by A. Giannetti
“Tonare says there is more than one small dragon,” said Elerian quietly as he took a handful of biscuits out of his pack and set them on the table.
“There are two for certain that I have seen and smelled,” volunteered Tonare. “There may be others that I do not know about.”
“We will tread warily,” said Ascilius as he poured wine for himself and Elerian. “More than that we cannot do.”
After giving Tonare his share of the biscuits, Elerian joined Ascilius in a quick breakfast of biscuits softened in wine. When their brief meal was finished, Elerian and Ascilius both lit small mage lights. With Tonare following behind them, they left the apartment for the last time, cautiously making their way back to the central ramp down one of the smaller tunnels, depending on Tonare to warn them if there was any danger about. When they finally approached the great chamber that surrounded the ramp, Tonare, who was in the lead, suddenly stopped short, head raised and black, wet nostrils snuffing the air.
“The red dragon is waiting in the ramp hall,” he said quietly in his rough voice.
THE FOURTH LEVEL
“What do we do now?” Elerian asked Ascilius.
“We need a distraction of some sort,” replied the Dwarf. “If we can somehow draw the dragon away from the hall, we can ascend the ramp in its absence.”
“What if there is another one waiting for us at the exit on the next level?” objected Elerian. “We will be trapped in the ramp between two of the creatures.
“I can lead them both away,” said a familiar voice, causing both Ascilius and Elerian to start violently and Tonare to grow softly.
Looking over his left shoulder, Elerian saw Anthea’s slim form standing behind him, her right hand on his left shoulder and her left hand on Ascilius’s right shoulder. Illuminated by the faint rays of his mage light, her eyes gleamed with mischief and excitement. Momentarily forgetting the dragon and everything else around him, Elerian spun on his left heel and attempted to embrace her, but his hands and arms passed through her form as if it were insubstantial as smoke.
Anthea laughed, her clear voice sounding amused. “I see that the sight of me has driven away your wits as usual,” she said to Elerian, pleased nonetheless at his reaction. “I am here as a shade only, my love. What you see is an illusion and what you hear are my thoughts in your mind.”
Disappointed, Elerian stepped back and opened his third eye. Before him stood Anthea’s golden shade, its outlines dim beneath the veil of the illusion that she had cast over it.
“How have you done this?” he asked, amazed, for this was a kind of magic that was totally unfamiliar to him.
“Even though I am a shade, I still retain my powers,” explained Anthea, inordinately pleased at the mystified look on Elerian’s face. “What could be easier than casting an illusion over myself so that I become visible to mortal sight?”
“As to that, I cannot say, for I have never willingly left my body,” replied Elerian, “but even with your form visible to the naked eye, Anthea, I do not see how you can help us, for you must remain tethered to the thread that joins our rings.”
Eyes filled with laughter, Anthea suddenly ran lightly from Elerian’s side. Opening his third eye, he saw that the golden thread that connected her to her body had separated from the thread leading from his ring. It now followed behind her, disappearing through a different portal.
“How did you learn to do this, Anthea?” Elerian asked, casting his amazed thought at her shade.
Running silently back to his side, Anthea touched Elerian’s right arm with her slender left hand.
“I have learned to create a portal similar to the one through which our rings communicate,” came her thought to Elerian through the contact between their two shades. “The new portal allows the thread that connects my shade to my body to follow me, allowing me to go wherever I wish. I see, however, that you have not been idle either in my absence, Elerian, having learned to cast your thoughts away from your shade.”
“It is not difficult,” replied Elerian, pleased that he could show Anthea, who with barely any training had far outstripped him in a novel form of magic, something new. Quickly, he demonstrated to her how she might cast her thoughts over a distance.
“Now that I can send my thoughts, I can draw the dragon away from the ramp even more effectively,” said Anthea, stepping away from Elerian and casting her first thought. “It will have a much harder time discerning that I am only a wraith if it can see me and hear me talk.”
“How will you find your way back to me if you succeed?” asked Elerian, who greatly wished to talk to his betrothed at length in some quiet place free from danger. “The city is large and confusing, and your mage sight limits what you can see.”
“I will return to my body and then follow the ring thread again, of course,” replied Anthea. “You can never escape me again, now,” she said, her eyes shining with laughter. “Be careful that I do not catch you in some sort of mischief, for you will never know when I may appear next.”
Before Elerian could think of a suitable reply, Anthea turned to a thoroughly confused Ascilius. Ruffling his beard and hair with one of her unearthly breezes, she cast a thought into his mind as Elerian had shown her. Ascilius heard the words, “Hold yourself ready to run,” but whether he heard them with his ears or his mind, he could not have said.
Turning to Elerian, Anthea then said, “Wait for me halfway up the ramp.” Lighting a small mage light which took up a position above her gleaming hair, she ran through the entranceway into the great hall.
“What just happened?” Ascilius asked Elerian softly, his craggy features reflecting his bewilderment, for he had heard nothing of the conversation that had passed between Anthea and Elerian. “Is Anthea really here in Ennodius?”
Before Elerian could give him a word of explanation, a tremendous roar reverberated through the chamber before them. The inky darkness in its depths was suddenly lit by a red orange glow.
“I will explain later,” whispered Elerian, shaking off the fog Anthea’s presence always seemed to cast over his wits. A second roar, more distant than the first came to his ears.
“Anthea has lured the dragon out of the hall through another exit,” said Elerian to Ascilius. “Let us take advantage of its absence.”
Together with Ascilius and Tonare, he sprinted into the hall, straight for the entrance to the ramp. Darting through it, the three companions turned to their right, ascending the wide spiral slope before them as it twisted gradually to their left at a steady, gradual incline. Well before they reached the next exit, Elerian called to Ascilius and Tonare to stop.
“We must wait here for Anthea,” he said to Ascilius. For a second time, Elerian and Ascilius started in unison when Anthea suddenly appeared behind them.
“There must be some truth to the legend that dragons have a fondness for maidens,” said Anthea cheerfully, her eyes gleaming with laughter to see her two brave adventurers start like young boys caught in some sort of mischief at her sudden reappearance. “When the greedy beast laid eyes on me, it forgot all else, pursuing me deep into the city. I think it will be some time before it returns here. If I find a second guardian by the next exit, I will lead it away in the same manner, joining you later in the city,” she said to Elerian and Ascilius before running lightly off toward the next level, her illusory form illuminated by the small mage light hovering over her head.
“She makes my head spin at times,” said Ascilius, his voice full of admiration as he watched Anthea’s retreating form.
Elerian did not reply, for Anthea seemed to mesmerize him as readily as Eboria had done. Shortly after she disappeared, they heard another frustrated roar from above, and Elerian smiled grimly to himself.
“So, there is at least one more young dragon as Tonare claimed,” he thought to himself. “Anthea will lead it on a merry chase before she returns to us.”
“Time to go,” said Elerian quietly to Ascilius and Tonare.
“What ab
out Anthea?” asked Ascilius. “It does not seem proper that we should leave her to face the dragon alone.”
“She is in no danger, Ascilius,” replied Elerian. “She is here only as a wraith. There is nothing the dragon can do to hurt her.”
“At least I hope it cannot hurt her,” thought Elerian to himself, as he resumed walking, his mage light and that of Ascilius dispelling the thick darkness around them.
When the three companions arrived at the end of the ramp, they found that the gates at the exit were a twisted ruin, one of the doors torn completely off its hinges. Ascilius entered the hall first, leading the way across the debris strewn chamber outside the ramp. When they entered a small service tunnel, they heard a muted roar in the depths of the city from the dragon which was still pursuing Anthea.
“We will not waste much time here,” said Ascilius grimly to Elerian and Tonare. “I have only one dwelling that I wish to visit before we leave.” With grim purpose, he began to run down the tunnel, heading south.
“I hope Anthea will be able to return to me once more,” thought Elerian to himself as he followed Ascilius. “There is much for us to talk about.” He waited expectantly as he ran lightly behind Ascilius, but she did not appear.
“Was I wrong to think that dragon fire cannot harm a shade?” he wondered to himself worriedly.
Consumed by his own fears, Ascilius never slowed his pace, depending on Tonare to warn him if there was anything dangerous nearby. Without incident, he led his two companions to the wide boulevard that formed that formed a circle at outermost edge of the fourth level. Recklessly, Ascilius ran out into the crossroads before him, turning left and running down the middle of the wide street which circled gradually to his left.
“He has taken leave of his senses,” Elerian thought anxiously to himself as he and Tonare followed on the Dwarf’s heels. “We ought to exercise more caution, for I have not heard the dragon in some time. I hope that it has not somehow harmed Anthea. She should have returned to us by now.”
As Elerian worriedly ran after Ascilius, he saw that there were doors and windows on the left side of the street but only a blank wall on the right. Then, the unrelieved stone forming the outer wall of the passageway was suddenly interrupted by a large, ornate double door. Despite being made of steel, the doors were buckled in the center, leaving a wide gap between them. Ascilius darted recklessly through the opening without slowing his pace in the least. Keeping a close eye on Tonare in case he scented any danger, Elerian followed the Dwarf.
Beyond the entryway, a hall at least twelve feet wide and ten high led to a large, round chamber with a high ceiling. As he ran through it, Elerian had a brief glimpse of pillars in the shape of different trees rising up from the polished floor around the perimeter of the room. Their stone branches, complete with stone leaves, covered the ceiling, but here, too, there were gaps in the foliage, showing that the dragons had plundered the jeweled eyes of the stone birds that must have perched on the branches. Between the pillars were doors, all of them broken and hanging open.
Without slackening his pace, Ascilius ran through an open doorway on the far side of the chamber, leading his two companions down a long hall that gave out into a second round chamber resembling the first one they had run through but on a smaller scale.
The room was evidently close to the south side of the mountain, for there were four large, deep windows covered with clear glass in the far wall that looked out over the valley to the south of the city. A faint golden light, painful to the eyes of the three companions after their long stay in the dark, came through the windows, cast by the sun just now rising in the east. The bright rays lit up the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room, all of which were polished to a mirror like finish with flecks of colored minerals showing below their surface. Elerian and Ascilius both extinguished their mage lights now that they were no longer needed.
Elerian saw that the chamber, like all the other rooms he and Ascilius had searched, had been plundered in the search for valuables, for a tangle of smashed furnishings and torn tapestries littered the floor. Ascilius’s face grew grim, as he surveyed the damage, but he said nothing to Elerian. Instead, he walked over to the large fireplace set into the right hand wall of the chamber, staring long at the two overturned chairs that lay in front of it, their fabric shredded by sharp claws. Elerian saw his shoulders sag.
These must be the king’s chambers,” thought Elerian to himself. “I do not think that Ascilius will find either one of his parents alive, judging by the state of this room.”
“Is there anyone left alive here, Tonare?” asked Ascilius suddenly in a voice devoid of emotion.
The dentire snuffled loudly. “Nothing living has passed through here in some time,” he said quietly.
Ascilius turned away from the fireplace, walking over to a small, richly carved oak door that stood open in the wall to the left of the hearth. Without turning around, he slowly climbed the narrow stone stairway that lay beyond the door. Elerian and Tonare followed the Dwarf up the long, winding stairs until they came to a landing with a small iron door at the end of it. The bolts were drawn back and the door hung slightly open.
“Wait here,” said Ascilius to Tonare. “Warn us if anything comes.” The dentire immediately sat down on the landing by the open door.
Ascilius, followed by Elerian, stepped through the doorway onto a small terrace of polished stone. A waist high wall circled the edge of the terrace. Beyond that was a sheer drop of thousands of feet. At the back of the terrace, rising hundreds of feet into the air, was the highest peak of Geminus. A small stone stairway to the right of the doorway led even higher up the mountain. Openly, as if he no longer feared Eboria, Ascilius climbed the stairway, which curved to the right around the side of the peak. Elerian silently followed Ascilius. After a steep climb, they reached a round, flat platform of stone about thirty feet across that had been cut into the living rock at the highest point of the mountain peak. In its center was a small stone pavilion with open sides and a domed roof supported by six plain pillars. A long, twisted silver horn set on a stand and with its end buried in the polished stone floor of the pavilion was positioned in its center. On the far side of the pavilion, a second set of stairs led back down the side of the mountain.
Elerian followed Ascilius across the stone terrace, standing beside the Dwarf in front of the second set of stairs. Below them, some titanic force had broken the side of the mountain into rubble, destroying all but the first score or so of steps.
“Perhaps they found some other way to escape,” ventured Elerian, for he knew Ascilius was thinking about the fate of his parents.
“They are both dead,” said Ascilius dully. “I knew it in my heart as soon as I passed through the doors to the king’s chambers. They must have fled up here to escape the small dragons, not knowing that Eboria had already destroyed the back stairs. She was probably waiting for them when they came out.”
“We should return inside before we meet the same fate,” Elerian advised Ascilius, for he felt that they were tempting fate by exposing themselves so openly on the mountaintop. Ascilius, however, seemed in no hurry to return to the king’s chambers. Instead, he walked toward the domed pavilion in the center of the platform.
“This vigilarum was set here at the topmost point of Geminus as a lookout point for any danger approaching the city,” said Ascilius dully to Elerian as they walked across the polished floor of the pavilion to stand by the horn. “This horn has spells placed upon it so that its voice will be heard throughout the whole city if it is sounded. Day and night, only the most trusted sentries manned this post, for it was hard duty. I stood watch here myself, both when the bitter winds of winter played about the peak and in the heat of the summer. My father, despite his age, often ascended the king’s stair we just climbed to observe the vigilance of the sentry. He seemed to come often when I stood here,” mused Ascilius to himself, a slight tinge of bitterness in his voice, “but evidently he was not so vigilant with t
he others who kept watch here. I wonder who was on guard the day the dragon came?” he said quietly, almost as if he was speaking to himself alone.
At a loss for words to comfort his friend, Elerian stood silent with the winds of the heights tugging at his bound hair, observing the vast panorama that was spread out before him. To the south was the burned out valley of Ennodius. To the west rose an endless sea of rugged peaks and dense forests. To the east was a narrow band of high mountain peaks, which screened the rolling plains of the Tarsi from their view. Northwest of Geminus, Elerian saw another valley, also blackened and ruined by fire. Nowhere was there any sign of life.
Shading his farsighted eyes, Elerian looked to the northwest where Galenus must lie. At the base of a tall mountain that rose up at the head of the ruined valley to the northwest, he saw the glint of steel and the minute forms of soldiers, part of a dark army that lay like a shadow around the foot of the mountain.
“Does Galenus lie at the end of that valley to the northwest?” Elerian asked Ascilius quietly.
“It does,” replied Ascilius. “What do you see?” he asked apprehensively, for he was well aware of Elerian’s keen sight.
“There are is an army drawn up around the base of one of the mountains at the head of the valley,” replied Elerian. “I believe Galenus is under attack.”
Ascilius stared grimly to the north, but his eyes could not see that far. “I'll wager those are the Goblin forces that we saw issuing from Calenus when we escaped from beneath the city. Even then, they were already traveling up the north road to lay siege to the Dwarf kingdoms. If there are survivors in the castella, they are now trapped there, caught between Eboria and the Goblins to the north, for with Galenus under siege, I cannot lead them to safety. Every part of my plan has now fallen into ruin,” he groaned. “At the least, I would have liked to send you back to Tarsius with a fortune in gold and jewels, but even that is denied me. Because of the suddenness Eboria’s attack on Ennodius, all of the treasure in the city was evidently unsecured and appears to have been carried off by Eboria’s brood. I am sure there is not a single gold coin to be had in Ennodius or the castella.”