The Ruin

by Richard Lee Byers

  More blood sprayed, spattering him from head to knees, the coppery smell mingling with the sour stink of the giantess’s flesh. She flopped down on her face. He spat gore from his mouth, wiped it from his eyes, cast about, and faltered in horror.

  Though the battle raged everywhere, it was at its most furious in the center of the plaza. Her gown burned away, her snowflake-and-diamond-painted skin raw and blistered, Iyraclea floated in the air at one end, while Zethrindor, his dead flesh ripped and hacked, crouched at the other. The two hurled blasts of blue and silver radiance, bolts of shadow, screaming winds, and pounding barrages of hail back and forth. The discharge of so much magic was nauseating to behold. An observer had a visceral sense the spells were beating at the substance of the world itself, and might conceivably break through.

  Between and around the commanders, their minions battled like warring ants grappling under the feet of a pair of duelists. Some of Dorn’s companions had gotten caught amid the fracas. Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn were fighting three giants and an Icy Claw.

  What appalled Dorn, however, was Kara’s situation. She’d managed the shift to dragon form, but even so, a huge white held her pinned and was ripping gashes in her crystal-blue hide.

  Dorn ran toward her, and several of Iyraclea’s human warriors scrambled to intercept him.

  He had no choice but to kill his way through them. The first to fall bore a kind of primitive sword, a length of bone studded with chips of flint. Once he snatched that up to wield in his hand of flesh, he could slaughter them a little faster, but still not fast enough.

  As he clawed and hacked, parried and sidestepped, he caught glimpses of Kara. Flailing with her wings, she broke free of the white’s coils and scrambled away. The chromatic, however, simply pounced after her and bore her down once more.

  Curse Taegan, Brimstone, and even Raryn! Couldn’t they see what was happening? Why didn’t one of them break away from their own little skirmish and help her?

  Dorn drove his knuckle-spikes into the last barbarian’s heart. Ahead of him, the white roared and reared up from Kara’s shredded, motionless body.

  Dorn sprinted toward the two dragons. Kara couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t.

  Iyraclea shouted, “Auril!”

  The cry was deafening, like a shrill thunderclap. She thrust out her arm at Zethrindor and curled her fingers in a clutching motion. White vapor steamed from the dracolich’s decaying flesh, and he bellowed. Dorn realized the Ice Queen was leeching forth the cold that was, as she’d warned him, a vital part of his nature.

  But Zethrindor wasn’t finished yet. He snarled words of power that cracked and crumbled the facades of buildings at the edges of the plaza. Dorn felt a pressure, a seething malignancy accumulating in the air.

  All the countless characters graven on the cobbles shined like cats’ eyes reflecting light. Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn faded, their forms becoming vague and ghostly. Before they quite finished disappearing, though, Zethrindor screamed the final syllables of his incantation.

  A towering mass of shadow appeared in front of the dracolich, then swept forward like a wave racing toward the shore. Giants and wyrms scrambled to get out of the way. Those who failed broke part into small fragments, which then crumbled to powder. The darkness likewise obliterated the paving stones in its path, and as soon as the first of them shattered, the symbols on all the others stopped gleaming.

  The wave raced on amid swirling dust. It surged over Kara’s body, and Raryn, Taegan, and Brimstone’s misty forms, and they too disappeared. At the opposite end of the square, it engulfed its actual target and halted with a suddenness no mundane matter could have matched. It clasped Iyraclea’s slender form like amber encasing an insect.

  Fissures ran through her skin as if she were a clay figure on the verge of breaking. Yet she didn’t perish immediately, as lesser beings had. She chanted the Frostmaiden’s name, and her body glowed like ice refracting sunlight, the blaze piercing the surrounding murk. She grew taller, as though the Cold Goddess was lending her more strength than a human-sized frame could contain.

  Then, however, Zethrindor roared another word, and the Ice Queen thrashed in agony. She was woman-sized again, her inner glow guttering out.

  “Aur—” she croaked, and a jagged crack split her luscious mouth and perfect face in two. Her left foot dropped away from its ankle. Then the shadow devoured her completely.

  Afterward, the magic dwindled and disappeared like water draining into the ground. Evidently exhausted, Zethrindor slumped down. Dorn looked around and saw nothing but drifts of dust and the broad new scar across the plaza. He hefted the gory bone-and-flint sword and marched toward the dracolich.

  Will smiled at the fur-clad spearmen spreading out to flank him. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to fight the dragons?” he asked. “They’re the ones trying to kill your queen.”

  The barbarians kept coming.

  “Have it your way, then.” The halfling faked a lunge at one, then whirled and charged the other.

  Startled, the second human nonetheless managed a spear thrust, but his aim was off, and Will didn’t even have to dodge. He simply rushed on in, drove his pilfered skewer into his opponent’s groin, and dodged around the stricken man as his knees started to give way. He was sure the other tribesman had run after him hoping to take him from behind, and he intended his maneuver to interpose the wounded barbarian between them.

  Sure enough, when Will spun back around, his remaining opponent was right where he’d expected him to be, hovering as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to circle right or left. He was still thinking about it when a flying, glowing, red-gold mace bashed him in the back of the head. The tribesman pitched forward.

  Will turned and felt relief at the sight of Pavel standing unwounded, a pilfered spear clutched in his hands. The halfling tried to think of a fitting insult to greet his friend, then glimpsed what was happening at the center of the plaza. Shocked into silence, he pointed. Pavel pivoted in time to watch the heaving, rushing darkness consuming all in its path. Even Iyraclea failed to resist its power.

  As the ravenous power ebbed away, Will spotted Dorn starting toward Zethrindor. Even in the dark, the big man’s asymmetrical frame was as unmistakable as his intentions.

  “Come on!” Will said. He ran toward Dorn, Pavel sprinted after him, and the flying mace brought up the rear.

  It occurred to Will that this headlong dash was no way to skirt trouble. But maybe it would be all right. Some of the combatants on the battlefield were still busy fighting one another. Others, wounded or weary, needed time to regroup, and perhaps in the present circumstances, many of the towering gelugons, giants, and wyrms simply regarded a scurrying human and halfling as inconsequential.

  One giant, an axe in either fist, his beard braided, did come stamping to intercept them. But Jivex swooped down out of the dark and puffed sparkling vapor in the behemoth’s face. The giant tottered backward giggling like a happy drunk. The seekers raced on by.

  Up ahead, Dorn halted and came on guard, iron arm extended, sword cocked back. Will felt a jolt of fear. The idiot was going to shout out a challenge, like a paladin in one of poor Kara’s stories, and he was still just a little too far away to do anything about it.

  Pavel snapped, “Silence!”

  Though Will wasn’t even the target, the magic imbuing the word made him feel something akin to a slap in the face. Dorn froze.

  That gave Jivex time to catch up to him, and the small dragon wheeled around the half-golem’s head. “Don’t be stupid!” he snarled.

  “No,” Pavel panted as he and Pavel stumbled to a halt, “don’t. With Iyraclea dead, the drakes have won. They’ll need some time to deal with the rest of her troops, and to collect themselves, but then they’ll remember us. This is our last chance to slip away.”

  Painted and stinking with blood, Dorn spat. “I don’t want to get away. I promised to keep Kara safe. I failed. But at least I’m going to avenge her.”

/>   “You can’t beat Zethrindor,” said Pavel, “certainly not with all these other wyrms ready to back him up.”

  “You go if you’re going.”

  “Lathander teaches that suicide’s a sin.”

  “Then bugger Lathander and you, too.”

  “We’re all sad about Kara,” said Will, “but she’d want us to go on, and wreck Sammaster’s plans. The way I see it, he’s the one who really killed her, and pissing in his tea kettle will be our true revenge.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Dorn retorted. “The search failed. We discovered nothing here. We just lost Kara—and Raryn, and the others.”

  “We did find something,” Pavel said. “Unfortunately, Zethrindor destroyed it, but perhaps just hearing about it will help our friends in Thentia solve the puzzle. We need to return and tell them.”

  “You go,” said Dorn. “You’re the scholar, fit to help with mysteries and such. As I just proved, I’m useless.”

  “Damn it!” said Will. “With Raryn gone, you’re the best hunter, forager, and pathfinder. Pavel and I don’t have a rat’s chance in a dog pit of getting off the glacier unless you help us. I know you loved Kara, but was she really the only one you ever cared about? Don’t the rest of us mean anything?”

  Dorn closed his eyes as if at a pang of headache. “We’ll get off the ice if we can.”

  “Then what’s our next move?” Pavel asked.

  “We climb down the other side of the mountain. When the wyrms think to hunt us, they’ll do it along the trail.”

  Pavel frowned. “Are you sure the climb is possible?”

  “How could I be? We’ve never seen the ground. Now get rid of the shining mace. We can’t have it floating along behind us like a firefly attracting attention.”

  Zethrindor had imagined that once he became a dracolich, he’d never experience pain or weakness again. Iyraclea had disabused him of that notion. He felt sore from snout to tail, and it was an effort just to raise his head to regard his followers with the proper imperious demeanor.

  He managed, though, despite the throb of his torn neck, and gave Ssalangan a glower. “Has anyone discovered anything of note?”

  “No,” said the living drake, “not yet, but everyone’s still searching.”

  Zethrindor was aware of that. He could hear the crashes as dragons forced their way through openings and into spaces too small to accommodate them, and their gleeful cries as they made a game of the destruction. Their victory had left them in high spirits. Because, dunces that they were, they evidently didn’t realize that by the foulest of luck, the prize they’d fought to win had slipped through their talons.

  “Tell them to stop,” Zethrindor said. “They won’t find anything. The plaza itself was the secret. I started casting my spell of annihilation an instant before it became apparent, not that I could have avoided destroying it even if I’d known. I had to defeat Iyraclea. But the magic is lost. Curse it, anyway!”

  “At least,” Ssalangan said, “Iyraclea will never take possession of it. Sammaster’s plans will move forward without her interference. We’re all going to be dracoliches and the lords of Faerûn.”

  This cheery assessment so irked Zethrindor that for a moment, his aches and weariness notwithstanding, he considered rearing up and giving the lesser white a taste of his claws. Then, however, it struck him that, in his own witless way, Ssalangan might have stumbled within hailing distance of a valid point.

  “It is true,” the larger wyrm rumbled, “that I’ve freed us from the indignity of serving a human, and Sammaster won’t even be able to reproach me for it.” He leered. “For I killed to preserve his secrets, did I not?”

  “Of course,” Ssalangan said. “So what do we do next?”

  “Complete the conquest of Sossal for our own benefit. I’ll be the first of the new dragon kings, and you lesser wyrms, my barons. But before we fly east, bring me Iyraclea’s prisoners, the ones who didn’t disappear. I want to question them.” He supposed he might as well make one last attempt to probe the hidden aspects of Sammaster’s grand design before putting the matter behind him.

  Ssalangan hesitated. “I don’t think we have them.”

  “Did they die in the fighting?”

  “It’s certainly possible, but I haven’t seen the bodies. To be honest, I don’t think anyone’s given them a lot of thought. They were just a pair of humans, a halfling, and some sort of winged lizard. Surely the song dragon was the important one, and we know what became of her.”

  Zethrindor glared, and Ssalangan cringed.

  “Find the corpses,” the dracolich growled. “If someone’s already eaten the meat, identify the bones, and the cripple’s iron parts. If you can’t locate them, it likely means they’ve fled. Choose members of our company to hunt them down. Make it clear: The hunters can kill three of the four, but I want one alive to interrogate.”

  “By the silent dirk!” said Will, his voice shaking with the cold. The halfling was only a few feet above Pavel, but the darkness reduced him to a shadow. “If I hadn’t already figured out you were a fake, pretty boy, this so-called ward you cast on me proves it. It isn’t doing anything!”

  “The spell I used on you,” Pavel said, stammering in his turn, “protects the recipient from fire and such. I knew you wouldn’t want to become overheated.”

  “Shut up!” snarled Dorn from farther down the slope. It was the first time he’d spoken in a long while. “Keep moving!”

  Pavel obeyed. He groped with his foot for the next toehold, and the one after that, even though everything about the descent was hellish.

  He was weary unto death, and felt as if he could scarcely suck in an adequate breath of the thin mountain air. The moaning wind shoved and tugged at him, trying to dislodge him from the steep, icy rock, and despite the protective enchantment he’d cast on himself, the cold soaked into his bones.

  He didn’t have any more such spells ready for the casting. If the ones currently in place failed before night’s end, he, Will, and Dorn might well freeze to death.

  Though not if Zethrindor’s minions caught them first. Earlier, Pavel had heard a great rattle of leathery wings from the mountaintop. The wyrms roared and screeched to one another as they took flight. He’d cringed in fear that the entire horde was going to descend on the fugitives forthwith, but that hadn’t happened. To the contrary, most of the drakes had evidently departed the vicinity. But he suspected at least one had remained to hunt for his friends and him.

  If so, it had every had advantage at the moment, including the ability to see in the blackness. If not for Jivex flitting about scouting the steep slopes and sheer drops, his wingless companions would have had no hope of finding a way down.

  Dorn’s iron hand grated and clashed as he clawed handholds in the rock. Pavel suspected that he’d hear that rhythmic crunching in his nightmares, assuming he lived long enough to experience any more. He shoved his toe into another of the gouges the half-golem had torn in the mountainside.

  Or at least he thought that was what it was, and perhaps that was why, in his misery and exhaustion, he forgot to test it before entrusting it with his weight. Rock crumbled beneath his foot, and he plummeted down the precipitous incline. He snatched, but found nothing to grab.

  As they crept from the ancient stronghold, he and his friends had plundered the bodies of dead tribesmen, collecting all the gear they could. One of the barbarians had carried the sturdy braided leather line they’d used to rope themselves together. In theory, it might have enabled Will to arrest Pavel’s fall. But when the line jerked taut, it tore him loose, and they both were sliding and spinning down the slope.

  As he hurtled past Dorn, Pavel tried again to grab something solid. His fingers only closed on a lump of snow. A bulge in the stone bounced him into empty air, and he fell.

  Something jabbed into his shoulder. For an instant, he didn’t understand what, then glimpsed a blur of pale wings from the corner of his eye. Jivex had caught hold of him
and fangs bared in a snarl of strain, was trying to hold him up. It was to no avail. The reptile was deceptively strong, but not strong enough to cope with so much weight.

  Stone cracked, the rope jolted Pavel to a stop, and Dorn cried out. Will tumbled past the priest, and the line gave another painful jerk as he, too, abruptly stopped falling to dangle below his friend.

  Pavel looked upward, at the spot where Dorn clung with his talons driven deep into the rock. The inhuman strength of his iron arm had served to anchor them all. Though, to judge by his contorted features, not without strain to the flesh-and-bone half of his body.

  “Get off me!” Pavel gasped. “Your weight makes it that much harder for him.”

  Jivex spat. “Try to help and what thanks do you get?” He sprang clear.

  Will swung himself against the slope and grabbed hold of it. Pavel stretched out his arms and accomplished the same thing, relieving Dorn of the last of his burden. Then the three of them simply clung to their perches for a time. Pavel shivered, and his heart hammered.

  When he felt able to speak, he wheezed, “We have to rest for at least a little while. Otherwise, we’ll make mistakes.”

  Will snorted. “Well, plainly, the imbecile among us will.”

  Jivex flew up from the well of darkness beneath them. “There’s a ledge not too much farther down.”

  They climbed on down to the shelf, then collapsed there, shapeless, silent, shivering lumps in their layers of loose, thick clothing. Pavel looked to the east, through the vaguely discernible gap between two mountains, hoping to see a first hint of dawn lightening the sky. It wasn’t there.

  But the sun will rise, he insisted to himself. Lathander sheds his grace on the world every morning, without fail, and when he does, everything will be better. The air will grow warmer, we’ll be able to see our way, and I can prepare new spells. We’re going to survive.

  Such being the case, they’d need to drink. He fumbled scoops of snow into a waterskin.