The Binding Stone: The Dragon Below Book 1

by Don Bassingthwaite

  He was going to lose, Ashi knew. It was inevitable. Hruucan was too fast for the wizard’s magic and too powerful for his blade.

  Ashi glanced beyond the crowd toward the dark mouth of the ancestor mound. No one was watching it. Nothing moved within. The fire of the Bonetree hunter who should have been standing honor guard guttered low, abandoned.

  She hadn’t told Singe all the tales about the mound that were spoken around the fires of the Bonetree. Stories of passages into the sacred depths and shrines built from dragonshards, yes—but also whispers of halls home to ghosts, of dark vaults where Dah’mir “prayed” with the outclanners who were sometimes led into the mound, of the lairs of Khyber’s children and monsters too horrible to bear the light of day.

  The crowd let out another roar. Ashi twisted back to the ring. Singe knelt on the ground, clutching at his belly. His rapier lay on the ground several paces away. Hruucan walked over to it—and kicked the weapon back to him disdainfully. Singe grabbed it, but Ashi could see the pain on his face as he rose.

  Her eyes darted to Dah’mir, watching the fight with the benevolent expression of a doting father. At his side, Medala wore the staring hunger of a hunting panther.

  All around the ring, she could see a similar bloodlust on the faces of people she knew as friends and comrades in arms. Breff leaped and shouted, cheering for a monster who roused only disgust in Ashi, a monster who had—by Breff’s own account—driven the returning hunters almost to death. This is my clan, she told herself.

  Would any of them have stood by her as Singe had stood by Dandra? Dah’mir hadn’t stood by her, that was certain. By her or by the Bonetree.

  Her hand fell to the huntmaster’s sword. In spite of Singe’s explanations, she wasn’t sure she fully grasped the idea of Sentinel Marshals. “Honor blade,” though—that was something she could understand. Maybe she carried the blood of Deneith, maybe she didn’t. Either way, she knew that she carried the sword of a hero.

  As Singe stumbled under another blow, Ashi slipped back from the crowd and darted for the mound. Scooping up a flaming brand from the absent guard’s fire, she drew the honor blade and walked cautiously into the darkness of the tunnel.

  “Someone’s getting beaten bad out there,” said Natrac.

  “How do you know?” Geth asked. He checked the byeshk sword on his hip again, making certain the weapon would slide easily from the makeshift scabbard. Behind them, Krepis and the half dozen orcs that Batul had judged to be the best fighters among the raiding party were doing much the same thing and giving their weapons one last check. Orshok was offering up a last prayer for guidance and protection. Somewhere above them, Batul and the other raiders would be reaching the top of the mound.

  “Listen to the crowd,” said Natrac. “You can tell by the way they cheer. It’s always the same voices—they’re only cheering for one person. That means one person is giving all the good hits so the other must be taking them.”

  “Maybe they’re all on one side.”

  “No, when that happens they boo a lot more and groan when the favorite takes a hit,” Natrac explained—just as a collective gasp rose from the front of the mound.

  “Like that?” Geth asked.

  Natrac shook his head. “Crotch hit. A crowd will groan for that no matter who takes it.”

  Geth glanced at the half-orc. “You know a lot about crowds,” he commented and Natrac gritted his teeth.

  “Dagga,” he said. “You pick that up in an arena.”

  The shifter’s eyebrows rose. “You were a gladiator?”

  “I didn’t say that, did I?”

  Orshok moved up beside them. The young druid looked nervous. “Are you all right?” asked Geth.

  Orshok nodded.

  Geth snorted. “Grandfather Rat’s naked tail. You’re terrified.”

  The orc flushed. “This is a bigger fight than I’ve ever faced before,” he admitted.

  Geth reached out and punched him in the shoulder. “You did good when you came to our rescue in Zarash’ak. You fought like a veteran.”

  “I fought without thinking about it,” Orshok said. “I just acted. I wasn’t standing and waiting for a signal!”

  “Then when Batul’s signal comes, just do that again. Waiting may be hard, but it’s the fighting that kills you.”

  The unseen crowd exploded with another roar. Geth bared his teeth and growled—then twitched at the feeling of something climbing up his leg. He looked down to see a tiny blue lizard blinking at him. Batul’s signal. The old druid and the raiders had reached the top of the mound. Geth brushed the lizard away gently.

  “We’re ready,” he rasped.

  Natrac, Orshok, Krepis, and the rest of his band clustered close. Drawing a deep breath, Geth led the way around the mound.

  The crowd came into view, a thick press of humans and dolgrims. Geth resisted the urge to try and see who was in the ring. The mouth of the mound was close and the way was clear. No one was watching them. A sentinel’s fire beside the mouth had burned low. He turned for the shadowed tunnel.

  Krepis’s breath hissed at same moment that Orshok froze. “What is it?” snarled Geth sharply, glancing back. Even as the words left his mouth though, the stones of his collar turned cold. He choked on a gasp and spun around.

  In front of the mouth of the mound, the shadows rippled and two figures seemed to step out of the air. One was a mind flayer, its probing mouth-tentacles glistening in the torchlight, a nightmare out of Dandra’s memories.

  The other was his own nightmare: the hulking, clacking, chitin-armored horror of a chuul!

  CHAPTER

  16

  Geth’s hand darted to his belt and snatched out his sword. The ancient weapon seemed even heavier than it had before, and the twilight sheen of the metal had taken on a dull glow, as if the sword somehow recognized that the creatures it had been made to destroy were near.

  He heard shouts and screams from Batul’s party on top of the mound. It was a trap. Dah’mir had been ready for them.

  “Ambush!” he yelled. He raised his sword high and lunged—

  The mind flayer’s foul, tentacled head turned sharply. Its white eyes flashed and a wave of pure mental power blasted through Geth. He staggered under the assault, struggling to resist the illithid’s power. The orcs in his band cried in fear and pain, caught in the same unseen attack. Some of those cries ended abruptly.

  Around Geth’s neck, though, Adolan’s collar was icy, like a shocking slap of winter. Geth clung to that clean cold and forced himself to stay on his feet. A fast glance over his shoulder showed him that most of his band hadn’t been so fortunate. Batul’s hand-picked orc raiders were down and twitching on the ground. Krepis was supporting Natrac. Orshok stumbled like a drunkard.

  “They knew!” the young druid gasped. “How did they know?”

  “Those herons!” Geth roared. “Those damn herons!”

  He whirled back to the mind flayer. Its tentacles thrashing, it slapped a spindly hand against the chuul’s armored shell and the monstrous creature scuttled forward, pincers snapping.

  Geth howled and shifted as he leaped forward to meet it. Invincibility flowing through him, he swung the byeshk sword hard at one of those grasping claws. The blade hit the chitin with a crunch, shattering it, and bit deep into the flesh beneath. The chuul screeched in pain and thrust out with its pincer, trying to slap him aside, but Geth soaked up the blow and stood his ground. He wrenched his sword free and dodged back, then swept the blade down the center of the pincer.

  The heavy blade found the joint of the claw and cleaved through it in a spray of strange, thin blood. Half of the chuul’s pincer sagged and fell, crippled. Once again, the creature screeched and thrashed, but Geth rolled under the sweeping, useless claw and threw himself at the mind flayer. The chuul was big and dangerous, but if the illithid had the chance to unleash another one of those mental blasts …

  But the illithid was rising into the air, floating up as Dandra did—e
xcept higher. Safely out of his reach, it peered down at him with its dead white eyes.

  The chuul’s broad, armored back turned on Geth as Orshok, Natrac, and Krepis closed with it. Without even hesitating, the shifter jumped onto the creature, planted one foot at the curve above the thing’s tail, vaulted up onto its shoulders, then—as the startled chuul reared back—leaped off and hurled himself at the hovering mind flayer.

  He had a brief glimpse of the illithid’s tentacles stiffening in sudden shock an instant before he slammed into it.

  They tumbled through the air, his metal-clad right arm wrapped tight around its narrow, bony hips. Geth could feel thin fists pounding at his shoulders and tentacles groping and scraping at his head. He thrust upward with his sword.

  The ancient Dhakaani smiths who had forged the weapon had ground sharp edges onto the spreading curves of its forked tip. The purple blade might not have pierced like a normal sword—but it cut very well. A palm’s width of metal chopped deep into the mind flayer’s back. Metal grated through bone. The mind flayer went limp.

  They fell. Geth twisted and flung himself free from the creature, rolling as he hit the ground. He came up in crouch. The mind flayer’s tentacles were still writhing, straining toward him. A whirling slice with the byeshk sword made certain the illithid was dead before he spun around.

  Their tumble through the air had carried them away from the chuul and from the mouth of the mound. He was closer to the crowd now—and the people in the mob had finally realized that there was a larger battle going on than just the one they were watching. Roars and shouts rose into shrieks and battle cries. At the head of crowd, Dah’mir stood on a platform, arms thrust out.

  “Attack!” he bellowed above the tumult. His green eyes flashed and a hand stabbed toward Geth. “The shifter! Bring the shifter to me!”

  Geth’s stomach knotted. “Tiger’s blood!” he choked as Bonetree hunters and dolgrims alike split away from the swarm of the crowd.

  Then Natrac and Orshok stood on either side of him with Krepis at his back. All three were covered in the thin blood of the chuul.

  “I’m never eating lobster again,” croaked Natrac.

  Geth bared his teeth in grim humor and risked a glance up at the top of the mound. The clouds that had covered the sky flashed with distant heat lightning and against that fitful flickering, bulky figures struggled. Chuul raised their pincers and dolgaunts struck with tentacles. Above the battle, robes whipping in the wind, floated two more mind flayers. Geth caught a glimpse of dark shapes tumbling down the steep side of the mound as orcs managed to topple a chuul, only to be caught and stunned by the mental blast of one of the illithids.

  “Where’s Batul?” he spat over his shoulder at Krepis. “Why isn’t he doing something?”

  Lightning danced from the clouds in a bolt that wrapped around one of the floating mind flayers. The thin creature’s limbs and tentacles snapped into sudden stiffness and it dropped out of the air like a wounded bird. The brilliant flare left an image imprinted on Geth’s eyes: the silhouette of an old orc with his hunda stick raised to the sky.

  “Batul doing something!” Krepis shouted above the thunder that rolled across the battlefield.

  The lightning had barely given the hunters and dolgrims pause, but it gave Geth fresh hope. He thrust up the byeshk sword.

  “Take it to them!” he roared—and charged.

  One of the mind flayers had a particular streak of cruelty. When the illithids left Dandra, it turned her head so that she could see Virikhad’s psicrystal gleaming in the dim light of laboratory. With the weird device of copper and bone clutching her head, Dandra felt like she had no will at all. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t move, she could barely call up memories from only moments before—not that there was much to remember. The laboratory was still. The only sound, apart from a brief, distant flurry of excitement and activity that came and went elsewhere in the mound, was her breathing.

  Somehow she could still feel, though, maybe out of instinct like breathing or blinking her eyes. Emotions bubbled inside her, primal emotions, raw and pure. Fear. Rage. Uncluttered by thought, they burned her.

  There was something familiar about that purity of emotion. Her mind drifted and flew back through her memories, back before her anger and her fear, back before Bull Hollow and that first trip Zarash’ak and even before Sharn. Back before she’d been a person to when she’d been a crystal, before she’d even developed a proper mind. Back to the time when all that she’d been was emotion, new and raw, eager and focused.

  She hadn’t been fear, then. She hadn’t been rage. She had been determination.

  She had been and always would be.

  Light shone on the walls of the laboratory. Orange light, the glow of a proper flame, not the blue-green light of Dah’mir’s strange torches. Dandra heard the whisper of quiet footsteps, heard someone murmur her name. The light came closer. It moved around the table and Ashi stepped into Dandra’s field of vision. The big hunter carried a naked blade and a stick of wood that had burned through nearly half of its length. Dandra saw her spear strapped across her back. Ashi’s face was pale, but strangely resolved. She moved back and Dandra felt the straps that bound her body being released. The hunter returned to her vision, bending down to look into her eyes.

  “Dandra?” she asked again. Ashi’s eyes flicked to the spindly device that the illithids had slid down over her head. She set down her sword and reached up to tug the device away.

  Thought returned to fill Dandra’s head with a rush of demands and concerns, but pure determination cut through all of them. She reached for her powers with an ease like nothing she’d known before and spun out a rippling web of vayhatana.

  Ashi slammed back hard against the ground. She struggled desperately as Dandra sat up and glared down at her. “Let me go!” she spat. “I’m here to—”

  Dandra squatted down and slapped her. “You’re here to what?” she snapped. “Hunt me? I’m already here. Torment me? Let’s wait for the mind flayers to come back. Murder my friends? I think Dah’mir’s already done that!”

  “No, you stupid outclanner!” snarled Ashi. “I’m here to rescue you!”

  “Really? Why would you do that?” Dandra narrowed her eyes in concentration and Ashi’s body rose from the floor, flying through the air to slam against the wall of the laboratory. The big woman grunted in pain. She blinked and focused her eyes on Dandra.

  “I’d do it because Singe asked me to!” Ashi said. “While you were under Dah’mir’s power, Singe helped me understand things about myself. I’m leaving the Bonetree clan. It was too late for me to save him, but—”

  “Save him?”

  Dandra’s concentration faltered. The invisible bonds that held Ashi faded. Dandra reached to summon up the vayhatana again—until she realized that Ashi, although standing free, hadn’t moved. The hunter looked at her, waiting.

  “I hid that I knew you weren’t Tetkashtai all the way from Zarash’ak,” she said after a moment. “I’m sorry for what I did to you, Dandra. Singe has shown me that Dah’mir isn’t what I thought he was. I want a new life and if you’ll let me, I’ll start it by making things right with you.”

  Dandra stared at her. “I …”

  “Dandra,” Ashi pleaded, “why else would I betray Dah’mir?”

  The kalashtar clenched her teeth. “Start with this, then,” she said. “You said it’s too late to save Singe. Save him from what?”

  “He’s fighting Hruucan,” Ashi answered. “Hruucan demanded it in revenge for the scars Singe inflicted on him.” She grimaced. “He won’t kill Singe—Dah’mir won’t let him—but he’ll cripple him. The Bonetree and all the children of Khyber are watching the fight. That’s why I was able to get in here. The mound’s empty!”

  “It’s empty because Dah’mir’s preparing an ambush,” Dandra told her. “Geth survived Dah’mir’s attack in Zarash’ak and now he’s bringing an orc raid here to rescue Singe and I. They’re already i
n Bonetree territory but they’re walking into a trap.”

  Ashi drew a sharp breath and her fists tightened. “There was no sign of a raid or an ambush laid when I entered the mound—but I heard fighting as I followed the tunnels. I thought it was some echo or ghost.”

  Dandra’s throat tightened. “Light of il-Yannah.” It had started. “How quickly can you get me back to the surface?”

  “I marked the way.” Ashi reached behind her back and pulled Dandra’s spear free of a harness. “I kept it,” she said. “A trophy at first, but now …” She held out the weapon.

  Dandra took it. “Thank you,” she said. Holding the spear brought some of her determination back to her. She looked around Dah’mir’s laboratory, at the strange device with the blue-black shard in its heart, at Virikhad’s violet crystal. Dandra walked over to the crystal and held her hand above it. She could feel the faint spark of Tetkashtai’s old lover inside and for a moment a part of her itched to take up the crystal and make a connection with him. At the same time, though, she knew what even a short imprisonment had done to Tetkashtai and Medala. Virikhad had been locked inside his crystal without access to a body for far longer than either of them ever had. There was no telling how far he had fallen in his desperation.

  “Dandra?” asked Ashi. She stood at the door of the laboratory.

  “One moment.” Dandra lifted her hand. No matter what his mental state might be, she couldn’t leave Virikhad here. Steeling herself, she went over to the kalashtar’s withered body and tugged a pouch from his belt, then used the head of her spear to tap the violet crystal into it. She looked up at the Dah’mir’s strange device again.

  She had tricked Tetkashtai into agreeing to return to Zarash’ak by hinting that perhaps there was a way to undo what Dah’mir had done to them. Now she was almost certain that there wasn’t. She and Tetkashtai were trapped as surely as Virikhad. Why had Dah’mir created such a terrible device? She might still be able to find a way to force the truth from the green-eyed man, but there was one thing she was certain of—the device should never have existed.