by Dave Gross
We left Kaid’s Band to defend our camp and began our ascent.
We passed two half-hidden cavern mouths as we traversed the dragon’s spine. I marked their locations on a hasty map in my journal, but we continued toward the obvious entrance. After Kazyah confirmed that the fumes emanating from the dragon’s mouth were not toxic, we covered our faces with damp kerchiefs and entered the smoky maw.
The chamber within resembled the interior of a dragon’s mouth. Toward the back, two passages lead deeper into the mountain: one rose in a ramp while the other terminated in a descending spiral stairwell. Smoke blackened the ceiling and much of the walls, but occasional traffic had worn gray trails along the bone-strewn floor. Most of the remains appeared to be those of birds, perhaps devoured by previous inhabitants.
The smoke emanated from a pair of stone braziers on either side of a marble altar. Fist-sized chunks of a coal-like material produced heat and smoke, but precious little light. A cool draft rising from the stairway carried the smoke through a pair of circular apertures forming the dragon’s nostrils.
Whatever icon had once rested on the altar had long since been cut away. Only a bronze ring, blue-green with verdigris, remained embedded in the marble. Runes surrounding the altar’s lintel had long since worn to unintelligible shapes. I sketched them anyway, along with the altar, crafting the beginnings of a new map.
While I worked, the others examined the room. Radovan found a rusted buckle of indeterminate origin. Arnisant whined at a hole which, judging from the droppings, provided entrance for a family of giant rats.
Since there was little left of the mountain above us, I decided we should clear that portion before going below. We found two chambers above the dragon’s mouth entrance.
Along the circular walls of the first, some ancient artisans had carved a panorama of the surrounding mountains. While sketching it into my journal, I noted a discrepancy in the carving. A quick return to the dragon’s mouth confirmed my guess: the carving exactly duplicated the view from the mountaintop, except that one mountain in the carving was absent from the real landscape. I noted the anomaly for later investigation but doubted it had any bearing on our mission.
In the lookout above the round chamber, we found the skeletal remains of an orc. Judging from its shattered femur and a long-dried bloodstain on the floor, the brute dragged himself into the shelter to die.
Radovan and Eando searched the room. Zora found an air vent choked with the debris of a long-abandoned bird’s nest. She cleared it, and the air sweetened enough that we lowered our damp kerchiefs.
“See how helpful I am?” Zora tried not to look at Janneke, but it was clear whose favor she meant to curry. She and Radovan exchanged a glance. I suspected collusion and hoped they would not be too disappointed when the gambit failed. Janneke did not strike me as the lenient sort.
We dispensed with the upper chambers and descended into the belly of the dragon.
In labyrinthine passages we found all manner of scavengers and predators. Most were little more than beasts, easily dispatched with a spell or a display of force. The provisional nature of their lairs left no doubt that the territory frequently changed owners. Whatever artifacts may once have lain in those chambers had been looted long ago. We went deeper, searching for some passage that others had not yet escaped.
Our first serious ordeal came after Radovan returned from scouting. “Orcs,” he said.
I offered him a kerchief and nodded at the spur on his right elbow. “How many?”
“I counted fifteen, not including the two I introduced myself to.” He wiped the blood from his spur and pocketed the handkerchief, knowing I would not want it back. “I bet they have a couple sentries down the other two passages.”
“Nineteen. Hardly an insurmountable force.”
“Their boss has a devil’s head mounted on his shoulder. He was talking to it, and it talked back.”
“Lovely,” said Illyria. “Did the head appear living or undead?”
“It was a head with no body,” said Radovan. “I don’t know. Living, I guess.”
“Pity,” said Illyria. In response to my raised eyebrow, “I didn’t meant to suggest I wanted a trophy, just that I’ll have fewer ways to control it.”
I felt it best not to point out that I had meant to claim it as a trophy myself. A passage on reanimating outsiders from the Grimoire inspired me to consider an experiment.
We followed Radovan to the point where he had dispatched the orc sentries. They seemed only asleep until the light from my ring revealed the blood pooling beneath them. With hand signs, Radovan signaled we were near. Quiet incantations rendered us invisible, at which point we concealed our lights and followed Radovan hand to shoulder. Arnisant was accustomed to the procedure, which we had practiced during our time in the Worldwound crusade. To my relief, the drake remained silent on Illyria’s shoulder.
On entering the orc lair, I appreciated why the orcs had chosen the site. One wing of the cross-shaped chamber had collapsed, a stream trickling down a multicolored wall into a pool of likely potable water. A breeze indicated an air passage that drew out the smoke from a bonfire at the center of their camp.
Half a dozen orcs sat near the fire, sucking the marrow out of small bones, scraping the hair from swatches of hide, sharpening blades, and performing other tasks. More slept on nests of skins and detritus scavenged from the ruins. Several sleepers snored so loudly that I felt assured we approached unheard.
Before a painted hide tent sat three more orcs, two in positions deferential to their leader, whom I recognized from Radovan’s description. A yellow-skinned devil’s head strapped to his shoulder stood out from the orc’s unusually red skin painted in the sigils of Hell.
The diabolic signs gave me hope. One can treat with a devil. Had the orc served a demonic master, we would have had no choice but to fight.
Drawing the Shadowless Sword, I confirmed the only illusions within the room were the spells concealing our party.
I patted Radovan’s shoulder, signaling our prearranged entrance. He went off to deal with the sentries while I made a silent count and took a riffle scroll in hand. At the appointed time, I touched Illyria’s hand, knowing she would signal Kline, and so on down the line. We took our positions between the fire and the diabolist’s tent and awaited Radovan’s return. Silently he reappeared in one of the other two passages, offering a slow wave to indicate he had dealt with the other sentries before sinking back into the shadows, where even the magic of my sword could not reveal him.
I cast off my invisibility and waited a moment for the orcs to notice me. When they did not, I spoke in an archaic and formal dialect of their guttural tongue: “Your sentries are dead, but the rest of you may buy your lives with submission.”
Behind me, I heard the sound of an orc lunging for his weapon, followed an instant later by a heavy impact and a sickening crunch. I kept my eyes on the spellcaster and his counselors, trusting that Kazyah had revealed herself.
“Death stands beside each of you,” I said, “awaiting only another treacherous act to fall upon your head.”
The shaman stared at me, eyes wide in apprehension. He commanded his followers, “Still your hands.”
“You will tell me what you have found in these passages. When I am satisfied with your answers, you may depart forever.”
The leader’s hand trembled near a bone wand hanging from his hip. I saw the conflict in his mind reflected on his face. Submission would cost him loyalty from his followers. Seeing only me and Kazyah, he weighed the cost of resistance.
“Coward!” the devil’s head shrieked into the shaman’s ear. “I bring you the gift of hellfire, and you cringe before this half-breed elf? Burn him! Burn them both to cinders!”
I raised the riffle scroll, ready to thumb its pages and activate the spell. “Defy me and die. No further warning.”
The caster glanced at the devil’s head, then at his counselors. In the craggy lines of his face, I saw the r
esolve forming. Before he could turn it to action, I unleashed a volley of arcane bolts at his infernal familiar. The head exploded in shards of bone and chunks of preserved flesh.
Janneke fired a cylinder at a pair of orcs rising from their nests. A glass vial shattered and splashed them with gray fluid. The orcs howled as the acid burned through their hide armor.
Illyria flicked a white feather as the orcs around the fire rose. As she finished pronouncing her spell, they too wailed—not in pain, but in terror. They cowered before the necromancer as Amaranthine flew toward them, lashing her barbed tail at their faces.
Kazyah called out a Shoanti chant, and the ceiling appeared to fall upon another orc. In an instant, the rubble rose in the form of a whirling earth spirit, lumpy limbs pounding the orc to gore.
Radovan, Kline, and I moved forward to attack with our blades. Radovan killed two before Kline and I reached our foes.
“Count!” cried Zora. I turned to see one of the leader’s counselor’s gripping the empty air, his spell evoking a red blaze.
I began a counterspell, but I could see it would be too slow. Zora whirled her flag, the banner rippling in the air as it crossed between the orc and me. His infernal bolt flared behind the flag but vanished as it struck the cloth. With a flourish, Zora continued the arc of her sweep and snapped the cloth around the orc’s ankle, pulling him to the ground. A moment later, Kline and I were upon him, our blades finishing the job.
The rest was a brief succession of clamors and flashes. In the end, we stood over the broken bodies of the orcs, the only sound our panting and the grinding growl of Kazyah’s earth spirit. I regretted only a little the lack of intelligence we might have gleaned from a survivor. The fact that they had set camp suggested they had not penetrated much farther into the complex.
Beyond the orcs, we moved cautiously through trapped passages whose mechanisms Zora and Radovan disarmed. When we came to seeming dead ends, Kazyah opened the walls with a chant.
In a catacomb, a pair of wights stalked us until Arnisant barked a warning. Lady Illyria paralyzed them with a spell while Kazyah and Janneke smashed their undead bodies to pulp.
Soon after, Kline threw a handful of glittering dust over a seemingly empty expanse, revealing an invisible stairway. At the bottom, I incinerated a nest of albino arthropods with a spray of flame.
Together, we drove off a pack of hulking brutes with three-fingered claws, doglike legs, and hideous maws. The rumbling of their bellies was audible even over the fight, and ribbons of drool hung from their slavering jaws. Despite their disgusting appearance, I felt a pang of sympathy for their hunger. We stopped to fortify ourselves with a handful of rations. Or two.
Consulting with Kline and Lady Illyria, I identified discrepancies in my map to reveal hidden passages and access to undisturbed chambers. We descended ever deeper.
In time, we came to a series of slanting rooms lined with painted tiles. In the detritus, Radovan discovered a drain on a wall, suggesting that the now-vertical surface had once been the floor. Kazyah traced her fingers across a span of hard-packed earth until she found a softer spot.
She concentrated, listening to voices the rest of us could not hear. She thrust a finger into the rubble. The dirt parted as easily as if it were water.
“Don’t try to follow,” she said. “Wait for me here.”
Humming a deep note, she thrust her entire hand and then her arm into the earth.
“Is she going to—?” Before Radovan could finish, Kazyah disappeared into the wall.
We stared after her, watching as the disturbed dirt settled. As the minutes passed, uncertainty weighed upon us. Our gazes shifted from the wall to each other, yet no one dared speak.
Without warning, a nearby section of wall collapsed. Kazyah stumbled out, gasping for breath. Wet mud caked her lower legs, and dry dirt sifted down from her bear’s helm and cloak.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“A river,” she said. “I should have brought a light. But it’s close enough that I can make a path, if you wish it.”
“Do the spirits tell you it leads to a larger area? To Xin-Gastash?”
She nodded.
“Make a path.”
She set aside her earth breaker and produced a small steel blade from her belt. From a pouch she removed a crumb of loam, a bit of clay, and a pinch of sand. Mingling them in her palm, she thrust the blade forth and uttered a deep tone. An inhuman harmony joined her, just within the lower range of my hearing. It vibrated in my bones and raised the hairs on the nape of my neck. Pebbles leaped and scattered across our toes.
The floor parted like the trough of a cresting wave, creating a descending passage perhaps seven feet wide. As we watched, the channel penetrated deeper into the earth until a sudden gust of moist air blew dust in our faces.
Radovan moved forward.
“Wait,” said Kazyah. “Not yet.”
The shaman went ahead, pausing twice to mold a piece of clay. In sympathy with her spell, stones flowed and reformed in the shape of a crude brace to support the channel walls. She did the same at two farther points before beckoning for us to follow.
We emerged from the trench in cold water up to our calves. The opposite bank lay nearly thirty feet away. Downstream, the river gurgled through a rapid decline. Upstream, the passage widened.
“Be careful,” said Kazyah. “It is much deeper in the center, and the current is strong.”
Radovan and I took the lead, wading near the river’s edge with Janneke close behind. Illyria illuminated the head of Kazyah’s earth breaker, and the shaman covered the rear.
We followed the shallow river for perhaps seventy yards before the ceiling rose and the passage opened into a large, glittering cavern.
Upon its shore lay a treasure trove.
Gold, silver, and copper coins formed hillocks on the shore. Among them lay goblets, plates, tapestries, wooden carvings, suits of armor, swords, shields, spears with crusader pennants, chests and coffers (some open to spill out their jewels), a wagon-wheel with gold inlaid in its spokes, and even a canopy bed.
Eando Kline and Lady Illyria simultaneously cast divinations. I did the same rather than rely on their reports.
“Is this what I think it is?” said Janneke.
“That depends.” Radovan brushed away some coins at the water’s edge, revealing the furrow of an enormous claw. “Do you think it’s a dragon’s lair?”
“We should have brought more wagons,” said Zora. “Look at all this treasure!”
“Take nothing,” I said. “We are not here to steal.”
“Except for your book,” said Radovan.
“Except for that.” I disliked thinking of acquiring the Black Book in terms of theft, but Radovan made a valid point. “We must find it and depart before the, ah, resident returns.”
“We shouldn’t be here.” Janneke cranked her crossbow.
“Look here,” said Eando. He stood atop an enormous marble head of a fleshy woman crowned with a ring of Azlanti stones. He pointed. Ten feet above the statue’s brow, a half-collapsed stairway rose to a higher chamber.
I looked to Eando and Lady Illyria. “Can either of you levitate someone up there?”
Kline shook his head. Illyria said, “If we rest a while, I can prepare a spell.”
“If somebody can find me a spider, I can climb up there,” said Zora. “Not too big, though. And not a hairy one.”
“What are we doing?” said Radovan. He waved Eando down from the statue’s head and took his place. “We don’t need magic for every little thing. Boss, can I get the mallet, spikes, and rope ladder?”
I opened the satchel and removed the Gluttonous Tome to reach the gear. Just as I set it aside, a mound of treasure shifted. Coins streamed down its sides, the sound of the disturbance rising to a loud ringing.
Something deep beneath the surface burrowed toward us.
On Illyria’s shoulder, Amaranthine spread her wings and hissed. Arnisant jumped
in front of me, barking.
The rest of us braced for attack, but only a familiar green radiance seeped out from beneath the coins.
As one, Kline and I said, “Oh no.”
A black shape burst out from the treasure, scattering coins in all directions. I writhed in wracking pains. Covers like leathery wings beat against my body as the book’s spine, like bony claws, scrabbled to clutch its pages. A distant fraction of my will wished to let it go, but with the panic of a drowning man, I held on as the Black Book rejoined its accursed siblings, the Bone Grimoire and Kardosian Codex.
At last, the book and I fell exhausted to the cavern floor. The Shadowless Sword clattered beside me. I heaved up the contents of my stomach. All around me, the others suffered their own agonies, caught up in the nauseating aura of the books’ reunion.
Some indeterminable time later, Radovan and the shaman lifted me by the arms. I snapped at them, clutching the Tome to my chest with both hands lest someone take it from me. The combined book fluttered open as though flaunting its final secrets.
The Black Book consisted of a scorched back cover and another hundred pages of smoke-darkened parchment. The inscriptions were in the same elegant hand as in the previous volumes. Only when Radovan spoke did I realize I had skimmed the pages before me and turned to read the next.
“You feel all right?”
My hands trembled. “I have it. It is all here before me. It is mine.”
“Now we must destroy it,” said the Pathfinder.
“By fueling a fire to cook for a fasting king?” I said. “You will forgive me if I first study these new pages for a less preposterous suggestion.”
“The more you read, the tighter the curse grips you.”
“Then it is a race,” I said, rising to the challenge. “I must discover the means to destroy the Tome before it can destroy me.”
“We,” said the necromancer woman. “We must discover it together.”