[Dhamon 03] - Redemption

by Jean Rabe - (ebook by Undead)

  The floor was tiled, alternating squares of slate and black-veined rose marble, with a thick layer of dust making them look fuzzy and out of focus. Dhamon prodded Maldred ahead of him with the butt of the glaive, finding two more places that gave way, with spikes at the bottom of each one’s long drop.

  “Why would Nura come up here?” Maldred wondered aloud. A quick gesture and a few words and he changed his light globe, making it larger and brighter. Behind him, Ragh did the same. Their light revealed a hexagonal room littered with benches and bookcases and a half-dozen shadowed alcoves.

  Dhamon edged forward, careful to test each tile in the floor with the glaive. He found another loose one, but rather than collapsing into a pit of spikes, this one upon his touch produced a gout of hot, blue flame.

  “A sorcerer’s den,” Dhamon spat. “A damn evil sorcerer if you want my guess.”

  Still, he turned and turned, eyeing the place.

  Ragh shifted away from Maldred, keeping an eye on the ogre-mage. He was using the great sword to prod the stones, and he employed his extraordinary draconian senses to detect anything unusual. “Dhamon. I smell magic that is still alive.”

  “Alive?” Maldred gave the draconian a disbelieving look.

  Ragh waved a claw toward a knickknack-littered table. “It’s old magic but it still carries some energy. Some type of ward, I think.”

  Maldred raised an eyebrow and started to say something. Dhamon cut him off.

  “Shut up. I don’t trust you, ogre.”

  Maldred glowered.

  “Let him cast his spell,” said Ragh. “It can’t hurt, and maybe it’ll help.”

  Maldred resumed his mumbled spellcasting. There was a melody to his words, though a dissonant melody, and when the words quickened, glowing patterns appeared on a workbench, in the air in front of a high shelf, in a dozen places on the floor, and at various heights in the alcoves.

  “Lots of wards,” Ragh said.

  “So what?” Dhamon demanded an explanation.

  “Magical traps,” Maldred explained. “Spells used to catch intruders—hurt them or kill them. Maybe they’re too old. They haven’t done anything so far, but I can’t tell what they are supposed to do.”

  “Can you destroy their enchantment?” Ragh asked.

  “I thought you had a little magic about you?” Maldred taunted. “Why don’t you do it?”

  “This wasn’t in any spellbook I perused,” Ragh returned testily.

  “I’ll bet you never looked at a single spellbook.” Maldred started humming, and Dhamon moved close, ready to use the glaive if the big man tried anything suspicious. This magical tune was more complex and drawn out. After several minutes passed, the glowing symbols started to disappear. When Maldred was finished, all but three were gone, and these were high over alcoves.

  “Can’t break those for some reason,” he murmured. The sweat was thick on his brow, showing the spell had taken considerable effort. “Stay away from those alcoves. I said I don’t know what the wards do. Maybe they cause more of those blue flames. Maybe worse. Probably worse. I can’t identify the magic.”

  “Because it’s old,” Ragh said.

  “And thereby dangerous,” Dhamon added. He’d lost a friend, a scraggly kobold named Fetch, to old magic—an enchanted pool that had belonged to Black Robe sorcerers some decades or centuries past. “I’ve wasted our time. Let’s get—”

  “Maybe not.” Ragh forgot Maldred. The draconian had moved over and was engrossed in a collection of small objects on a shelf. He gathered them up in his free hand and set them on a table. He hunched over the table and blew, trying to clear away some of the dust, then he went back to the shelf, gathering more objects.

  Dhamon pushed the ogre-mage forward, although the big thief was not eager to come close to the curious objects. “What did you find, Ragh?”

  “This and that,” Ragh said. “I don’t know their names. Well, I’m sure a sorcerer would know what to call them. Things. I’ve found magical things.” He started spreading them out. They were carved wooden figurines the size of a child’s thumb, and all depicted a woman in flowing robes. “There’s a word on the bottom of each one. ‘Sabar’. It could be the carver’s name. Could be the name of the woman. My fingers tingle, so I’d say they certainly do… something magical.”

  “Well, what?” Dhamon was losing patience. He was running out of time.

  The draconian shrugged, looking around until he found a leather pouch. He put the figures in them. “I’ll have to figure out what, later.” He poked through the rest of the objects, which included an ivory hair ornament, a thick jade ring, which he slipped on his smallest claw, and a collection of a dozen round glass and ceramic globes.

  “Okay, take all of those,” Dhamon said. “Maybe they’ll prove useful.” He found another pouch and scooped a handful of dust into it for padding the objects in case they were fragile. “Put them in here, and be careful. I saw Palin with something like those glass beads once. If they’re the same things I remember, they burst into fire when they strike something.”

  Ragh filled the pouch and passed it to Dhamon. “There might be some other things here, too, but I don’t know how much time we should spend looking around. And Maldred…”

  “Ogre!” Dhamon’s hand shot out, but Maldred had slipped out of his reach. The ogre-mage stood at a narrow wardrobe, the door of which lay broken on the floor. Inside were musty clothes, but what was on top of the wardrobe intrigued him.

  “Can you use a crystal?” Maldred asked. The draconian hurried over, too engrossed to pay attention to where he was walking. He nearly fell through the floor when a tile gave way Maldred growled and pulled him onto firmer ground.

  “Maybe I can figure out how to use it,” Maldred said, stretching up to reach the crystal on top of the wardrobe. “I haven’t seen one of these in quite a while. An old friend of mine, a healer in Blöten named Grim Kedar, used to have one.” He pulled it down reverently and set it carefully on the table.

  Dhamon had heard of crystal balls, in fact had seen Palin hunched over one once. This one was much smaller than Palin’s, about the size of an orange, and it sat on a base that looked like a miniature jeweled crown. It was the jewels that caught his eye. Even through the cobwebs and dust they shimmered—rubies and jacinths, all set in gold. There was a word in silver filigree, where the base touched the ball—Sabar.

  “Again—Sabar,” Maldred said, reading it.

  “Yes, O Sagacious One,” whispered a deep, lyrical voice.

  The voice caught them all off guard, and Maldred nearly knocked the ball off its pedestal in his astonishment. “Sabar?” he repeated.

  “Yes, O Sagacious One.”

  He drew his face down to the crystal, seeing wisps of pale lavender weaving themselves into artful designs.

  “What kind of a crystal ball is it?” Ragh pressed closer.

  Maldred gave a shrug of his broad shoulders.

  Dhamon leaned closer too, curious but also impatient to be on their way. He didn’t know that the best crystal ball in the world would be of much use to him if he was going to fight the shadow dragon. He thought it would be more worthwhile to continue following Nura’s tracks.

  Maldred raised his face, then quickly dropped his gaze to the crystal again. “Crystal balls were fashioned by sorcerers long ago to do all sorts of things. Some supposedly looked to the future, but Grim said that was only a fallacy. Some could be used to look to faraway places. Others might…” He looked up, this time deliberately catching Dhamon’s stare. “Find lost things.”

  Dhamon thrust a finger at the crystal. “Use it,” he demanded. “Make it find Fiona! Make it find my child. Make it find the shadow dragon!”

  “If I can.”

  “You’d better succeed, ogre.” The threat was heavy in Dhamon’s voice.

  Maldred sighed deeply and steepled his fingers in front of the ball. He closed his eyes and stretched out with his mind, touching the crystal without physically touc
hing it, feeling its cool smoothness, hearing it sing softly with each brush against his skin. Then he felt the lavender wisps, breathing them and smelling their wildflower smell. Intoxicating. A woman appeared in the mists, dressed in robes of dark purple and wearing a tiara similar to that which served as the base of the crystal ball. She looked vaguely like the carvings, beautiful and exotic.

  “Sabar,” Maldred whispered.

  “O Sagacious One, you call and I come to you.” The woman bowed her head. “What may my humble self show you?”

  Dhamon and Ragh watched in wonder. Maldred’s knees trembled as the crystal drew energy from him to work its magic. The woman’s complexion brightened as the ogre-mage grew weaker. Her eyes sparkled like perfectly cut emeralds.

  “Sabar, show me….” He first wanted to see Blode, to check on his father’s kingdom and the spreading swamp that threatened to consume his native land, but he knew that would have to wait. There would be time for that later, hopefully, when Dhamon was preoccupied. “The shadow dragon,” Maldred said. “The beast which laired in the cave below…”

  “…who was unaware of me in this chamber,” the woman finished.

  “Oh, yes,” said Maldred, surprised at this information. “That dragon.”

  The woman twirled like a dancer, the dark purple of her robes flying out and resembling a spinning flower, stirring the lavender mist and filling the crystal with a swirling purple smoke. There was a flash of green, the winking of her eyes, then the smoke disappeared and a cavern materialized to fill the small globe.

  Dhamon and Ragh spoke excitedly, but Maldred pushed their words to the background of his consciousness so he could concentrating on the magic in the globe. The crystal continued to sing to him, and he beseeched it to show him more.

  The image in the ball changed, the view shifting inside the cavern, showing parts that were dark but vastly different than the opening of the cave. The stone here was orange and brown and dry. There was no hint of the moss and no standing water. Soon they could see a very large, shadowy dragon stretched out at the back of a high-domed chamber. The dragon’s eyes flickered open, and Maldred urged the woman in the crystal ball to pull back. He couldn’t risk the chance that the dragon might discover he was being spied on. Magical creatures might somehow be able to use the magic to see who was scrying them.

  The image shifted again, showing the exterior of the cave, then showing the mountain in which the cave was nestled.

  “Where is this lair?” Maldred asked.

  The entire mountain range came into view, then a singular peak, a river tributary in the distance, and a row of spindly trees—distinctive features in the landscape.

  “Throt,” he said in a strangled voice. “The dragon must be in Throt.”

  “You can find this place?” Dhamon leaned closer to Maldred. He held onto the tabletop, gazing into the crystal, feeling his knees weaken. Throt was far from here, and he was certain his body would be completely covered with scales long before they reached this other lair. He was certain he would be dead, his soul gone.

  “Yes.” Maldred sagged on the table. The crystal was sapping his strength.

  “And my child. Ask it about my child.”

  Maldred remembered the scrying pool of the Black Robes that had stolen Fetch’s life, and he briefly wondered if this crystal ball would kill him.

  “Dhamon’s child,” Maldred requested.

  The woman in the crystal complied, eyes brightening and sapping more of Maldred’s strength. She revealed the same village the shadow dragon had showed them on his wall of fog, but it was daylight this time, and there were humans milling about and tending to various ordinary chores. There were a few elves in the mix, and Dhamon spotted Varek, Riki’s husband, talking to a young elven man.

  “Riki and my child,” Dhamon insisted.

  Maldred gritted his teeth and asked the crystal again. His mind instantly propelled him through the lavender mist and inside a small building where the silvery-haired half-elf sat in a straight-backed chair, nursing an infant.

  Dhamon gripped the table edge harder and stared, wanting to memorize every detail of the baby’s face. The innocent he might never see. Unlike him, the child would have a family, a mother and father—even though Varek wasn’t the true father.

  “Are they safe? Where are the hobgoblins?”

  Again Maldred passed this message and his strength to the crystal, and the vision moved to the outskirts of the village where the hobgoblins camped. There weren’t quite as many of them, but this time Dhamon spotted three Dark Knights.

  “The dragon might have been bluffing me,” Dhamon said. He wasn’t certain the dragon was allied with the Dark Knights. If that were true, the dragon could have deployed a legion of Knights against Sable, or at least he would have offered to lend a force to accompany Dhamon. “The hobgoblins are with the Dark Knights, not with the shadow dragon.”

  “So the shadow dragon was lying?” Ragh mused. “He couldn’t really threaten your child?”

  “Perhaps,” Maldred said weakly. “Maybe they’re not the dragon’s forces, but maybe they have some agreement with the dragon for this dark purpose.”

  “But they’re still alive,” Dhamon said. “Riki and my child. Ask—where is this village?”

  Maldred entreated the woman in the crystal ball. The village shrank, and now it was as though the watchers were flying above the village.

  “This place is also in Throt,” Maldred said after a few moments. The vision rose higher above the ground. “In Haltigoth, I think. Many, many miles from the shadow dragon’s new lair.” He made a move to push away from the table, but Dhamon held him in place, pressing a hand against the center of his back.

  “One more thing,” Dhamon said. “Ask the crystal ball about Fiona, too.”

  Maldred gasped, but relented, in part out of his own fondness for the Solamnic Knight. It was true he played a game with her, but he didn’t care to see her die out of her madness. He fed the question to the woman in purple, who twirled again as the image changed. This time the lavender wisps paled, then turned white, swirling like clouds. The woman’s eyes dimmed and flickered, and the globe showed nothing. “Dead,” the ogre-mage said sadly. “Fiona must be dead.”

  Dhamon slammed his fist on the table, jarring the crystal ball. The spell was broken, Maldred kept the magical artifact from rolling off its crown pedestal.

  “It’s not your fault,” Ragh told Dhamon.

  “Sabar,” Maldred whispered.

  “O Sagacious One, we will meet again.” The woman loomed large for just a moment, extended her hands beneficently, and Maldred felt instantly refreshed, all the energy taken from him restored in a rush. The crystal went clear.

  “Dead,” Dhamon muttered. Fiona, Rig, Fetch, Jasper, Shaon, Raph, and all those others with whom he had served in the Knights of Takhisis. Comrades all dead. Had he acted otherwise at important moments, he probably could have saved each one. To know me is to risk death, Dhamon thought.

  But his child would not die, Dhamon wouldn’t make any more mistakes.

  “We’re going to Throt,” he announced. “Now. While I can still think. While I’m still in control.”

  He went through the wardrobe, searching the garments until he found a robe that would fit him, and a pair of leggings. He sliced off the robe so it would hang to just above his knees. The fates knew how sorcerers managed to move about in all this voluminous cloth. He dressed hurriedly and fashioned a bag out of a cloak he cut in two. This he tossed to Maldred.

  “For that crystal ball,” he said. “We’re not leaving it here. We might need it again.”

  Maldred carefully placed the ball in the makeshift bag and tied it to his belt. He would have an opportunity after all to scry upon Blode. “All right, Dhamon, we’ll go to Throt. We’ll do all we can… Dhamon!”

  Dhamon was doubled over, clutching his stomach, retching. A moment more and he was on his knees, convulsed.

  Ragh leveled the great sword at Mal
dred.

  “Don’t move. Don’t move until Dhamon’s up and moving again,” the draconian said.

  It was a brief episode this time but an agonizing one—long minutes during which Ragh and Maldred watched Dhamon writhe on the ground in pain. The ogre stood without moving all that time, the great sword pointed at his heart. Finally, a shaky Dhamon got to his feet. Without another word between the three of them, the trio carefully left the old sorcery chamber, threaded their way down the staircase and through the rank cavern, then stepped back out into the swamp.

  Chapter Twelve

  Traitors and other Friends

  Fiona sat on the bank of the stream, dangling her sword in the water. The sunlight caught the blade and created sparkling motes that rippled along the water’s surface, mesmerizing her. The sword was superbly crafted, probably worth more coins than she’d ever possessed. Yet she was angry at the sword, for the magical weapon hadn’t deigned to speak to her for several hours.

  “Damn Dhamon Grimwulf,” she said, looking up and noticing him talking with Ragh and Maldred. “Damn him for everything.” She blew the gnats away, then turned the blade so she could observe her acid-scarred reflection in it. “I look like a monster, every bit as awful as the three of them.” She stared at her face, not noticing that the runes along the blade had begun to glow faintly blue. “Worse than a monster.”

  What you seek, the sword told her, breaking its long silence. The female Knight stood up, feeling the sword tug her away from the stream. What you seek.

  She glanced once more at her companions—the traitorous ogre-mage, the wingless draconian, and Dhamon, who did not look so far removed from a black spawn himself now. “Monsters, the lot of them.” Where was Rig? she wondered.

  What you seek.

  “Just what do I seek?” Fiona asked the sword.

  The female Knight quietly left the clearing, the sword guiding her through a row of young cypress trees, then around a haze-covered bog. It led her almost a mile away. She paused to untangle herself from a vine and glanced over her shoulder. Her companions had evidently not yet noticed her absence.