by James Wyatt
Gaven dropped his greatsword to the ground and spread his empty arms wide, palms out. “We mean no harm,” he said in Draconic.
He saw their eyes widen, and he was suddenly struck by how human they seemed. Their faces were wide, and accentuated by small frills extending back from their mouths. Despite his earlier impression, they did have distinct brows—ridges of scales arching up from their snouts over their eyes and meeting those cheek frills. Behind their brows, they had crests resembling thick, ropy hair, formed of horn or scales. Some of them also had protruding scales that extended down from their chins, and Gaven realized suddenly that those were the males—the bodies of the men and the women were quite different in familiar and quite un-reptilian ways. There could be no question about it in Gaven’s mind. The strange creatures that surrounded him in this alien forest were people.
People he shared a common language with.
“What kind of creature are you?” one of the women said in Draconic. Her voice was low but melodious. She wore metal armor, unlike most of the others whose garb was stitched of scaly hide. She held no bow, but carried a shield in her right hand and an axe in the other. Armor, shield, and weapon shared a similar style unlike anything he’d ever seen—graceful curves meeting in points, suggesting tongues of flame. Like the breath of a red or gold dragon.
Gaven opened his mouth to explain what he and Rienne were but found himself at a loss for words. The first word that came to his mind to describe them was “meat”—not how he wanted to identify himself to these people. He turned to Rienne.
“What are we?” he asked. “How do I explain Khoravar to these people?”
“The dragons of Argonnessen certainly know of the elves of Aerenal,” Rienne said. “Try it.”
“We are travelers-on-the-sea,” Gaven said in Draconic. “We have journeyed a great distance to arrive at this land. Some of our ancestors were Aereni.” He paused to judge their reaction to this news.
Their wide mouths curved in unmistakable smiles. At the tips of their snouts, the scales formed a beaklike protrusion, but leathery skin behind it parted to reveal knife-blade teeth. Some of them laughed out loud, deep and throaty. Gaven cast his mind back over what he’d said—had he made some gaffe of manners or grammar?
“You talk like a dragon,” the armored woman said through her smile.
“Or a character in a bad romance,” another one added, letting his bow straighten slightly as he laughed.
Gaven was relieved but confused. He did speak like a dragon—probably because he learned to speak Draconic by holding the memories of an ancient dragon in his mind for twenty-seven years.
He didn’t know any other way to speak Draconic, though he had already puzzled out some idioms and colloquialisms he’d never heard before. “Bad romance” was his best guess, and he could only assume that the dragon-man had meant a play or a work of fiction.
He decided to take advantage of the moment of levity. “And you?” he asked the woman, indicating the whole group of dragon-people. “What manner of creature are you?”
“We are drakatha, of course,” the woman answered. A compound construction—dragon-bred? he wondered. Dragon-spawn? Dragonborn, he decided.
“We know the Aereni from our histories,” the woman continued, her face serious again, her fist tight around the haft of her axe. She stepped closer to Gaven. “They are the ancient enemies of the drakamakki. Are you their spies?”
Drakamakki. Dragon-kings? Did dragons rule over these people like kings?
“Spies? No,” Gaven said. “Our ancestors were Aereni, we are not. We are simply travelers.”
“Travelers have an origin and a destination. You have given us neither.” Her tone was threatening, and the smiles had vanished from the faces of her entire party. Bowstrings were taut again.
What am I saying wrong? Gaven thought, cursing himself. “We come from beyond the land of the Aereni, far to the northwest.” Gaven wished Draconic had a better name for Khorvaire—as far as the dragons were concerned, “beyond Aerenal” was the best description of the location and significance of Gaven’s home continent.
“And where are you bound?” The woman stood close now, stooping so her eyes gazed directly into his.
Rienne’s touch on his shoulder calmed him in the face of the belligerent dragonborn, but then it tightened in warning. He glanced back at her, just in time to see their original pursuers erupt from the forest and stop in bewilderment.
Shouts rose up from both groups of dragonborn, and a dozen arrows that had been pointing at Gaven and Rienne flew at the newcomers.
CHAPTER
14
The ground rose slowly toward the mountains as Kauth and his allies hurried to put miles between them and the serpent’s lair. At first they slogged up long hills that weren’t too steep, then circled the edges of dells or made their way down into shallow valleys. After a few days they climbed paths that wound back and forth up hills too steep to take directly. One morning their path led them along the edge of a sheer cliff, still rising, and when they cleared the tops of the trees below them the whole forest was spread out before them.
Kauth paused to lean against a tree whose roots emerged from the cliff into empty air before winding their way back down to fertile soil. He fought to catch his breath, pretending that he was simply taking in the view. That was the problem with taking a form like Kauth’s—he looked both stronger and hardier than he actually was. Most of the time it wasn’t an issue, but days of hard climbing were taking their toll on his endurance. And Sovereigns prevent some tavern thug from challenging him to a contest of strength!
On the other hand, as Sevren had observed, he was smarter than he looked, which almost made up for his physical shortcomings.
The others stood beside him to admire the view. Zandar was visibly winded—that was acceptable, though, since he was slighter than the others. Vor and Sevren seemed unaffected by the exertion of their climb. And the view was impressive. An emerald mantle covered the hills below them and the gentler land beyond, as far as Kauth could see. The summer sky was a perfect blue, unbroken by clouds, and Kauth realized how accustomed he’d grown to overcast skies while he traveled with Gaven. The man carried the threat of storms with him like a weapon at his belt.
Sevren startled him by leaping up the trunk of another tree and climbing the branches as if they were a ladder until they grew too thin to support his weight. He leaned over the edge of the cliff and looked up.
Zandar called up to the shifter. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to get a sense of the land ahead—or above. We’re nearly at the tree line.”
“Can you see the pass?” asked Vor.
“Do you think I’ve led you astray?” Sevren pointed to his right. “It’s a little to the north, but I think our course will take us right to the gates of the mountain.”
“Then down into the Labyrinth,” Vor muttered.
Sevren scampered down the tree even more easily than he’d climbed it. “Come,” he said, and he continued up the path.
Kauth pushed himself to keep up with Vor, just a few paces behind the shifter, while Zandar trailed behind. “And you’re leading us through the Labyrinth?” he asked the orc.
“I told you I would.”
“Yes, you did. And I’m grateful.”
Vor grunted his acknowledgment.
“If we encounter the Ghaash’kala …” Kauth wasn’t sure how to ask what he wanted to ask.
“We will,” Vor said. “They are vigilant, and no one enters the Labyrinth without their knowledge.”
“Are you … welcome among your former people?”
“No one who seeks to cross the Labyrinth is welcome among the Ghaash’kala.”
“Ah.” So Vor would be no help in that regard. He had hoped the orc would be able to negotiate their passage in more than just a geographical sense.
Finally, the question he’d been burning to ask the orc since they first met in Varna spilled from his mouth. “Why did you le
ave?”
Vor looked at him, his face a mask of righteous indignation. Then his shoulders slumped, and he looked away, down at the ground. “It’s only right that you should know,” he said. “My life is in your hands no less than it is in Zandar’s and Sevren’s, so you should know what you’re holding.”
Kauth suddenly wished he hadn’t asked. He didn’t want to hold the noble orc’s life in his hands, didn’t want to know anything about the life he was willing to sacrifice for his own purposes. For Kelas’s purposes.
If Vor noticed his sudden discomfort, the orc gave no sign of it. “You know about the Ghaash’kala. They come from the same stock as the orcs of the Shadow Marches to the south, and once probably followed the same druidic traditions. Some wanderlust or calling led them to the Labyrinth. One legend claims that they were an army pushing back an invasion of the Carrion Tribes, so zealous in their cause that they chased their quarry back through the Labyrinth to the threshold of the Wastes. The more pious among them claim that the leaders were following the call of Kalok Shash, the Binding Flame, which drew them to the Labyrinth to continue the sacred work of warriors long since vanished from the land.”
“The Binding Flame,” Kauth said flatly.
“I know what you’re going to say—it sounds just like the Silver Flame. Everyone who’s not a Thrane or a Ghaash’kala says it. And maybe they’re right, for all I know. Certainly since I left the Labyrinth I’ve come to understand the Silver Flame better.”
Kauth could understand the confusion. Two religious traditions known for producing paladins, both of which revered an impersonal force identified as a flame. It was an image with strong religious resonance, he reasoned—fire could represent fervor and devotion, crusading zeal, a purifying furnace, or a punishing force of destruction. Paladins might cling to any of those images, or all of them. Even Dol Arrah, the one god of the Sovereign Host most identified with the virtues of the paladin, was also a sun god, depicted as a knight shining with brilliant light—or as a red dragon, mouth aflame.
Vor was beginning to stray from the original question, and Kauth thought perhaps he could divert the conversation entirely. “What does the Binding Flame bind?” he asked.
“It binds the souls of noble warriors together, the living and the dead, and thus holds back the darkness. In the most literal sense, it binds the evils of the Demon Wastes within its bounds, preventing them from spilling out across Khorvaire. And that is why I am no longer privileged to call myself Ghaash’kala.”
Kauth blinked. Had he missed the connection?
“I failed in the most basic commandment of Kalok Shash,” Vor continued. “I willingly and knowingly allowed a demon to escape the Wastes. For that crime, I was exiled from my people. I would have been hunted and killed in the Labyrinth, but my knowledge of its ways exceeded that of most of my—most of the Ghaash’kala. I escaped, and now I keep the company of the likes of Zandar Thuul, friend of darkness.”
Kauth glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see the warlock close behind, clearly listening to the orc’s words. Zandar grinned, as though he’d just been waiting for a chance to interject another barb at Vor’s expense.
“Think of me as a shade protecting the world from the blinding radiance of your soul,” the warlock said.
“The world doesn’t need protection from me,” Vor snapped, “but from the likes of you.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m not as bad as the fiends in the Wastes.”
“A lesser evil, certainly. But still evil.”
“I’m not evil,” Zandar protested. “Just … practical.”
Vor snorted and cast a sidelong glance at Kauth.
Kauth remembered Sevren’s comment back in Varna about his two companions: “It’s like they’re married.” Indeed, he thought. Their lives are in each other’s hands, and in Sevren’s. And in mine.
I’m not evil, he told himself. Like Zandar said—just practical.
As Sevren had promised, he soon led them out from under the shelter of the Towering Wood, high on the slopes of the Shadow-crags. The sky still clung to the blue promise of summer, but the air held the chill of the snow-covered peaks. The trees gave way to fields of purple heather and hardy gray-green grass, littered with bare, dry stones left behind in the summer’s thaw.
They had emerged from the forest at the mouth of a gentle valley that beckoned them farther up the mountains. Sevren said that they were approaching one of the few easy passes through the Shadowcrags—easy in terms of the climb, at least.
“It’s an easy way into the mountains,” the shifter explained, “so it’s also an easy way for things that live in the mountains to make their way out. In winter, especially, predators from the heights spill down into this valley and out into the forest in search of prey. In summer, they have plenty of food—mountain goats, elk, and hares. But that doesn’t mean they won’t take the opportunity to vary their diet. Keep alert.”
“What sorts of predators are we watching for?” Kauth asked, careful to keep the trepidation he felt from his voice.
“The hungry kind,” Zandar said with a grim laugh.
Sevren ignored the warlock, as usual. “I haven’t seen any sign of Depravation, so I don’t expect to see anything really strange. Bears, panthers, maybe girallons.”
Kauth had heard of girallons—carnivorous, four-armed apes—but never seen one, and he had to admit to some curiosity.
“Be especially on your guard for flying hunters,” Sevren added, pointing at Zandar to make sure the warlock was listening. Griffons, wyverns. Sovereigns protect us if a dragon has made its home in the pass. Ready?”
“Ready,” Vor said, and Zandar nodded.
“Ready,” Kauth echoed, though he didn’t feel it. The mention of dragons and wyverns made him think of Haldren, which reminded him of Kelas and the whole damned mission he was on. He trailed behind Vor as they walked up the valley toward the pass.
They passed through the valley with its wildflowers and herd of elk in a pleasant haze and camped for the night on a level patch of ground beside a bluff that made keeping watch easy. Twice during his time on guard, Kauth thought he saw eyes glowing pale green in the moonlight, but both times whatever creature was watching them kept a safe distance and then withdrew.
By the time they neared the valley’s head, snow dusted the slopes just above them. Kauth could see his breath steaming in the cold, and the thin air made his lungs ache. He tried, subtly, to make his chest larger, to expand his lungs and help himself breathe, but his control over his internal organs was imprecise at best. The fact that Sevren and Vor still showed no sign of exertion embarrassed him. Zandar, at least, was gasping more than he was.
They kept climbing until the snow was underfoot, and onward until they slogged through drifts as high as their knees. The sides of the valley grew steeper and closer around them, looming over them, sometimes even leaning together, almost touching above their heads. Bitter winds howled between the canyon walls, freezing Kauth’s breath to his face and driving snow into his eyes. Only then, when it was far too late to turn back, did Sevren tell them what the pass was called. Frostburn Cut.
Figures moved in the blinding snow, Kauth was certain of it. A snow leopard perched on an overhang and watched them walk below it, as though hoping one of them would stray from the others and make itself easy prey. Dark and distant wings circled above them, shadows in the snow-filled sky—perhaps the griffons or wyverns Sevren had mentioned. But more unsettling were the figures that were not there. Kauth kept thinking he saw places where the snow did not blow, where it eddied around a form with no shape or substance. No attack materialized out of these strange emptinesses, and Sevren paid him no heed when he mentioned it. So he continued on, casting wary glances around as the day wore on.
When the sun reached the horizon, it flared for a moment beneath the solid cover of slate-gray clouds, a flash of crimson light staining the snow around them like blood. In that instant, a shadow fell across the ground,
a shadow cast by emptiness. Kauth had a fleeting vision of a face within that emptiness, a face that gave form to his most primal fears. A great horned bear, snarling in bestial fury, its mouth foaming with blood, and tongues of fire in its eyes—its gaze was fixed on Kauth, he felt it burning into him. Terror seized him like the icy cold.
By the time his cry of alarm had leaped from his throat, the vision was gone. The pall of night draped over them as the red sun vanished, and the form in the snow was gone, not just invisible to his sight, but no longer present even as an absence amid the snow. Sevren’s knives were in his hands, but Vor did not seem surprised at all.
The orc lumbered over to where Kauth stood, searching the darkening snow for any sign of the creature that had inspired such fear, and put an arm around his shoulders to steady him.
“We are in the Demon Wastes now,” Vor said gravely. “Do not trust your senses.”
“Then what under the twelve moons can I trust?” Kauth said, knowing full well the answer.
“Nothing at all, my friend.”
Kauth saw something pass across Zandar’s face, something not too different from his customary smirk. It reminded him unpleasantly of the warlock’s behavior in the Eldeen ruins, when he had so calmly tried to kill his companions. Did Zandar suspect Kauth’s secret? His true nature, or the real purpose of their journey?
No, Kauth realized, the warlock’s eyes were not on him, but on Vor.
They made camp only when it was too dark to see their way through the pass, and none of them slept except to doze briefly, sitting up, huddling near the fire to ward off the cold. For all their vigilance, no danger materialized in the night, and by morning the snow had slowed and the wind calmed. Their path led them slowly downward, and soon a bare valley, as free of snow as it was desolate of vegetation, came into view.
“Bid farewell to Frostburn Cut,” Sevren announced.
“And abandon all hope for your body or your soul,” Vor added, “for we stand in the Demon Wastes.”
“How charming,” Zandar said. “Is that a proverb of your people? I rather like the sound of it.”