The Ruin

by Richard Lee Byers

  Perhaps his display of activity helped his companions shake off a bit of their own lethargy. Jivex, who’d been lying coiled and motionless, wings spread to cover him like a blanket, lifted his head and said, “Explain again about the paving stones.”

  “All right.” Pavel resealed the waterskin and stuck it beneath his bearskin mantle and the garment beneath, where his body heat would thaw the contents. “My guess is, the elves built their true stronghold, the actual source of the Rage, somewhere even more remote than the Novularonds. Someplace they thought the dragon kings couldn’t possibly find it, or march an army against it even if they did. But because that site was so far away from their own lands, they had to figure out a practical way to go back and forth themselves. To supply it with laborers, guards, building materials, provisions, and what have you. The outpost we discovered was their solution. The plaza was a kind of magical door. Open it, and people and goods could travel between the two citadels.”

  “What did open it?” asked Will, face shadowed by his hood with its white fur trim.

  “I imagine,” said Pavel, “Brimstone figured it out, and invoked the magic to whisk himself, Raryn, and Taegan away. Perhaps he thought it was their only hope of escaping the giants and Icy Claws of Iyraclea. Or else he realized Zethrindor was about to unleash a power that would obliterate everything in its path.”

  Jivex nodded. “So our friends did get away.”

  Pavel hesitated. “It’s possible. I pray they did. But they were still visible, still in a state of transition, when Zethrindor’s power sliced into the stones and disrupted the old enchantments. That means the sending could easily have gone wrong, and if it did….” He spread his hands.

  “Even if they did make it out the other side,” said Will, “the gate’s gone now. They can’t come back through, and we can’t follow. Curse it! Do you think Brimstone’s enough of a sorcerer to quell the Rage by himself?”

  Pavel shrugged. “Maybe, but we must also ask, are he, Raryn, and Taegan, by themselves, able to withstand whatever guardians and traps Sammaster left to protect the place? We wondered why we didn’t encounter such things on the mountaintop. I’m reasonably certain they were waiting on the other side of the portal.”

  Jivex snorted. “Well, you warmbloods can whine and hang your heads, but I say, it’s going to be all right. Taegan’s not very clever—that’s part of the reason he needs me, to do the thinking—but he’s good at chopping things with a sword.”

  Pavel dredged up a smile. “Well said. We won’t despair.”

  “What we had better do,” said Will, “is give some hard thought to our own situation, and I have. Jivex, at first light, you need to strike out on your own.”

  The drake shook his head. “That’s stupid.”

  “No,” Pavel said. “It’s likely the first sensible thing the simpleton’s ever said. Flying, you can travel faster than we can. You can carry word to Thentia faster.”

  “Forget it,” Jivex said. “We’ve lost some of our friends, and that’s bad. If we split up again, things will be worse. Don’t you understand, you people need me.”

  “We don’t matter.” Will grinned. “I can’t believe I just said that. But maybe we don’t, compared to stopping Sammaster.”

  “We’ll stop him together,” Jivex said.

  “But—”

  “No!” the faerie dragon snapped. “I’ve made up my mind.”

  With that, they all lapsed back into their cold, exhausted silence. Except, Pavel realized, for Dorn, who’d never emerged from it in the first place. Who, filthy with dried blood, simply slumped staring out at the night.

  Once again, Pavel wondered what he could possibly do to comfort Dorn in his grief and despair. He was a priest of the Morninglord, and the big man’s friend as well. He ought to be able to think of something. But he was still stymied some time later, when Jivex abruptly sprang to his feet. The little wyrm’s head swiveled this way and that, and his nostrils flared.

  “What is it?” Pavel whispered.

  “I was right,” Jivex said. “Zethrindor did leave somebody behind to hunt us, and he’s not ranging along the trail, not anymore, anyway. He’s on our side of the mountain. Don’t move, or make any noise.” The reptile faded into invisibility, then, with a telltale flutter of wings, took flight.

  A moment later, the world dissolved into an incoherent jumble of twisting shadows and oozing smears of phosphorescence. Pavel gasped, then realized what had happened. Jivex had covered the ledge in an illusion to shield his companions from hostile eyes. The chaotic smear of light and dark was how the effect looked from the inside.

  It was a good trick, and Pavel wished he could make it better still by shrouding the company in silence. But unfortunately, he only had a couple spells left in his head, and that wasn’t one of them.

  Nothing to do then, but crouch motionless, holding his breath, heart pounding. Until something on the slope above rasped, “Got you! You hid. Conjured … funny noises, led me wrong. But you couldn’t … cover your scents. Now show yourselves!”

  Pavel kept quiet, in the hope that the wyrm couldn’t tell exactly where they were and was trying to get them to give their location away.

  “Suit yourselves,” said the guttural, halting voice. Something pounded, and the stone beneath Pavel shook. Then came a rumbling crescendo of a noise. He realized with a stab of terror what it must portend.

  “Hang on to something!” he shouted, throwing himself flat and groping for handholds.

  The streaming snow and chunks of stone the dragon had smashed loose from the mountainside swept over him a heartbeat later. With Jivex’s magic bewildering his sight, he couldn’t see the onrushing tide, but he could certainly feel it. Pebbles stung him. Ice particles sifted inside his garments to chill his skin. The wave shoved at him, striving to fling him out into space. He lost his grip, slid, his foot slipped over the edge … then the pressure abated.

  “Is everyone all right?” he gasped.

  “What’s your idea of ‘all right?’” Will replied.

  “I’m still here,” said Dorn.

  “Show yourselves,” called the wyrm, “or … I knock down more.”

  Pavel drew breath to explain the illusion wasn’t under their control, but then it winked out of existence. Jivex, wherever he was, had evidently dissolved it.

  With it gone, Pavel could see the enormous shape of the ice drake clinging to the sheer rock ten yards above his head. Head pointed downward, the creature had driven the claws at the ends of its stumpy legs and even the tip of its wide, flat tail into cracks in the stone to anchor itself, and had likewise spread its wings for balance. The black eyes in its bone-white mask glared downward.

  Pavel lifted his spear with its long, broad flint point. It felt awkward and unfamiliar in his grip. The mace and crossbow were his weapons of choice, along with the magic he’d all but exhausted already.

  Will and Dorn were in slightly better shape. The former had a sling, the latter, a bow, and both items had no doubt been crafted as skillfully as the barbarians knew how. But they were poor stuff compared to arms and armor infused with Thentian wizardry.

  The three hunters aimed their weapons to threaten the ice drake, and it sneered back. “You throw sticks and rocks,” the creature said, “and I throw … real avalanche.”

  “You could have done that already,” said Will, “if you simply wanted to kill us. What do you want?”

  “Zethrindor needs … prisoner to question,” said the wyrm.

  Will drew a long breath. “Then here’s the bargain. Take me. I’m the lightest. You’ll have an easy time carrying me. But my friends go free.”

  “No,” Pavel whispered. “You can’t trust it.”

  “As long as it’s up there and we’re all down here,” Will replied from the corner of his mouth, keeping his voice just as low, “we’re pretty much helpless. This is our best chance, so shut up!”

  The ice drake hung, evidently pondering Will’s offer. At last it sa
id, “I agree. First, everyone, throw weapons off … the edge.”

  Will laughed. “Not likely.”

  “Then no deal.”

  “That means you’ll have to fight us. Maybe we’ll all die, and then what will Zethrindor say? Maybe Lady Luck will smile on us and we’ll even manage to hurt you. Look, my friends can’t throw away their weapons. They need them to hunt. But I’ll disarm myself, and they’ll set the bow and spear down. Then I’ll climb up to you. How’s that?”

  The drake grunted. “Do it, then.”

  Pavel laid his lance on the ground, and Dorn put down the bow. Will made a show of divesting himself of the weapons he’d collected, his sling, pouch of stones, two knives, and a hand-axe. Afterwards, he clambered upwards. Few observers would have recognized what an able climber he actually was. He faltered and fumbled, his skills evidently eroded by weariness, weakness, and the cold.

  Pavel wondered what the wyrm would do once Will came within reach. Grip him and render him helpless, perhaps, then trigger an avalanche anyway. Or else summarily kill him and thus reduce the number of foes arrayed against it. It might adopt the latter course if it believed one of the humans was better able to answer Zethrindor’s questions.

  Will struggled nearly all the way up, then stopped. “Please,” he whined, “I can’t do this.”

  “We made … bargain,” the reptile said. It yanked one set of foreclaws out of the rock and reached for the halfling.

  Will cringed. He stretched out his right arm and leg, found something to grab and a place to set his foot, and shifted himself to the side, keeping just out of harm’s way. The action made it clear he wasn’t as spent and feeble as he’d pretended, and Pavel felt a flicker of hope.

  “Stay still!” the ice drake snarled. “Still, or I hurt … you, kill everybody.” It pulled the rest of its talons and the end of its tail from their moorings and crawled across the mountainside.

  Will had a stone in his grasp. He hadn’t divested himself of every last weapon after all, though his cunning hands had made it appear so. He flung the rock and hit the drake in its black, glistening eye. The creature shrieked and recoiled.

  An instant later, dust puffed into being in the space surrounding the ice drake, clinging to its body and with luck, clogging its eyes, ears, and nostrils. The powder looked black in the darkness, but Pavel knew that in better light, it would gleam like gold. Jivex, whose talents included the ability to conjure the stuff, rippled back into view. He hurtled at the larger reptile, clawed its flank as he streaked by, and tilted his wings, wheeling for a second pass.

  Dorn snatched up his bow and drove an arrow into the ice drake’s belly. Pavel brandished his amulet and recited an invocation. The amulet glowed red and warmed his gloved but still half-frozen fingers. A shrill noise screamed through the air and split the ice drake’s hide like a blade.

  The immense creature lost its grip on the slope and tumbled toward the shelf, smashing loose chunks of stone, ice, and snow to plummet with it. Pavel supposed this was what they’d wanted, to knock the dragon from its perch, but he realized that in so doing, they’d more or less unleashed the very rattling, rumbling avalanche with which their foe had threatened them.

  He scrambled to the side, trying to get out from under the wyrm itself, anyway. Falling pebbles pummeled him. One clipped him on the head. It dropped him to his knees, dazing him, but he forced himself up and onward. It occurred to him that he might be safest pressed up against the mountainside so he lunged in that direction, and something else came down on top of him. This time it was a great mass like a giant’s hand, blinding, smothering, squashing him to the ground. An instant later, a tremendous impact jolted the ledge, and he pictured the whole thing breaking off and plunging into the valley far below.

  That didn’t happen, though, nor, evidently, was he dead. He thrashed and floundered clear of the snow that had buried him, to find himself almost within arm’s reach of the ice drake.

  The creature rolled to its feet and spread its wings. Dorn lunged at it, sunk his iron claws into the base of one pinion, and ripped out a handful of pale, bloody muscle.

  The ice drake snarled, whirled, and, evidently discerning Dorn’s location despite the dust encrusting its body, snapped at him with its fangs. He twisted out of the way and drove his knuckle-spikes into its snout. The reptile raked with its talons, and he blocked with his artificial arm. That kept the claws from piercing his flesh, but the force of the blow knocked him stumbling backward, toward the drop-off. The drake lunged after him.

  Pavel poised his spear and charged, yelling to distract the wyrm. It stopped its advance and lashed its tail at him. He ducked beneath the horizontal blow, sprang back up, and thrust the lance into the reptile’s hind leg.

  It lifted the limb high, jerking his weapon from his grasp, and stamped down. He jumped back to avoid being crushed. The ice drake started again to scuttle toward Dorn. Jivex dived from overhead and bathed the white wyrm’s head in a jet of his sweet-smelling, glittering breath. It didn’t seem to have any effect. Will, who at some point had made it back down onto the shelf safely, scurried underneath the ice drake and drove a long knife into its belly.

  The creature roared and stamped, trying to trample its tormentor. Will evaded the attacks and kept stabbing, only rolling clear when the drake smashed its entire underside onto the ground. By that time, Dorn was on its flank, punching, tearing, and hacking with his flint-and-bone sword whenever practical. For want of any better weapon, or any more attack spells, Pavel emulated Will and started throwing rocks.

  A manifestation of Jivex’s magic, bangs like thunderclaps exploded from the empty air around the ice drake’s ears. Pavel felt a stab of fear that the noise would trigger another avalanche. But it was probably stupid to worry about that with a wyrm trying to rip them all to pieces.

  He hurled another stone. Will scuttled under the ice drake, stabbed, and rolled clear. Dorn clawed gashes in its pallid hide. Jivex swooped, lit atop its brow, and ripped at its eyes.

  Zethrindor’s minion tossed its head, flinging Jivex clear, spread its jaws, and struck at him. Jivex beat his wings, narrowly avoiding the attack, and retreated. The ice drake lunged after him, and lurched off balance when the stone appeared to dissolve beneath its feet. Actually, Pavel realized, that bit of rock had never existed in the first place. Jivex had extended the ledge by dint of an illusion, then lured their foe into empty space. With the clinging dust and blasts of noise addling its usually keen senses, the larger reptile had failed to penetrate the deception.

  It twisted as it started to fall and caught hold of the lip of the drop-off with the claws of one forefoot. Dorn sprang in and attacked the extremity with his sword. The wyrm struck at him. He blocked with his iron arm, then returned to tearing and cutting.

  The ice drake lost its grip and tumbled down the mountainside, the constant banging receding with it, sounding in concert with duller thumps as it smacked against the rock. The wyrm got its feet underneath it, vaulted into empty space, and sought to spread its pinions. One unfurled, but the other, damaged by Dorn’s claws, didn’t. The reptile shrieked as it continued to fall.

  Jivex wheeled. “I win!” he cried.

  Will grinned. “That was neatly done,” he panted. “Is anyone hurt? Dorn, you bore the brunt of it.”

  The half-golem grunted and sat back down to stare out into the dark.

  All the world had become a dull, shapeless seething, rather like the murky stirrings a person sometimes saw upon closing his eyes. Somehow Kara could perceive it even though she no longer possessed eyes, nor any semblance of a body, just as she sensed Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn suspended along with her. Just as she felt the void eating away at what was left of her, like fire or acid. The sensation wasn’t painful, exactly, but it was terrifying and disorienting, so much so that it was difficult to think.

  But she had to think, and remember. Had to understand what was happening. At first, nothing would come but images, moments charged with emotion
but bereft of context. Dorn leaping back from a sweep of a giantess’s warhammer. Brimstone whispering words of power. A prone, mangled gelugon slashing her face with its tail.

  She pieced the scraps of recollection together like a mosaicist placing stones to make a picture until finally she understood.

  The Icy Claw had hurt her, and a powerful white had attacked her immediately thereafter, borne her down and wounded her severely. It was going to kill her if she didn’t get away from it.

  She crooned a spell as she struggled, and manifested the charm when she tore free of her adversary’s coils. A phantom Kara crouched before the white, while the real one retreated, shrouded in invisibility.

  A master trickster like Chatulio might have conjured an illusion convincing enough to fool the white for a long while. Kara’s effort would only flummox it for a heartbeat or two at best. Her wounds throbbing, she cast about for a source of help or refuge.

  Nothing. Just the roaring frenzy of dragons, frost giants, gelugons, barbarians, and ice wizards struggling on every side, the titanic clash of Iyraclea and Zethrindor looming above every other battle. Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn were nearby, fighting giants and a devil, but appeared to be in nearly as much trouble as she was. They certainly couldn’t rush to her aid.

  She could only think of one tactic that might serve to save her. She believed she understood the enchantment bound in the plaza, and even how to command it. She’d direct it to whisk her to the other side of the magical gateway, her and the hard-pressed vampire, avariel, and dwarf, too. She wished she could take Dorn, Jivex, Will, and Pavel, also, but she’d lost track of them amid the chaos.

  As the white leaped onto her ghostly double, she sang an invocation under her breath, and the magic bound in the cobbles sprang to life. Obedient to her thought, it gathered her, Raryn, Taegan, and Brimstone into a cool, tingling embrace while leaving their foes untouched.

  Then, however, Zethrindor created a towering wave of shadow. The rushing darkness crumbled stones to dust, damaging the pattern of forces the array had been designed to maintain and manipulate.