Fireclaws - Search for the Golden

by T. Michael Ford

  “Double the guard if you think it necessary, I don’t care! I assume the girl is secured in her tent as usual?”

  “Until midnight, at least, three men and the gargoyle surround her tent at all times.”

  “Then leave me be, I will summon you when I want her brought to me.”

  Marl nodded curtly and started backing out of the tent. Suddenly, the night air was rent violently by numerous equine screams. “Shit, something is at the horses!”

  “Well, deal with it; that’s what you are paid for,” the wizard grumbled, returning to his meditation. Marl stormed out into the melee of running men, who were quickly putting on their armor and snatching up weapons. A few called for more torches to be lit while others strung their bows hastily.

  Perhaps fifteen minutes later, a furious Marl stuck his head back into Lebahn’s tent. “Giant cats! I’ve never seen any that large before. Three of my outer guards are dead with slashed throats, and an entire string of horses broke loose and ran off. We’ll play hell getting them back in this darkness!” The mercenary Captain paused and gulped shakily. “There’s something else, Lebahn…the girl is gone!”

  “What?!”

  “It looks like something burrowed up out of the ground under her tent and took her!”

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there, you idiot! Send out search parties and find that girl; she can’t have gone far!”

  “Yes, sir,” Marl muttered miserably and disappeared back into the night, storming after his men.

  Lebahn, glared for a moment at the tent flap that had fallen closed; then he picked up the blood-red crystal, gazed into its depths, and allowed himself a small crooked smile.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Ryliss

  We had been riding hard for twelve hours or more now. Andi barely felt like a weight on my back; her previous experience as a horsewoman kept her instinctively sitting tall and balanced. But I could tell she was nearly at the end of her rope. The constant fear, pain and travails of the past few days had sapped what little strength the young girl had. I couldn’t speak in horse form, but it mattered little as the seer silently concentrated on clinging to my back and little else.

  I stopped periodically to leave a breadcrumb for what I hoped were our reinforcements; each probably a little sloppier than the previous, but, as usual, time was not on our side. We were traveling up the slope of some foothills in the shadow of an ominous line of “steamers,” mountains which off-gassed plumes of dirty steam or smoke. The gasses shrouded the mountaintops like a thick cloak and gave them an even more dire appearance. Their presence meant volcanic activity, possibly even open flows of magma, ahead. We would have to be careful. Rakka was ranging far out in front and behind to watch for danger; so far she reported no signs of pursuit. Diori just disappeared into the earth to travel, finding it easier and faster to move that way.

  I thought uneasily about the past evening’s adventure. Everything had gone as planned; the distraction of Jag’uri attacking the horses and guards coupled with Diori’s textbook snatch of the seer out of her tent. But now I worried about the abilities of the demon gargoyle. It had found Andi once; assumedly, it could do it again, and if it did strike, our only defense would be to have Diori take her far underground. The luxury of hiding and waiting out our pursuit was not something I could afford. The thought of Dawn and Dusk dying slowly from starvation was something I tried not to dwell on too much, but it was never far from my mind now. Time was not my friend. All these thoughts swirled through my brain as I galloped along.

  “We are getting closer now, Ryliss.” Andi leaned forward and spoke into my ear. “I can see the egg more prominently in my visions.” She attempted to stifle a small sob of sorrow as she continued, “But there is also great pain ahead as well. I’m sorry that I’m not a better seer for you; I wish I could tell you what to expect, what to guard against.”

  I pondered her words for a few moments. Dark elves are not an especially superstitious lot in general, but my rational mind knew that any foreboding that came from a true seer would occur somehow, perhaps just not at the time or place we expected. With a horsey sigh, I expunged the worry from my mind; every soldier goes into battle knowing that he or she might not return. If you let your mind fall too deeply into doom-faring, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. We kept moving.

  I caught myself stumbling a little and wondered how much longer I would be able to negotiate these steep slopes with no trail; my hooves were not meant for this type of surface. A mountain goat might be more agile, but just copying the form of an animal doesn’t mean I gain all their skills. Part of a goat’s climbing abilities comes from years of experience, which I didn’t have, but it was worth a try. Andi gave a small cry of surprise when the horsehair beneath her changed suddenly to thick, rough, layered hair, her mount shortened, and her seat became narrower and considerably less comfortable. At least my horns gave her something solid to hold on to. We pressed on, it was perhaps another two hours before even my mountain goat feet were starting to fail me.

  Finally after the third time she nearly slid to the ground, I found a small copse of wind- and nutrient-tortured aspens that offered some cover. I stopped to build a small fire and let her take a break. As she warmed herself and rested, I dug through my pouch and found a couple of dried apples remaining and handed them over.

  “Sorry, Andea, that’s the last of them…I wish I could do better.”

  She smiled weakly. “Don’t worry about me, Ryliss. It will be over soon; I just hope it will all be worth it.”

  “Can you tell me what you see, Andi? I know you can’t see yourself, but what about Kerrik, Daffi, and Diori?”

  “From what little I can tell, Kerrik and Daffi are well enough at the moment, but still far away. Diori is a blank to me, it’s like she doesn’t exist to a seer.”

  “But the golden dragon was a seer as well,” I mused, turning it over in my mind.

  “Perhaps that was part of the appeal of creating the perfect servant,” Andi opined cautiously. “Someone whose direction can never be discerned by outsiders.” She shifted uneasily. “What of you, Ryliss? Do you not wonder about your own fate?”

  I thought about it for a few moments, then shook my head. “No, I may not be a warrior, but I was raised among them. I have no desire to know the future beyond any information that could spare my friends an injury or death. If I die in the service of my King and Queen, I will pass over with no regrets or sorrow.”

  “Thank you, Ryliss,” she said quietly as if I had just given her a gift.

  At that point, a great black shape slunk into the small camp and curled up, practically encircling the small fire.

  “No sign of any pursuit, my Mother, but you should hurry on to our destination. I dislike this mountain, it growls like a badger in a hole, full of teeth and bad temperament. The trail continuing would best be done on two feet. What way there is, even the mountain goats have long abandoned, and nothing lives up here.”

  “What did you find up ahead?”

  “A few hundred paces ahead, there is a spot where you will have to decide to go through the rock clefts to the right or left, continuing on to the next mountains, or blaze a new trail straight up to the pinnacle of this peak. It is nearly straight up, but there are old goat switchbacks and the like. It will tax every ounce of strength you have to proceed.”

  “Andi, we come to a junction; left, right or straight up, which will it be?”

  The seer paused and grimaced. I saw several raw emotions transverse her young face, each option considered and then dismissed. Finally, she just sighed wearily and spoke, “Straight ahead, Ryliss. This is the mountain where we will find our destiny. There will be an entrance somewhere near the top, and the egg is inside.”

  “If we are so close, I will go on alone or with Diori if she shows up. It would be hard for you to go further and I can leave Rakka here to protect you.”

  The seer gulped and shook her head firmly. “No, I am in part responsibl
e for what lies ahead; I need to see this out.”

  Naurakka got up and, with a snort, loped off down the trail in the direction from which we had come, disappearing quickly into the lichen-covered boulders. I pulled Andi to her feet and we started back up the slope, shattered pieces of rock slipping out from under my boots. It seemed like for every two steps I took, I slid back one. Andea, who couldn’t see where to place her feet, was having an especially hard time.

  I squinted up at the top of the mountain high above us and estimated we had at least another thousand vertical feet to cover before reaching the top. Both of us were breathing in ragged spurts now, the altitude and fatigue taking its toll. Curiously, instead of becoming colder toward the summit, the air around us seemed to be getting warmer, as were the rocks beneath our feet. I had Andi wrap her arms around my neck and hold on as I attempted a particularly steep section. I thought of turning into an eagle and flying to the top, but my last experience carrying Andi was nearly disastrous, and that was at a lower elevation and when I wasn’t so exhausted. At the moment, I was pretty sure it would mean both our deaths.

  Abruptly, Diori popped out of the ground next to us. She looked at us both, but the fact that we were exhausted failed to register with the stone creature as she questioned cheerfully, “Are we near our destination yet, seer?”

  I eased Andi down on the flat edge of an outcropping and she immediately went to her knees and hung her head, too tired to answer the kobold.

  “Yes, Diori, we are close,” I panted. “But this is too steep for us to keep going much longer and nightfall approaches. I am thinking about going back down to a decent resting spot and trying again tomorrow.”

  Diori tilted her head quizzically. “If it is a conveyance the seer requires, might I offer some assistance? I could carry her to the top of this peak and you could become a winged creature and follow.” I think I could have kissed her at that point!

  A few minutes later, I was a kestrel pacing the kobold and Andea just below me. Diori gently carried the young girl in her arms, while the lower half of her body seemed to be submerged in the rocks as if she were striding forcefully through a pool of waist-deep water. Neither changes in the type of rock nor the steepness of the climb seemed to affect her momentum at all. She was as much at home in the stone as a fish is in a pond.

  Shadows were already starting to darken the lower elevations of the mountain when Diori pulled up short on a small, flattish area perhaps two hundred feet or so below the summit. It appeared to me that this had been a larger area at one time, but a rock slide had all but obliterated the shelf. I saw Andi nervously waving to get my attention, so I landed and changed back into my dark elf form.

  “This is the place. We are very close, Ryliss,” Andea whispered, taking a deep, hesitant breath as if she were about to enter a den of rattlesnakes.

  I examined the mountainside before me. It just looked like thousands of tons of mixed boulders and loose rock to me. I’m not sure how anyone would even attempt to start excavating it with mere hand tools.

  “I concur, Ryliss,” Diori said happily. “This is exactly how Kailemora would have protected a covert lair. This would be unrecognizable to dragons and nearly impossible for humans to enter.”

  I sighed and looked back down the mountain at the advancing shadows. “That’s wonderful, Diori, but unless there is a secret door or other passage, we are going to be stuck on this ledge tonight.”

  “You forget, Ryliss; I said it was nearly impossible for humans to enter. But the Auric wanted me, her loyal servant, to enter. Watch!”

  The kobold grew to approximately three times her/my normal size and, again, she sunk down to her waist into the rock and then strode forward. I heard a slight sizzling sound as she bored through the side of the rock fall. Amazingly, her outline seemed to melt and cauterize the loose rock so the ceiling and sides of the passage were as smooth as glass.

  Taking Andi’s arm, I followed. Perhaps sixty feet of tunnel later, we broke through into a hot cavern about seventy feet square. The air in here was murky and probably full of gasses I didn’t really want to know about, but still, it didn’t hurt too much to breathe. My dark elf sight would have been useless in an absolute void of light, but there were large patches of wall that appeared almost glass-like with what I assumed were ribbons of lava bubbling behind them. It gave the entire place a spooky, blood-red tint. The floor was a soft bed of reasonably flat sand crystals, with only the occasional outcrop of sharp stone to flaw its beauty.

  Diori drew in a deep amount of air as if scenting the cavern. “Kailemora’s egg chamber!”

  “I don’t see any egg.”

  “Oh, it would not be in a small room like this. I am positive there are one or more larger chambers beyond this one, but we must be getting very close. This would have been a diversionary chamber at best.”

  “Diversionary?”

  “Sometimes a luminary will set up a false chamber, even put some treasure and egg shells inside to make it look like the hatching has already taken place to throw off delvers. Come with me…”

  She moved farther into the space, concentrating on the far wall, while I helped Andi along. The seer was exhausted and almost asleep on her feet. Diori inspected the natural stone critically; she reached her arm, then her whole body, through the wall. A few seconds later, her head appeared and she stepped back into the space with us.

  “This is the way.” Once again, she created the glass-lined tunnel and we followed. In a much shorter span, perhaps twenty-five feet, Diori emerged into a second space. Similar to the first chamber in lighting level and construction, this one was much, much larger. The ceiling height alone was forty-five feet or more, the walls had to be two hundred feet in circumference. If possible, this room was even warmer and it had been a long time since we had access to water. I pulled out my badly-depleted water skin and squeezed the last few remaining squirts into Andi’s mouth. As if awakening from a bad dream, the seer’s eyelids shot open in terror.

  “We need to leave this place, Ryliss,” she whispered frantically. “We are in grave danger…I am so sorry!” Then she seemed to faint from either the heat or plain exhaustion. I eased her to the ground and propped her up against one of the cooler side walls. I looked around in a near panic; the last time I had gotten such a warning from the seer, I ended up being thrown off a cliff to my death.

  “Diori! Andi says…”

  “I found it!” the construct interrupted from the far end of the massive cavern. “Come quickly, I need you to verify the viability of the hatchling before I release the stasis!”

  “Does it matter?” I said urgently. “Just open it and find out.”

  The construct shook her head. “Luminaries have been known to plant a magically-trapped egg in chambers, as well. Believe me, as old and as magical as Kailemora was, you do not want to find one of those. You might find yourself transported to the surface of a moon or dropped into the maw of an active volcano. Even I might not survive such a fate. It is indeed fortunate that you are a Druid and have a connection to living things.”

  I raced to the spot where the kobold was looking down into a hot shallow pit in the floor. The mountain’s magma must be very close to the surface here as the heat rose in waves out of the depression. Surrounding the pit were a number of iron pillars like boundary markers drilled into the rock in a decorative pattern flush with the main surface. In the middle of the depression, no more than five feet down, rested a large egg with a band of light blue magic aura surrounding it.

  “I must know, Druid. Is the egg real and is it still viable?” the stone version of me questioned, her hand firmly on my arm.

  “What are these iron posts for?”

  “A warding; I have already deactivated them so they pose no harm. Now hurry, Ryliss! As soon as we rescue the Auric, I will open another path out of this place and your mission will be at an end!”

  Wiping the sweat from my brow, I gazed down into the pit, extending my senses down into the
egg shell below me, probing for any spark of life. Immediately, I felt a magical surge and the world nearly exploded around me. Indeed, there was a life form inside completely unlike any I had encountered before. It was sleeping, its consciousness lingering just below the surface of wakefulness. But I sensed a feeling of purity and wisdom emanating from it. Again, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise up, similar to when I met the Earth Mother. This was almost a deity-level creature before me, and I suddenly felt a moral imperative to protect him at all costs.

  Shaken by Diori out of my reverence, I gasped, “Yes, he is alive!”

  “Excellent!” I heard a loud male voice gloat from the other side of the chamber. Still slightly dazed, I looked up and saw half the chamber was now filled with Verledn’s men, including the gargoyle. It was the fire wizard, still carrying the red crystal who spoke, and he held a frightened Andi dangling roughly by one arm. Behind them all, three blood-red portals silently snapped shut and faded to darkness.

  “Diori, grab the egg and run!” I screamed, starting the change to my Jag’uri form. But before I sprouted a single black hair, I felt snakelike tendrils wrap around my feet and knees, climbing my body and pinning my arms helplessly to my side. The familiar haziness of contact with cold iron and its effect on my Druid abilities ensued. “What the…?” Seconds later I was thoroughly trussed up by the bands; I couldn’t free my arms, and my legs were bound tightly together as well.

  Turning my head, I saw a grim-faced Diori finish the summoning of my iron prison, and then turn to fashion a birdcage of sorts out of the same material. She was pulling it directly out of the pilings around the pit and forming it to her needs, casting the spells effortlessly. “Diori, why are you doing this? You must save the Auric!”

  The stone girl that looked like me paused momentarily but then continued working on her casting as she replied, “I, too, am saddened that we will no longer be friends, Ryliss. You were my first and only friend. Had we met even five hundred of your cycles ago, things might have been very different. But the wound placed on me by Kailemora has festered too long and now it poisons my spirit.”