The Ruin

by Richard Lee Byers

  Brimstone spat sulfurous smoke. “How?”

  “I can’t imagine. But I lack the talents of a Firefingers, or a Nexus.”

  “Taegan’s right,” said Raryn, sitting with his back against the wall and his short, burly legs outstretched, his white mane, beard, and polar bear-fur armor ghostly in the gloom. “We may fail, we may very likely die, and if so, there’ll be no shame in losing against long odds. But you don’t stop trying.”

  Kara forced a smile. “No, you don’t. Please, forgive my whining.”

  “I didn’t mean I would give up,” Brimstone growled. “But neither am I inclined to deny the truth of our predicament. So I leave the posturing and prattling to the three of you.” He wheeled and stalked into the darkness deeper in the cave.

  Afterward, Taegan reflected that the smoke drake’s parting remark had contained a measure of truth. He had been striving to feign an optimism he was far from feeling.

  Because the dragons’ demoralization, transitory though it probably was, had shaken him. Kara and Brimstone were creatures of exceptional courage, and far more powerful and knowledgeable about occult matter than he. If they could see no hope—

  No. Enough of that. Seeking to break his somber train of thought, he grinned at Raryn. “Is there any of your delicious spadderdock remaining? I believe my exertions may actually have actually left me famished enough to choke down a bite or two.”

  After months of strife, the Sossrim and glacier folk were willing to make peace, but felt no inclination to fraternize. The former camped on the ridge they’d defended at such a heavy cost, the latter, on low ground some distance back from the foot of the slope.

  Mostly burned down to coals and ash, Zethrindor’s remains smoldered where he’d fallen, about equally distant from each encampment. His destroyers had burned him to purge his flesh and skeleton of any lingering malignancy that might otherwise poison the earth. Or perhaps to make absolutely sure he wouldn’t rise in the night.

  Pavel found Dorn standing alone, staring at the pyre. Here and there, a few blue and yellow flames still danced, and some of the dragon’s blackened bones maintained their shape. The air smelled of smoke, but not decay, not anymore.

  “Supper’s ready,” Pavel said. “Stival even found some wine, the gods alone know how. He and Natali would like it if you’d drink to their betrothal.”

  Dorn didn’t answer.

  Pavel tried a new tack: “We should get an early start tomorrow. It will be difficult, but I think we can still make Thentia in time for the conclave. The Sossrim will do everything they can to help us on our way, and so will my folk, once we cross into Damara.”

  Still no reply.

  “Talk, damn it!” Pavel exploded. “You owe me that much. There lies Kara’s killer, burned to nothing, or near enough. You have your revenge. Doesn’t it make a difference?”

  “But did we truly destroy him?” Dorn asked. “Or is his spirit just lurking in a phylactery, awaiting rebirth?”

  Pavel hesitated. “Well … presumably the latter. But consider this: If he was one of Sammaster’s newly minted dracoliches, he’s been busy furthering the wizard’s schemes and attacking Sossal ever since his transformation, He probably never got around to caching spare bodies near his amulet, and that likely means he’ll never have the opportunity to occupy another. Imagine what it would be like to be trapped—blind, deaf, bodiless, and alone—inside a piece of jewelry for all eternity. I suspect it would be as every bit as unpleasant as dying a natural death and landing in one of the Hells.”

  For a moment, the hint of a smile tugged at Dorn’s mouth, but then it twisted into a scowl. “That’s good to hear. Still, the answer to your question is no. It doesn’t truly make a difference. I thought I might feel something if I killed Zethrindor, or helped to kill him. Something big. Something that would change me. But it didn’t happen.”

  “I understand how much you’re hurting. But give yourself time.”

  “Are you still afraid I’ll run away? Or kill myself? I told you I won’t. I think about it, but I worry that dead, I’ll feel just the same as I do now. Then I really won’t have anything to hope for, will I?”

  The Feast of the Moon, the Year of Rogue Dragons

  His rear and thighs aching from days of riding, mostly on mounts too large for a halfling to manage comfortably, Will trudged through Thentia, comparing the scenes that presented themselves with his memories of Midsummer in the same city.

  That had been his sort of festival, everyone drinking, dancing, laughing, chasing members of the opposite sex and catching them more often than not. In contrast, the Feast of the Moon, celebrated in recognition of the honored dead and the onset of winter, was a solemn, subdued observance. The taverns closed their doors. Storytellers recited tales in which misunderstandings led to murder and suicide, young warriors perished on the battlefield, leaving their lovers to pine away, or noble kingdoms fell to orcs and plague. Folk clad in mourning sang dirges, paraded single-file through the streets with candles in their hands, and eventually fetched up in the cemeteries, where they laid offerings of food, preserved flowers, and sentimental tokens on tombs and graves.

  But from Will’s perspective, the biggest difference was that four months ago, Raryn, Kara, Taegan, and yes, even Brimstone had been present, and it was their absence that actually made the festival seem so depressing. That, and the sense of desperation that had descended on the seekers who still remained.

  Yet even so, it was a relief when he, Dorn, Pavel, and Jivex escaped into the countryside and left the funereal proceedings behind. As before, the Watchlord’s Warders guarded the approaches to the field in which the dragons and their allies were gathering. The sentries saluted the hunters as they passed.

  The meeting site shined with a soft, sourceless silvery light one of the spellcasters had conjured. The glow glinted on the scales of the many dragons assembled there: Tamarand, who’d served as King Lareth’s principal deputy, and challenged, dueled, and killed the mad sovereign to save his people. Nexus, yet another gold, allegedly the mightiest of all draconic wizards. Lady Havarlan, much-scarred leader of the martial fellowship of silvers known as the Talons of Justice. Azhaq, Moonwing, Llimark, Wardancer, Vingdavalac, and others, their diverse scents combining to suffuse the cool night air with a dry, complex, and rather pleasant odor.

  The spellcasters of Thentia stood, unconcerned, around the feet of the colossal reptiles. There was Firefingers, a genial old grandfather of a fellow dressed in garish flame-colored garments, Scattercloak, as always muffled so thoroughly in his mantle, robes, and shadowy cowl that not an inch of skin was visible, and plump, fussy Darvin Kordeion clad all in shades of white. Her long tresses dyed their usual silver, Sureene Aumratha, high priestess of the House of the Moon, conferred softly with her proteges Baerimel Dunnath and Jannatha Goldenshield. Petite lasses who bore a familial resemblance to one another, the two sisters were mistresses of arcane magic rather than divine, but servants of the temple nonetheless.

  Gareth Dragonsbane had sent his own representatives to the council. Celedon Kierney, the paladin king’s foxy-faced, half-elf spymaster, welcomed Will and his companions with a smile and a wink. Scarred, hulking Drigor Bersk, probably the unlikeliest priest of mild, martyred Ilmater in all Faerûn, gave them a brusque nod far more in keeping with the grim atmosphere of the assembly as a whole.

  But surely, thought Will, it can’t be as bad as all that. These folk are wise. They’ll think of something.

  Nexus shifted his golden wings. Maybe it was the dragon’s equivalent of clearing one’s throat, for the others abandoned their murmuring conversations to orient on him.

  “This is the situation,” Nexus rumbled. “Essentially, we’ve made no progress since we last convened here four months ago.”

  Havarlan grunted. “With respect, wizard, that isn’t altogether true. Working in concert with a host of allies, we metallics have found and destroyed several bastions of Sammaster’s cult, enclaves which, left unchecked,
would have created any number of dracoliches. We’ve saved many otherwise defenseless folk from drakes in the throes of frenzy, or from the secondary threats the Rage has kindled across the land.”

  Nexus inclined his head. “True, and I don’t mean to discount such victories. But in the long run, they will mean nothing if we can’t end the madness gnawing at our minds, and with time running out, we’re no closer than before. We’ve devised the counterspell—or at least believe we have—but still have no idea where we must go to cast it.”

  Celedon stepped forward. “My lords and ladies, masters, I’m newly come to your deliberations. Please forgive me if I ask questions to which everyone else already knows the answers. I understand you actually have some of Sammaster’s papers in your possession?”

  “Written in cipher and sealed with a curse,” said Scattercloak in his uninflected, androgynous, somehow artificial-sounding tenor voice. “We’ve managed to read a portion of them even so, but nothing that bears on the location of the elven citadel.”

  “We’ve scried for the stronghold, too,” Firefingers said. “Sought its whereabouts in long-lost lore unearthed all over the continent. Dragons have flown across the northlands looking for it. All to no avail.”

  “Curse it,” Will exclaimed, “my partners and I found the door to the place! That has to count for something.”

  Nexus, with his blank, luminous yellow eyes, backswept horns, and dangling barbells, gave Will a look conveying both annoyance and compassion. “I understand how hard you and your companions worked to locate that portal,” he said, “and that you lost friends in the doing. But Scattercloak, Jannatha, and I have visited the site, and the gate is damaged beyond repair.”

  “But … isn’t there still some kind of magical trail you can follow?”

  “I’m sorry, but no.”

  Celedon fingered his pointed chin. “I assume you tried scrying for Brimstone and the others instead of the citadel itself?”

  “Naturally!” Darvin snapped. “Do you think we’d overlook something so obvious?”

  “No, good sir, I don’t. But I would have been remiss if I hadn’t made certain.”

  “I don’t believe,” said Firefingers, “we’ve overlooked anything. But I’m not yet ready to surrender. Look at the company we’ve assembled, dozens of human and dragon mages united in a single circle. When has there been such a formidable coven? Yet we’ve never pooled all our strengths and skills in a single ritual. We’ve been too busy running hither and yon, following up on all our various leads.”

  High, argent frill and quicksilver eyes shining, Azhaq said, “You’re proposing a grand divination. A coordinated effort to pierce the elves’ concealments.”

  “Yes,” Firefingers replied. “It seems our best remaining hope.”

  “I agree,” said Tamarand, “so how shall we begin? We need a structure, something to guide our individual efforts and link them into a greater whole.”

  “I suggest,” said Firefingers, “the Great Pentacle of the Hand and Stars in conjunction with the Binder’s Eighth Sign.”

  “A sound choice,” said Nexus, and contentious as the mages of Thentia generally were, with the most powerful human warlock and dragon wizard already in agreement, for once, no one pushed for an alternative.

  “In that case,” said Firefingers, “I’ll ask everyone to move back a fair distance. I need room.”

  They ceded him the greater portion of the meadow, whereupon he whispered under his breath and snapped the fingers of both hands. Streaks of blue flame exploded into being to race along the ground. Will flinched, fearing an uncontrollable grass fire, but the blaze didn’t spread in the usual manner. Rather, it drew straight lines and arcs, sprang over spaces Firefingers wanted clear, defining a complex, symmetrical geometric figure further adorned with sigils and writing. Even when the design was complete, the flame, leaping no higher than the surrounding blades of grass, confined itself to the same narrow pathways, preserving the intricate form’s precision.

  “Now,” said Firefingers, “all of you who can help, take your places.”

  To Will’s surprise, Sureene, Drigor, and Pavel headed for the pentacle along with all the mages, two-legged and reptilian, leaving only Dorn, Jivex, and himself to wait and watch outside. Apparently even practitioners of divine magic had something to contribute to a “grand divination.”

  The spellcasters took care to step through gaps in the lines and curves of flame. Once everyone found the place he wanted to stand, or was supposed to, Firefingers waved his hand, and the openings sealed themselves.

  “My turn,” Nexus said. Instead of whispering as his human colleague had, he roared words of power at such a volume as to echo from the surrounding hills. At the end of the incantation, he spat flame.

  Normally such a blast flared and died, though it might leave secondary fires burning in its wake. But Nexus’s exhalation hung as a bright, seething golden cloud in the air, which gradually shaped itself into a spherical construction of arcs, lines, and glyphs somewhat resembling the design beneath it on the ground, but rendered in three dimensions instead of two.

  Or maybe it was a single rune floating in the air, or a scroll without any writing on it. It flickered from one form to the next. Sometimes Will could even see multiple shapes simultaneously, a phenomenon that made a mockery of comprehensible sight and threatened to give him a headache.

  “Now,” said Firefingers, “let’s begin.”

  He chanted, and one or two at a time, the other spellcasters joined in, but they didn’t all recite in unison. Each had his own incantations, with their own rhythms, pitches, and peculiar inflections. The result should have been cacophony, or at least a muddled drone. Instead, all the diverse voices combined into a sort of mellifluous contrapuntal plainsong.

  During the moments it was visible, the globe of fiery lines shifted. One word or symbol melted into another. A triangle, defined by radii extending through the center of the construct, vanished, and a trapezoid appeared in its place. Will could only assume the spellcasters were taking their cues from the ongoing transformations, and that was what enabled them to declaim in harmony.

  Writing, dancing through changes like the structure of the sphere, began to appear on the floating scroll. The chanting grew quicker, louder, more insistent. The human spellcasters slashed their arms through mystic figures. An ivory wand in Darvin’s upraised hand pulsed with radiance. Motes of shadow spun around Scattercloak like angry wasps.

  A heaviness congealed in the air. Will could tell he wasn’t really having difficulty breathing, but it felt like it anyway.

  A fourth form appeared in the dazzling inconstancy suspended at the center of the pentacle, winking in and out of view like the globe, rune, and page. At first, it manifested so briefly and was so blurry that Will couldn’t make out what it was. Gradually, though, it grew clearer.

  It was a barren valley, seen from high above. Dark, snowy mountains surrounded it, and a gigantic castle stood toward one end. Dragons the color of ink, like skull wyrms but sprinkled with scales of a lighter shade, glided near the citadel.

  “They’ve got it!” Jivex cried.

  Then the illusory landscape vanished, replaced by a sphere, and despite his ignorance of magic, and difficulty discerning the details of a figure sketched in flame, Will realized that it was a different globe than before. Though he couldn’t say why, it was nauseating to behold, like some heinous act of torture.

  At the same instant, the feeling of weight in the air altered, too. Before, though unpleasant, it hadn’t seemed especially alarming. Will had trusted that the wizards had it under control. But it was soon plain that they didn’t. Even a person devoid of magical aptitude could sense it tilting out of balance, like rocks on the brink of tumbling down a mountainside and crushing the travelers below. Like rocks that wanted to fall.

  The complex harmony of the ritual shattered as dragons howled, and humans screamed. Drigor staggered, chin dark and wet with the blood streaming from hi
s nostrils. Baerimel doubled over vomiting. Moonwing collapsed and thrashed, argent wings and tail hammering the ground. Though stricken like everyone else, Pavel just managed to scramble clear and avoid being squashed.

  The fiery orb swelled. The lines on its surface reconfigured themselves into ovals that somehow appeared to stand out from the globe, and likewise seemed larger than they should have been.

  It’s turned into something that’s all mouths and jaws, Will thought. It’s reaching out to swallow us.

  Somebody needed to stop it, but the spellcasters were incapacitated. Will pulled his warsling from his belt and whipped a lead pellet at the sphere, but the missile flew right through the construct without disrupting it. He turned to Jivex, but the faerie dragon shook his head to indicate that he, too, had no notion what to do.

  Then, shuddering and twitching, Nexus nonetheless manage to fix his luminous eyes on the orb. He growled a single word of power, and the sphere vanished, as did the lines of flame on the ground. The terrifying sense of malignancy enveloping the field disappeared in the same instant.

  The spellcasters started shakily picking themselves up off the ground to adjust vomit-soiled and bloodstained garments, recover dropped talismans, and gingerly inspect the chewed tongues, bitten lips, and bruises sustained in their seizures and falls. All but Moonwing. The silver still lay where he’d dropped, but wasn’t moving at all.

  When he noticed, Azhaq lunged to his comrade’s side. He peered down at the other shield dragon, then said, in a bleak, flat voice, “He’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Havarlan said. “We’ll remove him to a place where he can lie peacefully for the time being. But then, I think, we must continue our deliberations.”

  “Yes,” Azhaq said. “He deserves better, but I understand.”