The Grieving Tree: The Dragon Below Book II

by Don Bassingthwaite

  Hruucan rocked backward as if struck—and stopped where he stood, his blazing tentacles lashing the air.

  Dah’mir took a step forward. “Hruucan,” he said, “do you know me?”

  The thrashing of the dolgaunt’s tentacles, of the fiery tendrils on his chest and head, quickened for a moment, then fell still. Hruucan bent his head. “Dah’mir,” he said. His voice was deep and grating. “My master.”

  “Good,” said Dah’mir with a nod. “Vennet, your arm—quickly.”

  The aura of his presence collapsed like the passing of a cloudburst, leaving the priest looking more exhausted than before. Vennet reached forward and caught him before he could fall. Hruucan’s tentacles stirred.

  “You’re injured,” he said.

  Vennet’s belly, still clenched tight, seemed to squeeze into a knot with the fear that Hruucan might take advantage of Dah’mir’s weakness. The dolgaunt kept his distance though and Dah’mir only gave a weak, cold laugh. “And you’re dead, my Hand.”

  “I died with hatred of Singe in my mind,” said Hruucan, “and rose the same way. Fire renews me. Life is my fuel. When I take my revenge on Singe, perhaps I will join him in death.”

  “Did you kill my Bonetree hunters?” Dah’mir asked as if scolding a child.

  Hruucan showed no sign of remorse. “Their lives sustained me,” he said. He turned and swept a hand across the smoldering bodies of Vennet’s crew. “These will sustain me for a time as well.”

  To hear the priest and the undead dolgaunt speaking so casually sent a ripple of horror through Vennet. A sort of mad courage rose out of the fear that gripped him. “They were my crew!” he snapped at Hruucan. He looked to Dah’mir, leaning on his arm. “How are we supposed to get back to Zarash’ak and Lightning on Water without them?”

  “Be at ease, captain,” Dah’mir said. “When I have my strength back, you won’t need a crew. I will see you back to your ship wherever she may be.”

  Shock and anger ran up Vennet’s spine. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

  Dah’mir’s voice was weary. “The dragonshards that led me to sanctuary on your ship are still onboard her, aren’t they, captain? I can still sense their beacon call. Perhaps your crew have stronger wills that I expected, but whatever the cause of it, your ship has been on the move for several days.” He lifted a hand and pointed into the darkness. “That way. I expect whoever controls her is making for Sharn.”

  Vennet stared at him. “My ship has been stolen? My ship has been stolen and you didn’t tell me?” His voice rose. “If my crew reaches Sharn with Lightning on Water, I’ll be exposed! What good will the power and wealth you promised me be then? How could you not tell me this was happening?” He tried to thrust Dah’mir away from him.

  The priest’s fingers sank into his flesh like talons. Acid-green eyes glared at Vennet, cold and furious. “The disposition of your ship is of no concern to me, Vennet.” Dah’mir spat his name rather than his title for the first time. “She is where she is and we are where we are—and where we are is what matters. The restoration of my strength is all that concerns me now. It should be the all that concerns you as well.” His fingers dug deep. “You will receive your reward—I have promised it—but do not assume that I owe you anything else.”

  There was something in Dah’mir’s eyes beyond mere fury, something strange and alien that made Vennet’s guts quiver with fear, but the half-elf had anger between his teeth as well. “But you do, Dah’mir. My bounty hunter will have found Dandra, Geth, and Singe in Zarash’ak.”

  “Singe is with your ship,” said Hruucan.

  Both Vennet and Dah’mir turned to stare at the dolgaunt. “How do you know?” hissed Dah’mir.

  “I feel him like a wound.” Hruucan’s tentacles lashed the air. “The river has prevented me from pursuing him, but I still feel his presence. When I was awake last, I felt him there—” He pointed almost directly south. Toward Zarash’ak, Vennet realized. “—but now I feel him there.” He swung around to point southeast.

  The same direction Dah’mir had pointed.

  Hruucan faced both priest and captain. “It takes little imagination to guess that the movements of Singe and your ship are connected.”

  “Storm at dawn,” Vennet cursed.

  A thin smile curled Dah’mir’s lips. “Your bounty hunter failed, Vennet.”

  Vennet growled. “You’ll find Dandra where you find Singe, Dah’mir. I think we both have an interest in Lightning on Water now.”

  Dah’mir’s smile faltered. His face hardened. “Take me into the mound,” he said.

  Vennet’s rage carried him past the burning bodies of his crew, across the battlefield, and up to the looming bulk of the Bonetree mound. It carried him through the tunnel mouth that opened in the mound’s side, a dark scar under the light of the rising moons. It carried him down the first twenty paces of the tunnel that pushed into the earth beneath.

  Then—as the tunnel turned twice in quick succession and all hint of moonlight, night air, and the outside world was cut off—it faltered.

  Perhaps Dah’mir felt the tension in him. The priest chuckled softly. “Are you frightened, Vennet?”

  The half-elf stiffened. “No.”

  Hruucan just laughed.

  The rippling flames of the dolgaunt’s tentacles and the ember-glow of his burned body were their only illumination in the tunnels. By their shifting light, Vennet could see that the tunnel floor had been worn smooth from use. They passed the mouths of chambers and other tunnels, but Dah’mir kept them moving along the most well-worn route—although at one chamber entrance he stopped. “In here,” he said. “I need to see something.”

  Vennet guided him into the chamber. Hruucan followed and the light of his body splashed across a towering device of brass tubes, wires, and crystals. Vennet recognized it from Dandra’s tale of her capture and torture at Dah’mir’s hands—it was the device that the priest had used to separate his kalashtar subject’s minds from their bodies, exchanging them with the spirits of their psicrystals. He recognized the tables to which Dandra said the kalashtar had been bound. One of them still held the remains, somehow preserved by the stale atmosphere within the mound, of a kalashtar man. His skull looked like it had been ripped apart.

  On the floor before the device of brass and crystal was a blue-black Khyber shard, the biggest dragonshard Vennet had ever seen. For a moment, he forgot his fear in a rush of greed. The shard was the size of small child. Sold at market it would be worth a considerable fortune.

  Dandra had described just such a shard as the heart of Dah’mir’s device. Vennet looked up at the device again: there was a hole torn through the tubes and wires that matched the size of the shard. The great blue-black crystal rested atop a network of cracks in the flagstone of the chamber floor. It had, Vennet guessed, been hurled to the ground hard enough to shatter the stones. He looked more closely at the shard itself.

  A deep crack ran through the shard’s center. It had been ruined.

  Dah’mir’s grasp was tight on his arm. Vennet looked down at him and felt his fear come rushing back. The priest’s face was pale with controlled rage. Vennet wouldn’t want to be whoever had broken the shard.

  “I’ve seen enough,” said Dah’mir after a long while. “Go back to the tunnel. Our destination lies deeper.”

  As they penetrated further, the frequency with which other tunnels and chambers appeared increased. The floor became not just worn, but slippery-smooth. The silence of the upper tunnels that Vennet had taken for granted was broken. There were harsh whispers in the depths and scrapes of furtive movement in the darkness. Some of the whispers sound threatening.

  “Dolgrims,” murmured Dah’mir. “Act calm. They’ll attack if they sense fear.”

  The tunnel opened into a chamber wider than the reach of Hruucan’s light, but both he and Dah’mir moved across it with confidence. Vennet might have been supporting Dah’mir but he would have been lost without the priest’s guidan
ce. The darkness of the chamber seemed unending. At some point, the whispers of the dolgrims faded away as well. Vennet felt unease rising up his throat like vomit. Just when it seemed that he would be sick, though, Hruucan’s flickering light fell on a wall of rock pierced by a narrow passage.

  “Here,” said Dah’mir. “Go carefully.”

  Vennet didn’t need the warning. The floors and walls of the passage were rough, not worn smooth. The tunnel was seldom traveled. He edged forward, leading Dah’mir. Hruucan stayed back—the passage was so restricted that it trapped the heat given off by his body. Vennet could feel hot air circulating around him, like standing too close to a roaring fire.

  The passage ended in a dark crack. Vennet stepped out of the glow of Hruucan’s tentacles and into a seeming void. His foot struck a loose rock—it clattered away into the darkness, raising a cacophony of distant echoes.

  “I told you to be careful,” Dah’mir said. He raised his voice and called out an arcane word. Arcs of dim blue radiance streaked through the chamber, veins of crystal embedded in the walls woken to light by the magic. Vennet caught his breath.

  A cavern soared around them, opening above and below. They stood on a broad ledge about halfway up from the cavern floor. More ledges stepped down like gigantic benches on the cavern’s other walls. The floor of the cavern was broken and uneven, but about twenty-five paces across. At floor level in the opposite wall was another broad tunnel. Stones ringed the tunnel mouth in a rough arch—stones etched with symbols and interspersed with the shining blue-black of Khyber shards.

  “Storm at dawn,” breathed Vennet.

  “So close,” wheezed Dah’mir. “So close.” He gestured sharply. “Help me down!”

  Vennet glanced over the side of the ledge. The rock face looked as though it had been worked like clay to form a series of irregular steps down to the cavern floor. He went first, choosing his footing carefully and helping Dah’mir down each step. The priest moved with the care of a frail man. “The shifter will pay for this,” he murmured with each cautious movement. “He will pay.”

  Hruucan leaped down with a careless grace to join them as they crossed the floor. Vennet stared up at the stone ring built around the tunnel. The stones clearly didn’t come from within the cavern—they were a mix of colors, sizes, and textures. Many had the smooth curves of river stones, others the broken sharpness of quarried rock. Up close, he could see that they were held in place with a dark but glittering mortar.

  “What is it?” Vennet asked.

  “A seal,” said the priest. “A seal devised by Gatekeepers to restrain forces they feared.” He pulled away from Vennet and eased himself to the ground, kneeling before the tunnel.

  “A Gatekeeper seal?” Vennet’s tortured gut felt ready to rise once more. His heart was pounding in his chest. When he’d been tutored in the classrooms of House Lyrandar, the ancient myths of the Gatekeepers had been curiosities. When he’d been taught the lies of the Sovereign Host, the Gatekeepers hadn’t been mentioned at all. Only when he’d found faith in the Dragon Below had he learned more of them—enemies of the powers of Khyber, creators of the seals that had for millennia restrained the great lords of the dark, the alien daelkyr. He swallowed. “You’re going to break it?”

  “No,” Dah’mir said. “But I don’t need to.”

  He sat back on his heels, his leather robes pooling around him, the red Eberron shards set in his sleeves flashing in the dim light as he raised his arms above his head. A chant began to ripple from his lips. Vennet didn’t recognize the words. They were like nothing he had ever heard before, neither a true language nor the syllables of magic. They hurt his ears and sent horror stabbing through him. They soaked into his head like wine into a white cloth. When a second voice took up the chant, he cringed and looked to Hruucan.

  The dolgaunt, however, stood silent. It took a moment for Vennet to realize that the second voice was his own, that his lips and tongue were moving in time to Dah’mir’s. That he had settled down to kneel on the rocky floor as well.

  He thrust himself to his feet and stumbled backward, but the words of the priest’s chant stayed with him, forcing themselves out of his mouth. He tried clamping his hands over his mouth. It only muffled the words. The chant rose to a peak.

  Within the ring of the Gatekeeper seal, the air shimmered and grew bright. The tunnel beyond seemed to contract, rushing toward him—

  And Vennet peered through an enormous lens into a great chamber, the throne room of a wealthy lord. Of a prince!

  Except that the courtiers who turned to look back through the window were tall and spindly beneath their fine robes. They had broad, hairless heads with slick, pulsing skin and dead white eyes—and dangling, writhing tentacles where there should have been a nose and jaw. Mind flayers.

  There were other strange creatures as well. Dolgaunts stood as guards and dolgrims crawled on the floor like dogs. A mind flayer carried a small creature like an eyeless monkey on its shoulder. A beautiful elf-like woman turned to reveal thick fleshy tendrils growing among her hair and down her back.

  At the center of the grand chamber, on a throne carved from glittering black stone, sat a human man of astounding beauty. The robes that spilled off him exposed pale, muscular arms and a broad chest. His hair was black as night and fine as silk; his skin was as pale and smooth as marble. His eyes were solid acid-green, the same color as Dah’mir’s but without pupil or iris. His ears, his nose, his brow, the line of his jaw—all were so perfect that it took Vennet a long moment to realize that he had no mouth, only smooth skin between nose and chin.

  “Storm at dawn,” whispered Vennet. A fragment from the rites of the Cult of the Dragon Below came back to him. They are perfect in their power. They are without flaw save those flaws they choose. Their triumph is delayed but not denied—they will hold Eberron as they held Xoriat. They are the great lords of the dark and nothing is beyond their will.

  Dah’mir touched his fingers to his forehead and his lips, then bent low, prostrating himself. “Master,” he said, his voice thick with adoration.

  The voice that answered the priest crashed through the cavern like thunder. It slammed into Vennet and sent him staggering. The half-elf screamed at the sound of it. He clapped his hands over his ears, but it did no good. The only sound he blocked was his own scream. The voice of the great lord of the dark, of the daelkyr, was in his mind.

  Vennet had stood at the helm of Lightning on Water to guide the ship through storms, the rain lashing him, the roar of the gale and the howl of the ship’s great elemental ring blending together until he could hear nothing else. The daelkyr’s voice was like that except that the thunder was broken by the rise and fall of words. Words that Vennet could recognize but not grasp—words far larger and older than him. Words that seemed older than Eberron itself. They ate into him like bitterly cold acid, numbing and searing at the same time. He stumbled and fell, cracking his knees against the rough stone of the cavern floor.

  Dah’mir seemed to understand the daelkyr’s voice, though. As the thunder stopped and Vennet reeled at a moment of respite, the priest shook his head and turned his eyes downward. “No, master,” he said. “Your new servants aren’t ready. There have been complications. Medala is dead—”

  The daelkyr spoke again. Vennet reeled. Across the cavern, he saw Hruucan, standing as motionless as a soldier on parade, shift his weight and brace himself. Even Dah’mir went pale.

  “The kalashtar who escaped, master. She found allies. I captured her and returned her to the mound, but her allies recruited Gatekeepers. There was a battle—”

  In the great throne room beyond the lens, there was a soundless stir as mind flayers looked at each other. The daelkyr sat forward, his voice a whip crack on the air.

  “Dead, master,” Dah’mir said. “All of them—killed by the kalashtar’s allies.” His hands fumbled with his leather robes. “I was wounded, too. It was a chance blow, a desperate strike, but the blade was Dhakaani and powerful
.”

  He parted his robes. Vennet was behind him and couldn’t see the wound he exposed, but he heard the sucking sound of leather peeled away from raw, bloody flesh.

  Contempt emanated from the daelkyr. Vennet fell over and wept as the silent words of disgust that rolled from the great lord peeled back the layers of his mind. Hruucan staggered and went to his knees.

  Dah’mir fell prostrate one more. “Master, I know! I am weak! Without the shard, my strength is gone, your gifts fade.” A shudder shook him. “There is more, master,” he added with the despair of someone forced to deliver ill tidings. “The great stone has been broken.”

  The daelkyr said nothing. The only sound in the cavern was Vennet’s own weeping. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the daelkyr and his priest, however. He saw Dah’mir hesitate, then look up. “It’s not the end, master. I believe I can create another stone, one suited to our needs and not a flawed cast-off. One closer to the true stones. My studies, my experiments—I can draw on them.” Dah’mir took a ragged breath. “It will take time.”

  The thunder of the daelkyr’s voice rolled again. This time, though, it seemed to Vennet that he could actually understand something of the green-eyed lord’s silent speech. As his thoughts fell apart, the ancient words became distinct. They burned in his tortured mind, melting sanity like wax. We have time.

  Dah’mir lifted himself from the floor and wrenched his robes wide once more. “Then heal me, master! Heal me, I beg you!”

  The daelkyr sat back, his eyes narrowed—then held out a hand. A mind flayer, taller than its fellows and with long tentacles that made Vennet think of an old man’s trailing beard, stepped forward and placed a blue-black dragonshard in the daelkyr’s hand. The great lord stroked the shard for a moment, then casually pitched it forward toward the shimmering lens.