cold this high up for even one of a dwarf’s toughness.”

  “Better freezed than toasted,” Ivan grumbled.

  Danica ignored the remark and slipped into the cave. Shayleigh shook her head and followed.

  Vander set Ivan on the ground, drawing curious looks from both the dwarves. “I’ll not force you into a dragon’s cave,” the firbolg explained, and he walked by without waiting for a reply, squeezing in through the narrow entrance.

  “Oo,” Pikel moaned, not so filled with humor since they had come to a critical moment.

  Ivan stood resolute, his burly arms crossed over his chest and one foot tap-tapping on the wet stone. Pikel looked from his brother to the cave, back to his brother, and back to the cave, not sure of what he should do.

  “Aw, go on,” Ivan growled at him a few heartbeats later. “I’m not for leaving the thick-headed fool to fight the dragon alone.”

  Pikel’s cherubic face brightened considerably as Ivan grabbed him and led the way in. When the green-bearded dwarf remembered that they were marching on their merry way to face a red dragon, that impish smile disappeared.

  Far down the trail from the face of Nightglow, Druzil watched the black forms disappear under the high, enshrouding veil of fog. The imp had no idea where the giant had come from—why would a giant be marching beside Cadderly?—but he was fairly confident that the other distant forms, particularly the two bobbing, short and stout creatures, were Cadderly’s friends.

  And the undead monster seemed certain enough, too. Whether the creature could actually “see” the distant party, Druzil couldn’t tell, but the monster’s chosen path was straight and furious. Some beacon guided the otherworldly spirit, leading it on without hesitation through the dark of night and under the light of day. The creature hadn’t slowed, hadn’t rested—though weary Druzil was beginning to wish it would!—and they had covered a tremendous amount of ground in a very short time.

  With its goal in sight, the creature moved even more furiously to the base of Nightglow’s treeless, high slope, ripping through the snow angrily, as if the white powder’s hindering depth was some deliberate conspiracy to keep the ghoulish thing away from Cadderly.

  As a creature of the fiery lower planes, Druzil was hardly fond of the chilling snow. But as a creature of the chaotic lower planes, the imp eagerly moved along behind the undead monster, rubbing his clawed hands at the thought of the savagery that was soon to come.

  Cadderly gently slid one foot in front of the other, inching his way toward the chamber’s far exit. The giant red toads had settled again, but the young priest felt many eyes upon him, watching him with more than a passing interest.

  Another few feet put him right in line with the exit, and ten running strides would have gotten him through it. But he stopped where he was, trying to muster the courage to break into a run while trying to discern if that would be the wisest course.

  He started to lean forward, mentally counting down to the moment when he would spring away.

  And a toad hopped across to block the exit.

  Cadderly’s eyes widened with fear and darted from side to side, looking for some other path. Behind him, toads had quietly gathered in a group, cutting off any retreat.

  Are they herding me?
the astonished young priest wondered.

  Whatever it was, Cadderly knew that he had to act quickly. He considered his magic, wondered what aid he might find from the song of Deneir. He decided immediately to act more directly and began flicking his light beam at the blocking toad up ahead, trying to startle the thing out of his path.

  The toad seemed to settle down more fully, grinding its considerable belly against the stone. It jerked upward suddenly. Cadderly feared for an instant that it was leaping at him—but only its head came forward, its mouth popping open and a gout of flame bursting forth.

  Cadderly fell back a step as the small fireball erupted just short of him, reddening his face. He let out a cry of surprise and heard the toads shuffling rapidly behind him. Instinctively, the young priest brought his hand crossbow up. He didn’t look back, but kept his focus on the escape ahead and launched the quarrel. He ran off at once, following the dart’s wake, fearing that a dozen small fireballs would incinerate him from behind before he ever got near the exit.

  The toad’s mouth flicked at the small missile, sticky tongue catching it in midflight and drawing it in.

  The quarrel had not exploded! The tongue had apparently caught it without crushing the vial. And Cadderly, in full flight toward the toad and with nowhere else to run, had no readied alternatives, didn’t even have his enchanted walking stick or spindle-disks in hand. He flicked the light tube frantically again, hoping against all reason to startle the formidable toad away. The thing just sat there, waiting.

  Then the creature made a strange belching sound, its throat puffing and then retracting, and a moment later it blew apart, toad guts flying in all directions.

  Cadderly threw his arms up in front of his face as he crossed through the spray and prudently ducked his head to avoid cracking it against the top rim of the low tunnel. He was many running strides out of the cavern before he dared to look back and confirm that no toads had come in pursuit. Still the frightened young priest ran, careening down the winding way, skidding to a stop and looking back, though he sensed that the tunnel had widened suddenly around him.

  Cadderly stopped, frozen in place, no longer thinking about the toads but more concerned with the sound of rhythmic breathing, breathing that sounded like a tempest wind in the narrowing tunnel. Slowly, Cadderly turned his head, and even more slowly, he brought the light tube to bear.

  “Oh, my dear Deneir,” the young priest mouthed silently as the light ran along the scaly hide of the impossibly long, impossibly huge wyrm. “Oh, my dear Deneir.”

  The light passed the dragon’s spearlike horns, crossed down the awesome beast’s ridged skull, past the closed eye to the jaws that could snap giant Vander in half with hardly an effort.

  “Oh, my dear Deneir,” the young priest muttered, and he was kneeling, not even conscious of the fact that his knees had buckled under him.

  EIGHT

  OLD FYREN

  The beast was a hundred feet long, its curled tail a hundred feet again, and armored, every inch, with large, overlapping scales that gleamed like metal—and Cadderly didn’t doubt for a moment that those smooth red scales were every bit as strong as tempered steel plates. The dragon’s great leathery wings were folded, wrapping the beast like a blanket on a babe.

  But that illusion couldn’t hold against the reality of Fyrentennimar. Had an unsettling dream inspired those six-inch-deep claw marks in the stone near the dragon’s forelegs? Cadderly wondered. And how many humans had been part of the meal that had so sated the beast’s hunger that it could sleep for centuries?

  In the next few moments, Cadderly thanked the gods a thousand times that he’d stumbled upon Fyrentennimar while the dragon was asleep. If he’d come running in blindly and Old Fyren had been awake, Cadderly would have never known what killed him. His luck continued, for none of the toads followed him—the little creatures were smarter than Cadderly had expected. Still, Cadderly had read that a dragon’s slumber was an unpredictable thing at best. He had to work fast, get his magical defenses up, and prepare himself mentally to battle the awe-inspiring beast.

  He summoned the song of Deneir into his thoughts, but for many moments—interminable moments to the terrified Cadderly—couldn’t hold the notes in any logical sequence, couldn’t fully appreciate the harmony of the music and find his devotional focus within its mystical notes. It was that very harmony, the understanding of universal truths, that lent Cadderly his magical strength.

  Finally Cadderly managed to enact a magical shielding sphere, an elemental inversion of the material air around him that would, he hoped, protect him from the fires of dragon breath.

  The young priest took out The Tome of Universal Harmony, flipping to a page he’d marked before leaving the Edificant Library. The origin of dragons was unknown, but it was obvious to scholars that the creatures didn’t follow the expected laws of nature. Large as they were, there was no logical way that a dragon’s wings should have been able to keep the creature aloft, and yet dragons were among the fastest fliers in all the world. Typically druidic magic, powerful against the mightiest of animals, had little power over dragons, so special protective wards had been devised to guard against those mighty beasts, by wizards and priests trying to survive in the wilder world millennia before.

  The marked page in The Tome of Universal Harmony showed Cadderly those wards, guiding his thoughts to the song of Deneir in a slightly different manner, altering some of the notes. Soon he had erected a barrier, called dragonbane, from wall to wall a few feet in front of him that, according to the writings, the mighty wyrm couldn’t physically pass through.

  Fyrentennimar shifted uneasily, and Cadderly figured the wyrm probably sensed the magical energies being enacted in the room. The young priest took a deep breath and told himself over and over that he had to complete the quest, had to trust in his magic, in Deneir, and in himself. He took the Ghearufu out of his pack, and tucked his feeble weapons away—even his potent hand crossbow would do little damage against the likes of that beast—and wiped his sweaty palms on his tunic.

  He uttered a simple spell so that the clap of his hands sounded as a thunder strike. Great wings hummed as they beat the air, uplifting the front portion of the wyrm. Old Fyren’s head shot up from the ground in the span of a heartbeat, hovering a dozen feet in front of Cadderly, and the young priest had to fight the urge to fall on the stone and grovel before the magnificent creature. How could Cadderly dare to presume that anything he might do would even affect the awesome Fyrentennimar?

  And those eyes! Twin beacons that scrutinized every detail, that held the young priest on trial before a word had been spoken. Surely they emanated a light of their own as intense as that coming from Cadderly’s enchanted tube.

  The weakness in Cadderly’s legs multiplied tenfold when the dragon, tired and cranky and not at all in the mood for a parley, loosed its searing breath.

  A line of flames came at Cadderly but parted as they hit his magical globe, encircling him in a fiery blaze. His translucent globe took on a greenish hue under the assault, the protective bubble seeming thick at first but fast thinning as the dragon continued to spew forth its fire.

  Sweat poured from Cadderly, his tongue went dry in his mouth, and his back itched as though all the moisture in his body was being evaporated. Wafts of smoke came up from the edges of his tunic. He had a hand on the adamantine spindle-disks, but had to let go as the metal heated, and similarly had to flip his metallic light tube gingerly from hand to hand.

  Still came the fires as the great dragon’s lungs expelled their load. Would the dragonfire never end?

  Then it was over.

  “Oh, my dear Deneir,” the young priest mouthed when the green hue of his magical bubble faded and he looked at the floor just outside of his protected area. He needed no light tube to witness that spectacle. Molten stone glowed and bubbled, and cooled quickly, hardening in a wavelike formation from the force of the flames.

  Cadderly looked up to see the dragon’s slit
ted lizard eyes widen with disbelief that anything could survive its searing breath. Those evil eyes went narrow again quickly, the dragon issuing a low, threatening growl that shook the floor under Cadderly’s feet.

  What have I gotten myself into? Cadderly asked himself, but he forced the fearful notion away, thought of the evil the Ghearufu had spread on the land and would continue to spread if he didn’t destroy it.

  “Mighty Fyrentennimar,” he began, “I am but a poor and humble priest, come to call upon you in good faith.”

  The sharp intake of Fyren’s breath drew Cadderly’s cloak around him, nearly pulled him forward beyond the line of magical dragonbane.

  Cadderly knew what was coming and desperately fell back into the song, chanting at the top of his voice to reinforce his thinned fire shield. The breath came in a wicked blast, mightier than the last, if that was possible. Cadderly saw the thin green bubble diminish to nothingness, felt a blast of warmth and thought that he would sizzle where he stood.

  But a blue globe replaced the green, again driving the fires harmlessly aside. Cadderly’s entire body ached as though he’d fallen asleep under a high summer sun, and he had to stamp out small flames on the laces of his boots.

  “I have come in good faith!” he cried loudly when the blast ended, Old Fyren’s eyes wider still with disbelief. “I need but a simple favor then you may return to your slumber!”

  Amazement turned to an unbridled rage beyond anything Cadderly would ever have believed possible. The dragon opened its mouth wide, rows of ten-inch fangs gleaming horribly, then its head shot forward, neck snapping like a snake’s coiled body. Cadderly groaned and nearly fell over, for a moment sure that he was losing consciousness and soon his life.

  But the young priest nearly laughed aloud, in spite of his terror, when he peeked out to regard Fyrentennimar, the dragon’s face pressed and distorted weirdly against the line of magical dragonbane. Cadderly could only think of the mischievous young boys at the Edificant Library, who would press their faces against the glass of the windows in the study chambers, startling the disciples within, then run off laughing down the solemn halls.