Trail of the Black Wyrm - Chris Pierson

by Dragonlance

  “Oh, gods,” she moaned.

  The boy looked down, the reptilian smile returning. He drew a dagger of black iron from his belt. She shrank back, but the blade wasn’t meant for her. Instead, he set its edge behind his right ear. His eyes burned red, no longer human.

  “Blood for the Faceless,” he said and began to cut.

  Essana woke with a scream, trying to sit upright—but a sudden, wrenching agony in her wrists kept her from rising. She fell back, gasping, sick, weak. There was light here—wherever here was: cold, gray light, shining down from a source she couldn’t see. She lay upon a table of volcanic glass, cold and hard against her back. Shackles bound her wrists and ankles, the chains taut enough to make her shoulders and hips ache. The only part of her that could move was her head, and now she craned and twisted to see what was around her. The room was small, dark, with a low ceiling and glowing crystals set into the walls. Drapes of purple satin hung to either side of her, sealing off the ends of the room. Behind the one on the left she heard quiet movement; to the right, slow, steady breathing.

  Some foolish part of her wanted to call out, to ask who was there. She swallowed the words; she didn’t want to draw attention. But it didn’t matter: an instant later, she felt a mind touch hers, cold and slippery and inhuman. Yaggol. They had found the talisman—no surprise. She hadn’t really tried to hide it. The alien mind slithered around, inspecting her thoughts, then coiled itself, forming words.

  She wakes …

  The movement behind the left-hand curtain stopped. There was a moment’s silence. Then the cloth jerked back and the Master strode through. Behind him was a work-table, festooned with glasswork and phials of powders and pickled insects and tentacled things floating in jars of brine. He had been doing something to a beaker that bubbled over an open, blue flame with no obvious source of fuel. Greasy brown smoke flowed over the phial’s edges, down onto the tabletop. Two yaggol stood at either end of the table, watching as the leader of the Brethren approached her.

  She swore at him, conjuring the vilest oath she could think of. He stopped, taken aback, then shook his head and chuckled.

  “My delicate lady of Coldhope,” he rasped. “I had begun to wonder if you would ever wake. It has been a week since your pathetic attempt at escape.”

  She blinked. A week? It seemed like only hours ago that she’d collapsed by the waterfall, the pains of miscarriage overwhelming her. Only hours since the Keeper let out that terrible, agonized shriek and blackness came down.

  She looked at her belly. It was round and firm again, even more distended than before. The pain was gone. Essana shut her eyes, letting out a forlorn sigh.

  “Yes, the child lives,” the Master said. “Though it was a near thing. You came quite close to ruining everything … you and that miserable turncoat, the Keeper. It didn’t work, though—and now things are far worse for you. You will remain bound like this until it is time for the child to be born. You will only be unchained to attend the sacrifices. We cannot let you try to stop us again.”

  She said nothing, only glared at him, hate boiling inside.

  She wonders about him, said the mind of the yaggol. The traitor. She wishes to know his fate.

  “Do you?” the Master asked, mocking. “You would learn of your savior? He lives, you know. We decided to leave him alive. Do you wish to see him?”

  He lifted his gaze, looking beyond, toward the other side of the room. The other curtain. The breathing. Essana swallowed, shaking her head.

  “No,” she said, her voice dry. “No, I don’t—”

  She lies, thought the yaggol. She yearns for it. The truth.

  The Master laughed, gesturing. “Very well. Look, my lady, and see what remains of the one who would have betrayed us to the Rainward kings.”

  The curtain pulled back. The breathing grew louder, more rapid. Essana fought the urge to look—and lost. Against all better judgment, she turned … and screamed.

  They’d hung him from the ceiling, from chains and hooks jabbed deep into his back. After that, they’d started with his limbs: the cutting. Both legs were gone at the knee, both arms at the elbow. Next they’d put out his eyes, and torn out his tongue. Then they’d ripped off his skin, like the Brethren had stripped away their own faces, laying bare bloody sinew and bone. Lastly, they’d cut him open from the base of his throat to the top of his abdomen. The flesh spread wide, like glistening wings. Beneath, she saw the white of his ribs, and within those, his lungs—still pink and twitching, in time with his tormented breathing. Between them, the fist-sized muscle of his heart beat rapidly.

  She shut her eyes, looked away—all too late. The sight of the Keeper had burned into her mind, and was all she could see. She began to sob.

  The Master laughed and laughed as the curtain swung shut again.

  Chapter

  19

  THE BOILING SEA

  Shedara was tired. She’d been tired for days now, taxed by spell after spell, by the moons’ power coursing through her, by every moment of waking and sleeping. Relying on magic made her feel weak, irritable, all but useless in the day-to-day work aboard the boat—which Forlo had now dubbed the Starlight, after his wife. But the magic was necessary. The alternative to being tired was being dead.

  They had sailed back down the coast of Northern Hosk, leaving the Panak behind. When they came to the Run, they’d tacked to port and gone on down its length, taking care not to get too close to any minotaur vessels out on the strait. For Forlo and Hult, it had been a hard journey. At the Run’s western end, the signs of the Uigan’s defeat still remained: bodies of men and horses, drowned and smashed by the great wave, lying bloated and burst on the rocky shores while crabs and gulls plucked at what flesh remained. There were hundreds of corpses, but Shedara knew it was only a small part of the doom she and Maladar had wrought upon the riders. Thousands more had been swept out to sea, forever lost.

  Then they passed the Lost Road: the tower where Forlo had fought Chovuk, which now stood empty, the ravine still torn and muddy from the battle. Beyond lay Malton, a wrecked ghost of a city, its charred walls standing eerily silent, and Coldhope across from it. They kept away from Forlo’s old home, bearing north to keep it as far from view as possible. Even so, he stared ever southward, and one morning cried out at the sight of the keep looming in the distance. Following his gaze, Shedara understood why—though it was too far to see anything but dim shapes, there was no mistaking what had happened. Coldhope was shattered, torn down, reduced to rubble. It shouldn’t have mattered to him—he could never have returned to his home, even if it were whole—but Forlo was silent and angry for days afterward, just the same.

  Finally, they came to the Run’s eastern end, and things began to change. The air, which had carried winter’s chill, grew warmer. The snow dusting the shores disappeared. Mist clung to the sea’s surface, and in the distance, massive, yellow clouds hung above jagged mountains on the distant shore. They had come to Indanalis, the Boiling Sea.

  Like the Run, the Sea had been born in the First Destruction. Before that terrible day, it had been a long inlet in Taladas’s south shore, running for hundreds of leagues from the jungles of Neron all the way up to the mountains of the Fianawar dwarves. When the rain of fire fell on Aurim, however, and turned that empire into a roiling cauldron of molten rock, the lava flowed outward on all sides. To the north and east, it coursed over land, cooling into sheets of obsidian and badlands of basalt pillars. To the west and south, however, the lava poured into the water—and kept pouring, every day for more than four hundred years. The waters of Indanalis were forever changed: they boiled constantly, giving off noxious steam that poisoned the lands on either shore. Things still lived on the coasts, and in the depths, but the creatures were twisted, corrupted—foul to look at and wracked with pain from the day they were born until their merciful deaths.

  This was their road, the quickest way to the valleys of Marak—eight days’ sail down the Indanalis, then ashore and thro
ugh the passes of the Steamwall Mountains, which kept the fertile lands to the west safe from the Sea’s fumes. When they crossed into those waters, Shedara’s spellcasting began in earnest. Some people, such as the surviving Fianawar, had perfected sailing ships that could survive journeys across the superheated waters, but Starlight was not so well protected. So, for the last two nights before they crossed into the Indanalis, Shedara had walked the boat’s deck, gouging protective glyphs into the wood with her knife. She made hundreds of carvings, against the terrible heat and unpredictable currents of the Boiling Sea, then—when it was done—drew down the power of Solis and Lunis and bound it into the boat. Enchantment seethed all around them, a shield that kept Starlight safe from harm—as long as she renewed the magic every night. If she didn’t, they would all die in moments.

  Nor was that all. Protecting the boat was one thing, but there were still the people aboard to consider. The fumes of Indanalis were lethal to anyone who breathed them. The bodies of those who did were seldom found, but occasionally an ill-fated ship was found wallowing at the edge of the Sea, crewed by corpses frozen in throes of agony, their faces swollen and blue, dry blood crusted around their ears, eyes, and noses.

  So Shedara worked her magic on the four of them as well, every few hours gathering the power to cast spells to protect them when the boat passed through a bank of noxious fog, or when a great bubble of gas rose from the sea floor to the surface. Even so, they all grew sickly and pale, constantly coughing as the vapors burned their lungs. And Shedara grew wearier every day, as the ship hugged the sulfur-crusted coast, riding the scalding waves.

  On the seventh night, when she was done with yet another round of spells, she coughed so violently she collapsed, the taste of blood warm on her tongue. Hult and Eldako helped her up—Forlo stayed at the tiller, keeping them on course—and brought her belowdecks, to lie down on her bunk. When she was resting, Hult took his leave, heading back up to help work the sails. Eldako remained, though, wiping sweat from her brow with a cloth. She coughed again, and he blotted red from her lips.

  “Thank you,” she wheezed.

  He nodded. “When we were in Panak, I swore I would give anything to be warm again. I fear I may have prayed too hard.”

  Shedara’s eyes narrowed. She looked at him hard, trying to figure out if he was joking. The merkitsa was hard to read. “Maybe you should pray for clean air,” she said. “I don’t think too much of that would be bad.”

  “True,” Eldako said, his brow furrowed. “I will ask the ancestors for it. Perhaps Hult can ask Jijin, as well. And you might ask your moon-gods. The more powers we have on our side, the better.”

  He smiled then, taking her by surprise. And he was holding her hand, too—he’d started by measuring her life-beat on her wrist, but hadn’t let go. She looked away, afraid of what she might see in those pale, blue eyes—and what he might see in hers.

  She’d always avoided entanglements when she was working—and most of the time when she wasn’t. They caused trouble.

  “Tell me about Marak,” he said.

  She blinked. “Hmm?”

  “Marak. You have been there, yes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Some time ago. Like you, with the Ice People. It’s a grim place. The kender used to be a happy people, but the Destruction did terrible things to their valleys. The trees are stunted, the rivers gray with ash. There are earthquakes all the time.”

  “Yet the kender stayed.”

  She shrugged. “Where would they go? There are hobgoblins in the mountains north of them and Thenol to the south. And they wouldn’t find warm welcome in the League. No, they’re trapped there, and it’s changed them. They’re a gloomy lot, and they don’t have much love for outsiders.”

  “If any remain,” Eldako said. “They may all have been changed into shadows.”

  Shedara hesitated, then shook her head, sighing. “I doubt that. They’re good at hiding, and there are more of them than people realize. Still, if we can find a way to stop what’s being done to them, we must. We swore to my brother that we’d try.”

  “Yes. And there are other deaths to avenge, as well.”

  She was silent, thinking of all the people she’d seen killed by the shadow-fiends. Angusuk’s tribe were only the latest in a long line that included many of her own people—her queen included. Yes, there was a reckoning ahead.

  She coughed again, but there was no blood this time. The ship heaved and listed to one side, then slowly righted itself. Above, she heard Forlo swearing in the minotaur tongue.

  “Another gas bubble,” she said.

  Eldako nodded. “They could probably use another set of hands up there.”

  “Go on. I’ll be fine down here. Wake me in a few hours, so I can cast the spells again.”

  He looked worried and might have objected, but thought better of it. Instead, he bent low and kissed her on the forehead. Then he let go her hand and rose, leaving her with her thoughts a mess, lying in the brimstone-stinking dark.

  It took a while for her mind to calm enough for sleep.

  They had feared, during the whole journey, that they would lose the boat. They all knew it only survived because of Shedara’s magic; unlike in the north, they couldn’t just leave it moored in the Boiling Sea while they made the trek to Marak. Without it, they would have a long journey ahead, through hostile lands: neither Thenol nor the League would be safe for travel. They could make landfall in the Hulderwood, a tract of ancient forest to the north, but the hulder-folk, a race even older than the elves, were not friendly to outsiders. Still, with so few roads open to them, it was the only way.

  On the last day of their sail, however, luck saved them. The sheer cliffs of the Steamwall retreated, leaving real coastline for the first time in days. Here the Sea had retreated a little, leaving a long beach of black sand, scattered with soot and slashed by steaming crevices. Forlo made for land at once, bringing the Starlight to shore and running it aground. They furled the sails and tied ropes to the hull so they could haul it out of the boiling water. Even pulling with all their might, it took Forlo, Hult, and Eldako four hours to pull the craft onto land. By the time they were done, they were all exhausted, and Hult was coughing flecks of blood as well.

  With a relieved sigh, Shedara let go of the spells that had protected the ship. The air around them seemed to crystallize, then shattered, tinkling pieces vanishing before they hit the sand. She shut her eyes, trying to find her strength.

  “We can’t stay here,” she panted, waving her hand at the yellow fog that hugged the ground. “We’ll die. We have to go inland, out of this mist.”

  None of them replied; none had breath enough to speak. Leaning on one another, staggering like drunkards, they made their way west, away from the bubbling waters. Once they were above the mist, at the edge of the Steamwall, they called a halt and slumped down onto the ash-caked rocks.

  “Sorry you stayed with us, Eldako?” Forlo asked.

  The merkitsa spread his hands. “I have seen places more terrible than this. I have traveled to the edge of Hith’s Cauldron itself, where only gnomes and fire-minions dwell and the land itself melts away. But I am glad to leave this behind us, for now.”

  Hult nodded, opening his mouth to speak, but he fell into another coughing fit. Forlo pounded on his back until the barbarian shoved him away, shaking his head. Shedara rooted through her pack, looking for her maps.

  She didn’t have a very good one of these parts—she’d never thought she would come this way when she set out in search of the Hooded One, those many months ago. The map she did have was old and not very detailed. She scratched the back of her neck, studying the chart.

  “There,” she said, pointing at a line that snaked into the mountains. “This used to be the wash of a river, from the looks … probably dried up years ago. We can follow it into the mountains and pick up a larger pass that’ll take us out the other side.”

  They all watched her trace the route through the Steamwall. �
�It’ll be a bit of a climb,” Forlo noted. “I don’t see anything better, though.”

  “Not for a hundred miles,” agreed Eldako. “Let’s just hope the land hasn’t changed much.”

  As if summoned by his words, a quake rumbled the ground. It was just a small temblor, but enough to bring them all to their feet. In the distance, a cascade of broken stone slid down a mountainside, throwing up billowing cinder plumes.

  “Well,” Shedara said. “Only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

  They set out inland, following the riverbed. It was hard going, all loose shale and scree, dotted with bigger boulders that had fallen from the heights above. The earthquakes continued every few hours, causing more rockfalls, and at times they had to make their way around hissing fissures that led to hidden depths. But they put the Sea behind them, rising above the worst of its vapors as it vanished from view. For the first time in days, the air began to smell clean again, and no longer burned their eyes and lungs.

  “Now … can … we … rest?” Hult gasped.

  They looked at one another—tired, pale, weak—reaching a silent agreement. They wouldn’t be of much use unless they slept, and the sky was getting dark anyway. Shedara cast about and spied what she was looking for: a dark opening on one slope, with no steam pouring out of it. She pointed, and together the group picked their way among the rocks, up over the shifting gravel to the cave. Drawing their swords, they made a torch and got it lit, then went in.

  The cavern was shallow, the ceiling low: as shelter, it wasn’t much. But nothing lurked inside, and Shedara, for one, felt she could fall asleep on a mountaintop in a thunderstorm. They made themselves as comfortable as they could, ate a little—they were nearing the last of their provisions—and drank careful sips of water, rationing what they had. Then, at last, they lay down, their cloaks bundled for pillows. It was uncomfortable, almost painful, but Hult was asleep the moment he laid down his head. Forlo snored loudly half a minute later.