Dragons- Worlds Afire

by R. A. Salvatore

  The dragon itself made no such accounting as it soared toward the largest peak on the eastern horizon, not sparing a backward glance at the evening’s entertainment.

  It’s happening again, Vaan thought, careful this time to keep silent. But soon I will finally see it end.

  Tania Cayce stared after the dragon as the monster flew away. She was crouched and silent, safely concealed (they assured her) by a thick sheaf of leaves and the cold morning mist.

  Cayce did not feel safe. In her mind, awe fought for supremacy against terror and self-preservation, so there was very little room for comforting thoughts of safety. Her heart beat painfully in her chest, and she was unable to remember why she had come here in the first place—or why she wasn’t running for her life. She peered at the obscene wreck the dragon had made of both the bridge and the people on it. She realized she was at least better off than the poor devils down there. She was alive, for one thing, and for another it wasn’t raining up here on the mountainside.

  “That is our quarry,” the female guide said. She was huge, six and a half feet tall, and dressed as a wild woman from the forest with hide clothing and bone fetishes. Her eyes were almost vibrating in her head, and a huge grin stretched her features. Her partner, a small male pixie, hovered silent and dour beside her on dragonfly wings.

  “We will test this dragon’s strength, its cunning, and its essential right to be,” the woman continued. “If we are resolute, and if our cause is righteous—”

  “It is,” said a softer voice from the procession ahead, “but vengeance will be served, be we righteous or not.”

  From behind Cayce and from ahead of her came the murmured assent of soldiers. Directly in front of her, Master Rus turned and beckoned her closer. Cayce scooted forward and turned her head so her ear was next to her mentor’s mouth.

  “I hate working with fanatics,” Rus whispered. “Especially religious and military ones. Still,” the stout man said. “That moping blue bugger’s plan is sound. And the rewards will be well worth the risk.” He took Cayce by the chin and turned her face so that their eyes met.

  “Don’t look so concerned,” Rus said. He was not warm or comforting but stern, determined to banish any chance his apprentice’s expression had of reflecting badly on him. Potionmaster Donner Rus was known throughout five kingdoms as a poisoner without peer, and he valued that reputation above all else. Three of the five monarchs he worked with kept him on permanent retainer to prevent him from using his craft on them, and Master Rus was very fond of being paid for not doing his dangerous work.

  This time, however, Master Rus had accepted a massive fee for his personal attention in the matter of slaying a dragon. Cayce knew her master was unlikely to admit it, but Rus had taken this job largely to salve his bruised ego. Vaan the pixie had let fly a torrent of subtle barbs about the Potionmaster’s age and fading glory—if Master Rus wanted to redeem his reputation and save face, he had to either take the job or take offense. Cayce kept this observation to herself, of course. Any apprentice who volunteered such information would not remain healthy, sane, or in Rus’s service for long.

  Now Master Rus spoke firmly, the tone of a professional talking about his business. “You know what your master requires, Tania, and you shall provide it. Stay close behind me; be quick with what I ask for; and remember the most important thing artists like us must do, with excellence, at all times.” He prompted Cayce with a tilt of his head.

  “Observe and be silent.” Cayce bobbed a quick bow and felt her eyes drying. Her master had a way of looking at Cayce that made her forget to blink. Also, she was unwilling to take her eyes off the old devil for long, lest he slip her a dose of something nasty. She forced herself to blink and felt a dry, sandy pop as her eyelids met.

  “Very good.” Rus turned away and continued up the trail. The stout man quickly caught up to the soldiers without deigning to visibly rush. Cayce fell in behind her master, sticking close enough to hear his asides but well clear of his billowing satin cape.

  The guides led them on, approaching the dragon’s lair from the south. Both the forest woman and the somber pixie assured them that though this path was steeper and more treacherous than the northern route, it was also more heavily wooded and would be shrouded in mist until midday. They could expect to climb halfway up the mountain before the dragon had any chance of spotting them… provided the party members all kept their footing and didn’t plummet to their deaths.

  Cayce shifted her heavy pack and tucked a strand of long white hair back into her headdress. She had seen and done many strange things apprenticing with Master Rus, from harvesting graveyard mushrooms by moonlight to milking spiders with tweezers. Sometimes the things she saw and did came back to her while she slept, and she awoke with a half-strangled scream in her throat.

  This trek up the mountain was something new, however. Even the lurid drudgery one found as a poisoner’s apprentice could not compare to participating in an actual dragon hunt. She had never imagined such a thing in her most fevered dreams, not even in those brought on by the most toxic fumes from her master’s cauldron.

  In addition to her private misgivings, Cayce felt the guides were surely the most discouraging pair anyone had ever followed up a dark mountain. Vaan, the morose blue-haired pixie, had the body of a grown man at just under half the size. Alone, he seemed perfectly proportioned, handsome even, with his white eyes shimmering like smoke, but with someone beside him to provide a sense of scale, he was stunted and absurd.

  Atypically for a pixie, Vaan spoke little, brooded often, and seemed perpetually on the verge of sighing. He seemed detached from his own quest for freedom—oddly disinterested in the mission he had hired them to perform. When they asked him why he and the forest woman had formed the party and were leading it to the dragon, Vaan muttered something about his people being conquered and generations of slavery under the wily old serpent’s cruel yoke. It was a listless tale told without enthusiasm, and it was neither inspiring nor convincing.

  For all his good looks and purportedly noble motives, Cayce found Vaan empty and pathetic. To her, he seemed like a sad miniature statue, an artist’s study in melancholy done in sharp-cut gems and blue-tinged marble.

  The female guide was named Kula, and while she was more formidable looking than the pixie, she was no more encouraging. Kula did all the talking once the journey was underway, and she seemed to know her way around the woods that surrounded the dragon’s mountain. A braided band of tough, woody vine held her hair tight against her broad skull, almost disappearing against the backdrop of her nut-brown skin. Kula claimed to be an anchorite, which she further defined as some sort of religious hermit.

  Cayce was happy to agree. In fact, she was happy to grant Kula any title, so long as the huge woman didn’t wad Cayce up like a pinch of fresh bread and swallow her whole.

  Cayce wasn’t only disconcerted by Kula’s size. Kula’s hulking form was a mild amusement compared to the reverential, almost trancelike state she entered when she spoke of killing dragons. As an anchorite, Kula claimed to be a student of nature and an agent of the natural order. Her role, she said, was to enforce the laws of the jungle. Confronting the dragon in its nest was a spiritual trial she was undertaking, a holy effort made to advance her on the path to enlightenment.

  This peculiar attitude seemed to make Kula cold and aloof toward Cayce and her master. Cayce was not quite sure why. Some of the most effective poisons were completely organic, derived from the natural creatures and plants that lived in Kula’s forest.

  The rest of the ten-member party was rounded out by a small squad of soldiers: one officer, four infantry, and one golem. The officer introduced himself as Captain Allav Hask, and though his face was dead and waxy, his eyes burned with cold fury. He wore one sword on his hip that seemed normal enough, and one strapped across his back that was clearly for special occasions. This grander, larger sword was sheathed in a gleaming golden scabbard and wrapped in multiple layers of fresh white l
inen. The wrappings came loose as they hiked, giving Cayce the chance to note the powerful runes carved into the swords scabbard and hilt. What would happen, she wondered, when the captain drew that enchanted blade?

  Captain Hask always kept two of his infantry close by him at the front of the party, just behind the guides. The other two brought up the rear, both to protect them all from attack and to make sure the heavy golem kept up.

  Kula was massive and Vaan was as dour as stone, but the golem was literally a massive statue. The soldiers called the stone man “it” or “the golem” when the captain was in earshot, but among themselves they called him “Boom.” He was carved in the rough outline of a man with only the vaguest and most rudimentary features. The reddish granite of his body glowed softly at the shoulder and neck joints, and his heavy brow jutted out over two hollow, smoking eye sockets. When he opened his mouth to acknowledge the captain’s orders Cayce could see, hear, and smell the inferno burning inside.

  Boom the golem seemed mindless—utterly devoid of a personality or independent thought. Judging from what she had seen so far, Cayce guessed he wasn’t designed for such niceties. Along the route she had watched him crush a chunk of granite to powder beneath his feet and bend back a foot-thick evergreen as though it were a stalk of corn. No military or mechanical expert, Cayce nonetheless guessed Boom was built for close-quarters combat where brute power and durability were more important than speed and tactical thinking.

  Of them all, Master Rus himself was the most familiar figure, but to Cayce he was alien and strange to begin with and thus seemed so in every context. Rus was dressed as always in inappropriate finery that managed to seem both formal and flamboyant. His wide-brimmed black hat was rimmed with a curtain of golden yarn strands that hung down over his eyes and danced against the tip of his round nose. He wore an ornate ruby ring and carried a polished hardwood walking stick with a sharp-faceted crystal skull on the handle. The purple satin lining of his cape glinted in the waning moonlight when the wind whipped it open.

  Rus carried nothing but his cane, leaving Cayce to bear their food, water, and dozens of arcane substances carefully organized in jars, bottles, and pouches. Her master claimed to have bested dragons before, but Rus was such a liar and a braggart that Cayce never knew when he was being sincere and when he was just selling himself to a customer. In any case, she knew he had brought along his deadliest potions and powders, and the knowledge that they were at least well-armed lightened her load considerably.

  Ahead, Kula motioned for the party to stop. They were approaching the edge of the tree line and, according to the anchorite, were “about to venture into the most exposed and dangerous part of the journey.” When outlining the plan at the base of the mountain, Kula had paused before adding, “Barring its end, of course, where battle with the dragon itself may prove more dangerous.” As she said this, Kula had almost swooned behind a dreamy, unfocused grin.

  Cayce despaired at the sight of the tree line. She silently cursed her own pessimism, wishing she could do as Master Rus often bade her and see advantages and opportunities instead of dangers and consequences. Cayce did not voice this thought to her master because doing so in the past had only caused Rus to lecture her, and if there was one thing Rus loved, it was lecturing.

  “Great poisoners see only opportunity,” he’d say. “If you want to limit your vision to avoiding threats and consequences instead of delivering them… if you want to defend instead of taking the initiative, at least do it properly. There’s always a market for royal food-tasters, though their careers don’t usually last long enough for them to distinguish themselves. Especially when Master Rus is on the job.”

  As the rest of the party gathered around Kula to hear the plan reviewed once more, Rus made a show of being bored. He wandered off a few paces, still within earshot but not part of the semicircle around Kula. Cayce watched Vaan hovering moodily behind the forest woman.

  Something about the two of them together jarred Cayce from her private thoughts. The pixie seemed impatient and hesitant at the same time, both anxious to proceed and fearful of what they had yet to encounter. Kula, for her part, seemed eager to begin their mission, but there was something grudging about the way she spoke to the others—as if she were unwilling to share this rare opportunity. Cayce watched Vaan brood as Kula quietly but fiercely outlined their plan of attack. The guides’ demeanor and Cayce’s general dislike of the entire situation nagged at her until an important truth became painfully clear to her.

  All one had to do was look at their faces. The guides had assembled the party and they were leading the party into action. The pixie was full of hope and dread, and the anchorite was full of anticipation and selfish longing. In contrast, the soldiers were all grim and focused, perhaps bent on avenging some attack or another the beast had visited upon their nation. To a man they showed nothing more than determination. Master Rus’s expression showed only a preoccupation with his appearance. To him it was just another job, another chance to improve his reputation and his standing among the kingdoms’ aristocrats.

  Only the guides seemed to have concrete expectations about the party’s date with the dragon. What did they know that gave them such feelings? What did they know that they hadn’t shared? Whatever it was, it was something Cayce, Rus, and the rest of them did not know, and it would be unprofessional to let them keep it that way.

  “Master,” Cayce whispered as she walked.

  Rus slowed ahead of her, pretending to struggle as he extracted the tip of his cane from a crack in the rocks. “What is it?”

  “I have been observing, as you have taught me. I think I have identified an opportunity.”

  Master Rus stopped twisting his cane and cocked an eyebrow at Cayce. “Spreading our wings, Apprentice? Expanding our horizons?” Rus chuckled softly, but he was interested. “Is this an opportunity for knowledge, profit, or advancement?”

  “For survival,” Cayce said. She cast her eyes toward the guides then back to her master. “Remember how you once told me never to work with pixies? They always talk too much, you said. They always give away the game and tip off the target because they can’t keep secrets to themselves.”

  Rus scowled. “That was sprites,” he said. “Or faeries. I never said anything about pixies.” He quickly glanced at Vaan, then added, “Besides, I need to make that little blue turd eat what he said. Asking me if age has ‘softened my resolve as it has my belly.’ We’ll see how clever he is when Rus the dragon-slayer is a hero among his own people.”

  Rus’s jaw clenched and he yanked the tip of his cane free. “Sprites. Yes, it was definitely sprites. I remember it clearly now. Never work with sprites. They give the whole game away.”

  “Yes, Master Rus.”

  “Sprites are smaller than pixies. And even flightier. They burst into song at inappropriate times.” Master Rus nodded knowingly, his gaze turned inward. “Pixies are fine as long as they’re in front of you. As long as you remember they’re steeped in glamour.”

  “Yes, Master Rus.”

  Rus worked his jaw. Cayce forced herself to blink.

  “Fine,” he said. “You have Master Rus’s attention. What have you seen?”

  Cayce leaned in close to Rus’s ear. “Vaan said hardly anything beyond his needling insults. And he hasn’t talked to anyone much at all since we met him. Is that typical pixie behavior?”

  Rus planted the tip of his cane and swirled his cape dramatically around his arm. “It is not. You believe he knows more than he’s saying?”

  “He must.”

  “And so we ought to know more of what he knows.”

  “That or we should walk away. You’ve taught me that much,” Cayce said.

  Rus nodded. “I’m not walking away, and neither are you.”

  “No, Master.”

  “But I do think you’re on to something. I’ve never seen a more downtrodden pixie, even if he does bear a slavery-fueled tale of woe.”

  “Shall we brace him,
Master? Confront him and draw out what he’s hiding? I have an idea—”

  “Not we,” Rus said. “You. Pursue your idea, Apprentice. Without my help. Brace the pixie on your own, and Master Rus will stand back and observe.” Rus cocked another eyebrow at her. “Think of this as an impromptu examination. A field test of your practical skills.”

  Cayce hesitated, seeking a hidden snare in Rus’s offer. Her master gathered his cape around his shoulders and leaned on his cane.

  “Well?” He tipped his hat toward the rest of the party, segments of golden yarn waving before his eyes. “Begin.”

  Cayce took a deep breath and went forward. She sidled up alongside one of the soldiers and waited for Kula to pause for breath.

  “Captain Hask’s golem being the last line of frontal attack. Which brings us to…” Kula looked up from the map she was scrawling on the ground and nodded to Cayce. “Nice of you to join us. If the golem proves necessary, you and your master must be standing by, ready to—”

  “How do we know it’s the right dragon?” Cayce said.

  Kula blinked. “What?” The anchorite’s face and voice were edged with annoyance.

  “The dragon you’re leading us to. How do we know it’s the one you hired us to kill?”

  “Little girl,” the forest woman said as she rose to her full height and planted her fists on her massive hips. “How many marauding dragons have you seen tonight?”

  The soldiers laughed, but Cayce remained stoic. “Just one,” she said. “The one that attacked the farmers on the bridge. Is that the one?”

  “Of course it is, you silly child.” Kula called out to Rus, “Master poisoner, would you rein in your student? We’re trying to—”

  “What color is the dragon Vaan gathered us to hunt?”

  Kula paused mid-reply. Instead of answering right away, the anchorite cleared her throat and glanced at Vaan. Then Kula said, “Blue-white, almost silver, like winter lightning. Like moonlight on the edge of a sword. What are you getting at? You saw it yourself, as did we all.”