"But the right mountain," Arlon interrupted. "I'm looking for Amrennathed's home."
Diadree went rigid under Bahrn's hands and said, "Amrennathed is even less your affair than I am."
"Who is Amrennathed?" Bahrn wanted to know.
"A dragon. In local legend you know her as the Queen of the Mountain," Arlon explained. "I came here searching for her."
"For a children's story?" scoffed Bahrn. "You've wasted your steps. The mountain has no queen but Diadree, and she's not a dragon, except in speech." The old woman's shoulders quivered with what might have been laughter. Bahrn couldn't be sure. "Your queen was used to scare children into good behavior."
"Never worked," Diadree muttered.
"Amrennathed is a dragon of amethyst, older and stronger than this mountain," Arlon persisted. "By all accounts, she came here a great wyrm and rarely left the lair she made for herself." His voice rose with excitement. "Don't you see? When you were a boy, she was practically beneath your feet, and you never knew."
Bahrn was unconvinced. "What does that have to do with Diadree?"
"Nothing," Diadree interjected, but the wizard was smiling at her.
Arlon turned, murmured something Bahrn didn't hear, and stepped close to the cliff wall. The grass and dirt shifted, as if a swift, momentary breeze had passed over them, and Arlon lifted his arm into the air. He clutched a dirty scrap of cloth between two fingers.
Diadree made a small, constricted noise of fury in her throat. Bahrn recognized the piece of the old woman's bloodstained skirt. The breeze plucked the fabric out of his grasp and bore it on the air for several seconds before allowing it to float gently to the ground. The rush of air streaked away from the cliff and blew toward the back of Diadree's home, ruffling flowers and bushy plants from her garden in its wake.
"This way," Arlon said, following the breath of magic.
A rocky outcropping rose up behind the small dwelling. The trail they had been following ended there, cut off by a steep climb up the rocks.
"A blood scent spell," the wizard explained when Bahrn came up behind him. He pointed to the rock wall.
Puzzled, Bahrn walked farther around the outcropping.
Roots of small trees and brush sticking out from the cliff formed an ascending carpet of rough stepping places and handholds. Halfway up the roots were torn, and there was a dark stain dribbling down the rocks.
"You tried to climb this?" Bahrn asked, turning to Diadree. "This is where you broke your ankle."
"She must have been looking for something terribly important," Arlon remarked. "I wonder what it could be, Diadree." His tone was conversational, but his eyes were fixed on the mountain, as if with enough force of will he could draw in and open the rock.
Murmuring under his breath again, he levitated up vertically along the cliff wall, steadying himself against the wind by grasping at outthrust rock.
"Follow him!" Diadree shrieked. She grabbed Bahrn's arm as the wizard disappeared from sight over the outcropping. "She won't like it if he finds where she slept!"
"Who won't?" Bahrn asked, his patience rapidly thinning. "Arlon's dragon? She's dead, Diadree, if ever she existed at all. Either way, she's not going to care who visits her grave."
"He's looking to pick through whatever she might have left behind. That's what they do, don't you see?"
"If that's all he intends, he's welcome to…" He trailed off as Diadree's face went livid.
"Stupid, insolent child," she spat. "Why did you come back here-bringing a sniveling, arrogant, cult mage in tow!" She shoved at him. He half-expected her to reach for the nearest broomstick as she had almost two decades before.
Bahrn raised his hands. "He hired me to bring him-for you. I didn't know what he was. Why does it matter what he takes?"
"Doesn't it matter to you? Of course, seeing your own home picked to bones by the vultures didn't seem to slow you, so why should I be surprised?" Diadree snorted with disgust and swiped at him again.
Deftly, he plucked both her fists out of the air and forced them away from his face. "A pile of sticks, to my memory. I only came back to see if you were well."
And if Arlon was a cultist, as Diadree claimed, he'd brought her much more trouble than he could have saved her by staying away.
Diadree's grip slackened, but her eyes remained raw. "I don't understand you."
Bahrn sighed and stooped, offering his broad back to the old woman. "Neither do I, at the close of most days. I'll carry you, but only as far as the roots go up."
Diadree closed her eyes briefly. "Thank you." She wrapped her thin arms around his neck and said, "I was wrong. The years have changed you a little. You're much less a fool than you used to be, even if you are traveling with the Cult of the Dragon."
"How do you know he's a cultist?" Bahrn asked as he began to climb. "He's not mad, not like-" he stopped and clenched his jaw.
"Like me." Diadree cackled. "You turn the same open mind toward the world you did as a child, Bahrn. You'll want to be careful of that in the future. You've seen his look. Amrennathed knew ones like him would get around to coming after her eventually. She was prepared, don't you doubt it."
Bahrn did doubt and refused to ask how an imaginary dragon might have prepared against the fanatical cult or how Diadree would know about it, but he felt compelled to make some argument.
"I am not the same boy you chased with a broomstick, Diadree," he said.
"That's true. You didn't have this when you were a child." She thumped his armor beneath her knuckles.
"I didn't have it because I was a child. I left Orunn when I was thirteen."
The old woman shook her head impatiently. "I mean your father didn't pass it on to you. Norint was a farmer."
"Yes. I turned mercenary after he died."
Bahrn glanced back as he felt her hand rest on his shoulder. Her fingers absently traced two of the spiral designs on his shoulder plate, carved into the metal like a second set of eyes. Inlaid with lapis lazuli, the swirling patterns appeared in mottled blue-white pairs all across his armor, contrasting sharply with his darkly tanned face and black mustache. Frankly, he enjoyed the superstitious notion of having extra eyes to guard him, though the patterns resembled no human or elf orbs he'd ever seen.
Watching Diadree stare into them was uncannily like watching a child gazing at her reflection in a mirror.
"Why did you stay, when everyone else had left the village?" he asked quietly.
She looked up, and smiled. "Because I'm old. Bratlings and cult mages have driven me mad, and I'm too feeble to move on, no matter how hard the earth shakes my bones."
"The tremors could have killed you," Bahrn pointed out.
"Yes, but they were not her fault." Diadree sighed. "Be grateful at least one dragon managed to pass out of this world with so little fuss, boy."
"You believe Amrennathed's death caused the tremors?"
"Why not? The power of a dragon dying-one so old and tightly linked to the earth-is bound to be felt, no matter how gentle she tried to be."
"You wish to protect her memory." Bahrn shook his head. "Yet she destroyed Orunn-not in fact, but as a result of her death."
"It was her time, and she chose to go as her dignity-greater than an army of greed-driven cultists-demanded. I can only hope to be offered that same grace someday." Diadree tensed. "Careful now, the mountain's about to have another fit."
"What-? " Bahrn cursed as the rock beneath his fingertips shifted, and began to tremble. Metal armor rattled against stone, jarring both of them, but Diadree seemed at peace with it.
Hooking an arm around the thickest root he could reach, Bahrn pulled the old woman in close until the shaking slowed and finally subsided.
"How did you know?" he asked when the rock was firm beneath them again.
Diadree didn't answer. When he craned his head around to look at her she was gazing back down at her house. From the high vantage, Bahrn saw that a section of the roof had collapsed in on itself.
"Keep climbing," she said. "We're almost there."
Bahrn followed her eyes to a ledge snugged against the cliff several feet above them. At its back hung a tunnel.
Diadree slid off onto the ledge when they reached the top. There was enough room for both of them to stand comfortably outside the tunnel. Squinting into the darkness, Bahrn thought he caught the glimmer of tiny lights.
"Arlon!" he called out, but the lights didn't move. He slipped a torch from the pack on his shoulder and spent a moment lighting it. When he raised the flaming end inside the passage, Diadree was already several steps ahead of him, examining the tunnel walls. He caught a flash of colored light against the flame and blinked, thinking he'd imagined the sight.
"What is that?" he asked, then answered the question himself: "Amethyst."
He flattened his free hand against the stone. In the shadows, deeply embedded, the formations were a mural of sparkling purple and white, swirling designs not unlike his armor.
"Watch your step," Diadree cautioned as gravel and something firmer crunched under Bahrn's boot.
He stepped back quickly and shone the torchlight over a dirt-caked bone that had been snapped nearly in half under his weight. He noticed a skull lying nearby.
"Human," he said. The entire back portion of the skull was caved in. "Others have come here?"
"Several others," Arlon's voice echoed out of the darkness ahead of them. They heard the wizard's footsteps as he trotted into the torchlight. "There are other sets of remains in the larger cavern," he said, then shot the mercenary a look of triumph. "And two eyes," he added, motioning for them to follow him back down the tunnel.
The ground sloped downward for several feet, emptying into a dome-ceilinged chamber. Directly ahead of them loomed two identical, man-sized oval alcoves buried a hand-span into the wall.
The cavern was full of the sparkling amethyst. Crusts of it speared out from the wall and druzes carpeted the ground around his boots like a crystal maze in miniature.
Arlon moved his palm over the largest of the spears. Light haloed up from the crystal, illuminating the entire chamber in painful, lavender light.
Bahrn could pick out other glittering objects strewn about the floor-gems of varying colors and sizes amongst gold and silver coins.
"She was here," Arlon said. "These are remnants of her hoard. Tell me where she is!" he demanded, whirling on Diadree.
"Arlon." Bahrn casually pivoted between the pair, ignoring the dark look the wizard threw him. "You truly believe she's hiding Amrennathed in one of her pockets?"
"For a brief time, I thought she was the dragon." He spoke to Bahrn in that same easy manner, but the wizard's eyes followed Diadree's every step around the cavern with the glittering fascination of a man who does not realize he is being observed.
Bahrn was observing though, and Arlon's eyes told him more than enough. The mercenary's hand slid to his waist, where the handle of his morningstar waited.
"The others who returned from the mountain never found this cave," Arlon went on. "They claimed the only living soul on the mountain was one crazy old woman… a woman who refused to leave Amrennathed. They didn't know she was speaking of the dragon, the Queen of the Mountain. Only a very few know her by name."
Diadree paused and glared back at him, her hand raised at the ridge of one of the stone eyes.
Bahrn thought of Diadree's reflection in his armor. He shook the memory off. "That's absurd. She isn't a dragon, she-"
"I know that!" Arlon said. "But she knew the dragon's true name. She tried to get up here herself. Why?" The wizard scraped up a handful of coins, jewels, and dirt from the floor and hurled it at the wall inches from the old woman. "Not for this! You're not a looter, not an ore, are you, Diadree? However much you smell like one. Where is she? Where are the dragon's bones?" he shouted.
Silence reigned in the cavern. A single coin from the wizard's tantrum rolled to a stop at the toe of Bahrn's boot. The mercenary glanced down at it and caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
For a moment, Bahrn thought the left eye of the cavern had blinked, but it was only Diadree, shifting restlessly beneath the low-hanging stalactites suspended above the hollow in thick-set lashes. He opened his mouth to call her back to his side.
And one of the rocky spears broke away from the wall. Not a stalactite, Bahrn realized-at the same time his voice shouted to the old woman to move-and it wasn't falling. It was crawling down the wall.
Detaching from a cluster of stone, the thing shuffled down into the circle of purple light cast by the enspelled amethyst. Bahrn could make out an anvil-shaped head that swiped, pendulumlike, from side to side, and four stony feet dragging awkwardly across the ground.
Its body swung toward Diadree as she stumbled away.
Bahrn drew his morningstar and ran forward to push her aside, but Diadree's ankle had already given out beneath her.
She slid to the ground as the creature charged by, raking her side with its stony belly. Diadree cried out as she was dragged forward, bare flesh caught on protruding shards of rock and crystal.
Bahrn swung the morningstar underhand at the creature's other side, taking both front feet out from under its body in a cloud of dust and shattering rock. The creature skittered wildly across the floor like a puppy on slick cobbles, allowing the old woman to fall free.
Bahrn wheeled around for another strike but checked the swing as Arlon's hands began cutting rapid patterns in the air. The coins and jewels and chunks of stone he'd hurled earlier rose up from the floor and shot toward the creature like a dozen tiny sling bullets. More pieces of the creature's stone body fell away as the pellets impacted. Stung, the beast swung its attention immediately to the wizard.
"Watch her." Arlon raised his hands again. "I don't want her dead yet," he snapped at the mercenary.
Diadree lay curled into a fetal ball against the cavern wall. Her shirt was shredded-stone and bits of sharp crystal were embedded in her side.
"She's protecting herself," Diadree moaned as Bahrn tried to tend the cuts in the dim light.
"Arlon will kill it," Bahrn soothed, adding silently, and perhaps he'll move on to us. "It appears your dragon left a few pets behind to guard her lair."
"No," Diadree said. "They're like children, only not, not really. She's left pieces of herself behind."
"That thing isn't alive, Diadree," Bahrn assured her. "It's made of mountain rock, and gold and gems. I pulled some out of your wound." He pointed to the bloodstained pieces of wealth on the floor beside him.
The old woman lifted her head from her hands and reached for him, her fingers finding and clutching an exposed bit of tunic. Her eyes, dulled by pain, focused on him, pleading.
"Could you take the rest?" she begged.
Bahrn's heart wrenched. "They're all gone, lady, I promise you."
"No, they're not. Amrennathed's not. The pieces are still there." She tapped her temple hard with a dirty nail. "It's not her fault I got some of them. I'm stubborn-I loved the mountain as much as she did. I wouldn't leave."
"What are you saying?" Bahrn gripped her shoulders as she began to tremble. "Where did Amrennathed go?"
"The mountain. She was old and didn't want to leave or be scavenged after her death. Would you, if you had lived half so long, want your bones looted for trophies? I didn't blame her. I watched it happen to Orunn. So she joined her body with the mountain. It upset the balance of… everything-shook the earth, these caverns. Everyone left the village except me. The mountain and I… somehow the pieces got mixed, and now I've got some of her in me and… and I just wanted to stay in my home, to be safe." Tears welled in her eyes. "Or maybe that's her voice, her wishes. I don't know anymore. But it doesn't matter if he kills it," she moaned. "There're still too many pieces."
"Gods, Diadree," Bahrn said, feeling helpless. He rubbed his hands over her shoulders as she cried, trying to calm her.
His hands stilled abruptly as her words sank in. Too many pieces.
Bahrn squinted at the walls of the cavern, letting his eyes become absorbed by the rocky fixtures and shadows. He remembered as a child lying on his back on the Fox Ear's shore, hunting for cloud shapes in the sky. As he looked, his eyes picked up more of the vaguely serpentine shapes sprouting out of the rock at various points around the cavern. They remained still and silent.
Behind them, Arlon dropped to his stomach as the stone wyrmling twisted, slamming its hindquarters into a rocky shelf jutting out from the far wall. It fell hard to the floor and shattered.
The wizard stood and said, "The amethyst dragons are powerful psions. I should have realized-wyrms animated from stone. Amrennathed allowed her body to waste away into the mountain, and her mental essence followed intact. But your proximity to her and the mountain-somehow a bit of that essence seeped into you."
He strode toward them, his expression frozen on Diadree in triumph as he began to mouth the words of another spell.
Bahrn wasn't about to wait to find out what magic it might be-at best, a spell to kill or contain them both, anything to keep Diadree's mind intact.
His hand moved to his weapon, but he hesitated. The wizard was too far away. If Arlon ducked, if he missed his target, he and Diadree were dead.
He scanned the wall, following the spines of serpentine, stone bodies, as if he could will them to move, to leap down upon the wizard.
Arlon raised his hands.
Bahrn smiled grimly and hurled his morningstar into the space between them.
Arlon's eyes bulged. His left hand trembled violently, but he continued to weave the gestures of his spell even as his right palm spasmed weakly, pinned between the cavern wall and the head of Bahrn's morningstar. Blood streamed down the rock into the dust, but he kept speaking, spitting the words of his spell with flecks of saliva.
The Realms of the Dragons 2 a-10 Page 20