The Grieving Tree: The Dragon Below Book II

by Don Bassingthwaite

  “Singe,” said Ashi, her voice muffled, “we’re almost at your knees!”

  “Keep going!” he called back softly. He wriggled a little more and pushed his arms past the broken wall and into open air beyond. Another push and his head was through as well. Arching his back and propping himself up with his free hand, he stared in amazement.

  He had emerged in a corridor constructed of large stones, carefully smoothed and tightly fitted. Angular writing—some form of Goblin—covered both walls, scrawled across the stones in irregular patches as though a scribe had taken to graffiti. The strokes of the writing were sharp-edged, like a pen on paper, but there was no sign of ink or paint. Instead, it was as if the stone itself had been stained—a simple magic, but one applied on scale far larger than Singe had ever imagined. The light of his sword didn’t reach far, but it looked like one end of the corridor headed back toward the collapsed entrance, while the other continued on into darkness. The writing marched into the shadows in an unending stream.

  The floor was an easy drop beneath him, the stones that had been removed to open the hole stacked neatly to one side. He lowered his rapier and carefully flicked it to the far side of the corridor. It fell to the floor with a swirl of light and a quiet clatter that rang like chimes on the still air. Singe paused, watching the darkness and listening, before twisting around and hissing back up the hole, “Let go!”

  Hands released his ankles. Singe spread his legs, pressing against the sides of the hole in an attempt to control his descent, but he still came sliding out like the pit from a ripe cherry. He tucked as he fell, rolling back to his feet and snatching up his rapier in a smooth motion. He held it the weapon high and ready, light splashing around him.

  Nothing stirred in the shadows. His breath hissed between his teeth and he stepped back over beneath the hole. He could see Dandra peering down at him. He gestured for her to join him. “Come down! Twelve moons, you have to see this!”

  Geth was the last one down the hole. The slide into darkness was brief, the impact of his feet on the tunnel floor jarring, the cascade of dirt dislodged by his gauntlet extremely uncomfortable—it poured onto the top of his head and right down his back. “Rat!” he cursed, shaking himself and trying to dislodge it.

  “Careful!” snapped Singe. The wizard was just lifting his hand from the head of Dandra’s spear. Light shone from the weapon just as it shone from his rapier. Geth growled and bared his teeth at him, for a moment caught up in their old, familiar rivalry.

  Except that the anger in Singe’s eyes was real, just as it had been all the way along the road from Vralkek. Geth’s growl died in his throat and the shame that had haunted him since seeing Robrand again returned like a punch in his gut. The instant that Singe’s gaze left him, he pressed back into the shadows.

  Why did it have to be Robrand working for Tzaryan? He could have happily lived his whole life without ever facing the old man again.

  Orshok and Natrac came trotting along the tunnel. “You’re right,” Natrac said to Singe. “It ends at the collapse outside. Someone has been working down there—stones have been pulled out and pieced together on the floor like they were trying to match up fragments of writing.”

  “Ekhaas,” Singe said. “I’d bet my hand on it.” He raised his sword so that its light shone full on a patch of writing. “This is some variation of Goblin. I recognize the script.”

  “Can you read it?” asked Dandra.

  Singe shook his head. “Not on my own. I can cast a spell that will let me, but the magic doesn’t last long. We need to go deeper—try and find the heart of the writing.”

  “How? There doesn’t seem to be any end to it.” Dandra gestured with her spear, sending light dancing along the corridor. The strange writing on the walls stretched as far as Geth could see.

  Singe reached up and touched some of the black characters. “Dah’mir left us instructions,” he said. “Look neither left nor right. The riches there are not for you. Hold to the path that leads to the Hall and find what waits in the shade of the grieving tree.”

  “If there were ever riches here, they’re long gone,” said Geth. Singe glanced at him coldly.

  “They’re not gone.” He patted the wall. “They’re here.”

  Understanding lit up Ashi’s face. “The Bonetree hunters would have no use for writing—”

  “—but Dah’mir would!” Dandra finished for her. She looked to Singe. “Do you think this writing is why he laired here?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out.” He lifted his rapier like a beacon and started down the corridor. “Follow me.”

  For a moment, Geth wondered if the wizard realized how much he resembled Robrand when he took command of a situation. The thought brought another twinge of shame—another flash of better times among the mercenaries of the Frostbrand company. He forced it out of his head. Dandra had said it best: they had to work together.

  That would have been easier if Singe had been willing to give him something more than a sour frown. Geth drew a shallow breath. “One battle at a time,” he muttered to himself, then winced. Another of Robrand’s gems of wisdom. He reached across his body and drew his sword, taking what comfort he could in the simple, solid weight of the weapon.

  Around his throat, the stones of Adolan’s collar were a reassuring weight as well. He touched them. Grandmother Wolf, he thought, I wish you were here, Ado.

  They crept down the dark hallway slowly, spreading themselves out so that they were close enough for comfort but far enough apart to swing their weapons if the need arose. The further they traveled along the script-lined corridor, however, the more Geth suspected that they had nothing to worry about. The shadows were still and silent. The dust of ages that lay on the floor had been disturbed by passage—Ekhaas, he presumed, since all the footprints looked the same—but there was no sign of struggle or violence. The air smelled of nothing but dust and rock … and maybe, if he breathed deep, old metal. He slid his sword back into its sheath.

  At his side, Natrac leaned a little closer and whispered, “A different place from Jhegesh Dol.”

  Geth nodded silently. The ghostly daelkyr fortress that the two of them had passed through in the depths of the Shadow Marches had been lonely and eerie as well—but it had also born the horrendous touch of its otherworldly master and been haunted by the spirits of his tormented victims. The tomb-like quiet of Taruuzh Kraat was welcome by comparison.

  “They’re the same age, though, aren’t they?” Geth said. “The Dhakaani Empire was destroyed in fighting the Daelkyr War. Taruuzh Kraat and Jhegesh Dol might have both been occupied at the same time.”

  “On opposite sides of the war, thank the Host.” Natrac nodded to the blade in Geth’s scabbard. “But your sword is that old, too.”

  Geth looked down at the heavy Dhakaani weapon. “I try not to think about that.”

  Natrac was silent for a moment, then added, “You really have Singe worked up. Him and Robrand both.”

  “I try not to think about that either,” growled Geth. “Hold tight to your own secrets, Natrac.” He moved away from the half-orc.

  The corridor they followed curved gently and soon rooms began to open off of it, then intersecting hallways. All of them were lined with writing as well, some of the characters larger or smaller, some patches of text isolated, others running uninterrupted for paces. It was like walking through an enormous book. Aside from the writing, the rooms they passed were empty. Geth took a wary glance through each doorway and down each hall that they passed. The ruins might have been dry, but the passage of centuries had left behind only those things that could resist time’s hunger. A fireplace, a counter crafted of stone and brick, scattered metal fittings amid the stains left by long decayed wood, a jumble of broken crockery fallen where some shelf or cupboard had crumbled.

  And while Taruuzh Kraat might not have carried the terrible threat of Jhegesh Dol, the unending streams of text began to wear on him. Geth caught himself twitching and turning at
half-glimpsed motion, only to realize that it was just another passage of writing on the wall. He bared his teeth and the hair on his neck and forearms bristled.

  “When I was at Wynarn,” Singe said abruptly, his voice brittle on the still air, “there was a researcher who specialized in planar cosmology. He usually wrote out his calculations in chalk on a slateboard, but sometimes when he was caught up in a problem that was larger than in his board, he would write on the walls of his classroom. One morning another researcher came in and found him backed into a corner, trapped by his own notes.”

  “A few years ago in Zarash’ak, one of the scions of House Tharashk went mad and wouldn’t stop writing,” said Natrac. “It was a scandal. She scribbled on anything she could reach with anything she could get her hands on. She had to be restrained or she would bite her fingers and try to write with her own blood.”

  Breath hissed through Dandra’s teeth. “You’re not helping!”

  Geth glanced at her. Dandra’s face was tight, her jaw tense, her eyes half-closed in concentration. The others saw it, too. “Dandra?” asked Orshok.

  Dandra lifted her chin. “It’s Tetkashtai,” she said. “This place frightens her. Il-Yannah, it frightens me. There’s madness here. You’re lucky that you can only feel the edges of it.”

  “This was Dah’mir’s lair,” Singe pointed out. “Maybe something of his power is still here.”

  She shook her head. “No. This is different. It’s—” She drew a rasping breath. “It’s older. An echo of something that happened a long time ago.”

  “Can you tell what?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head again. “But it’s getting stronger.” She raised her glowing spear to light the way ahead.

  To her or Singe, Geth realized, it probably looked like the corridor just kept going on and on. Out beyond the edge of human or kalashtar sight, though, the shadows opened onto a deeper darkness, like the shallows at the edge of a lake. “There’s something up there,” he said sharply. “The hallway ends.”

  He felt an instant of bitter satisfaction as Singe’s face wavered between disdain and the need to ask for help. The wizard’s disdain won, though. He pushed forward, striding down the corridor. Everyone else followed hard on his heels. In only moments, the deeper darkness that Geth had glimpsed came into the light—a high archway with some kind of balcony beyond. Singe and Dandra stepped through the archway and out onto the balcony, their glowing weapons held high. Geth stopped just a pace behind them.

  They looked down over a great chamber that still retained vestiges of the natural cavern it had once been. Vaulting arches of worked stone leaped across a high, rough ceiling. The lower walls had been smoothed and cut straight, but the chamber was still an irregular oval more than a score of paces wide and easily twice as long—even Geth’s keen eyes couldn’t make out its far end in the shadows. Broad stone stairs hugged the wall to one side of the balcony on which they stood, leading down to the floor ten paces below.

  Spaced out along the walls and set into alcoves were the cold hearths of half a dozen ancient forges, soot staining the walls around them. Some still had the crumbling remains of huge bellows connected to them. Anvils, tools, and huge stone benches had been piled into the alcoves as well, all tumbled together as if they were nothing more than toys. Every smooth section of wall had been filled with more writing, though in this chamber the Goblin words were interspersed with strange sketches and diagrams.

  In the center of the chamber, standing atop a broad platform, a strange sculpture of white stone reached up toward the ceiling. A thick base rose from the platform, narrowed, then spread and split into dozens of curved segments. The entire sculpture was cut with grooves across and along its surface. In places, sharp ridges and thorny spikes jutted out from it. The thing had an unpleasant, sinister look to it—so unpleasant and sinister that it actually took Geth a moment to realize what it was supposed to be.

  “Grandmother Wolf,” he breathed. “It’s a tree.”

  “If this is the Hall of the Revered, it must be the grieving tree,” said Singe. He looked at Orshok. “That’s what kind of tree grows underground, I guess. A stone one.”

  Orshok just stared at the sculpted tree. “Why?” he asked. “What is it here for?” He glanced at Ashi, but she shook her head.

  “Light of il-Yannah!” Dandra thrust out her arm. “Look there beside the tree.”

  Geth followed her pointing hand. Close beside the stone tree—in its shadow—stood a strange heap of metal tubes and wires interspersed with pieces of glass or crystal. His eyes widened and his heart seemed to skip a beat. He’d seen something like it before, in memories Dandra had shown him through the kesh of her time as Dah’mir’s prisoner. It was a near match for the device Dah’mir had used to trap Tetkashtai in the psicrystal and place Dandra in her body.

  “I think we need to take a closer look.” Singe grasped Dandra’s hand and drew her after him down the stairs. Geth and the others followed, picking their way carefully. The same footsteps that they had followed in the dust along the corridor marked the dust of the stairs as well. Ekhaas had been this way. When they reached the floor of the of the chamber, however, he was surprised to find that there was no dust on the floor at all—it had all been swept away.

  Ashi noticed as well. “Someone was trying to hide their presence, I think,” the hunter said.

  “Why here then and not in the corridor?” Geth asked.

  Ashi shrugged.

  The device beside the tree was considerably smaller than the one in the memory Dandra had shown Geth. In her memory, Dah’mir’s device towered overhead. The device before them, on the other hand, was only a little taller than Ashi.

  “This isn’t the same size,” Geth said.

  “No,” Dandra agreed, “it isn’t.” She circled the device and stopped before to a niche built inside it. To judge by the broken metal surrounding the niche, Geth guessed that something had been pulled out from inside the device. Something large—something the size of a crouching child.

  “And find what waits in the shade of the Grieving Tree,” he quoted. “That’s where the Bonetree found Dah’mir’s dragonshard.”

  “He built a model of his device?” said Natrac.

  “I don’t think so.” Singe stepped close to the device and pushed against a piece of age-corroded metal. It crumpled like paper, sending green flakes drifting to the ground. All of the bits of metal and wire that made up the device, Geth realized, were similarly corroded, the crystals among them clouded by time. “Dah’mir was here two hundred years ago. This is a lot older.”

  They were all quiet for a moment before Geth said. “The Dhakaani made this?”

  Dandra stepped back and stared at the device. “That’s impossible.”

  Singe spread his hands. “Maybe not. By all accounts, the Dhakaani were accomplished smiths. Their weapons helped fight off the daelkyr. I’ve never heard of Dhakaani artifacts that use dragonshards before, but—”

  “No,” said Dandra. “It’s impossible that the Dhakaani could have made something to affect kalashtar.” Her eyes were wide. “This device has to be thousands of years old, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” said the wizard. “The Empire of Dhakaan fell after the Daelkyr War. I think historians agree it was dead by about five thousand years ago.”

  Dandra raised her hand and wrapped it around her psicrystal. “How much do you know about the history of the kalashtar?”

  Orshok and Ashi looked at her blankly and shook their heads. Geth spoke up, repeating bits and pieces that he had heard during the Last War. “Kalashtar come from across the Dragonreach. From the continent of Sarlona.”

  “They come from farther away than that,” Singe said. He frowned. “Kalashtar are the descendants of humans and spirits from Dal Quor, the plane of dreams. That’s why you have psionic powers.”

  Dandra nodded. “We’re not descendants as such—the Quori spirits that formed the first kalashtar were exiles from D
al Quor, and they were given refuge in Eberron by merging with a group of humans in the nation of Adara in Sarlona. As those first kalashtar married and had children, the original Quori spirits splintered among their lineages. The point is, we know exactly when kalashtar came into being. It was eighteen hundred years ago.” She pointed her spear at the Dhakaani device. “How could an empire that was dead more than three thousand years before kalashtar even existed build something to affect us? Why would they?”

  “Maybe they’re not the same device,” said Orshok. All eyes turned to him and the young druid shifted uncomfortably. “Dah’mir’s device was bigger, wasn’t it? A knife and a sword have a lot in common, but you don’t use them for the same thing.”

  Singe’s eyebrows rose. “But both devices were built around the same Khyber shard. Once a shard is attuned to a particular magic, it can’t be changed.”

  Geth was abruptly conscious of the weight of Adolan’s stone collar around his neck. During the battle at the Bonetree mound, the Gatekeeper magic within the collar had protected him from the mental assault of a mind flayer. The Dhakaani sword at his waist had been forged to kill illithids and the other aberrant servants of the daelkyr; the ancient hobgoblins must have known about the tentacle-faced creatures’ deadly abilities. “Dandra,” he said, “are the powers of mind flayers psionic or magical?”

  Her mouth opened, then closed as her eyes narrowed. After a moment, she said, “Psionic. They might come from the madness of Xoriat instead of the dreams of Dal Quor, but they’re still psionic. It’s like the difference between the magic of druids and the magic of wizards.”

  “The Dhakaani fought mind flayers during the Daelkyr War.” Geth looked to Singe. “What if the binding stone traps things with psionic powers and all the wires and crystals around it are like …?” He struggled to put the idea in his head into words. “Like a sieve that only lets certain things through. What if the Dhakaani built a device that let the shard capture mind flayers, but Dah’mir made a new device that captures kalashtar instead.”