The Lake of Death

by Jean Rabe

  “…is considerable, Dhamon, and you gain more treasure with every force she sends against you. I don’t see the point of collecting all this stuff. Frankly, if we don’t do something with it…”

  Ragh sat the globe of light at his feet, tugged off the backpack, and upended it. Pouches of coins and pearls spilled out, along with a small sculpture of a nightbird that Ragh suspected was magical, and two exceptional daggers with inlaid handles.

  Ragh bent and picked up one of the pouches he remembered was filled with pearls. He hefted it as if to judge their value. Then he picked up his light globe again with his other hand. “This hoard is sure to attract Sable, mark my words.”

  The dragon shifted his head and several coins rolled from the mound and clinked against the floor. The silver wisps brightened in the crystal ball and something indistinct appeared in the center.

  “Let her send more bakali and knights against me, wherever she can find me. Let her send all the minions she has.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  Dhamon’s eyes narrowed. “I do. Perhaps I want Sable to come herself.”

  The draconian started pacing, the light globe in his hand causing the shadows to dance as he stepped past alcoves and overhangs. “You can’t mean that. You can’t possibly mean that. Tell me you don’t really mean that.”

  Dhamon didn’t reply. He was studying the indistinct something in the crystal ball, cocking his head as if listening to another voice. “Where?” he asked the crystal. “Where?” His eyes narrowed as he leaned his head closer. “Just what is it?”

  Ragh stared at him quizzically.

  “You’ve told me the ‘where’ of it, crystal. Now tell me the ‘what.’ Saying what I seek is in a lake is not good enough. I repeat, I do not care for lakes, and I will not search one for a mysterious something. I need to know what is so important. What?” The object in the crystal remained indistinct. “Tell me!”

  What is “what?” Ragh mouthed. It was all mysterious to the sivak, and he wanted to know what Dhamon was talking about, what Dhamon was searching for in the crystal ball, but he knew now wasn’t the time. The dragon’s rising irritation was already causing the cave floor to tremble ominously.

  “What?” Dhamon repeated with a snarl. “What exactly do I need to find?”

  Ragh studied his friend, relaxing finally when Dhamon appeared to give up the searching. The sivak had watched Dhamon use the crystal ball before, but he still couldn’t figure out how it worked—and neither could the dragon, Ragh guessed. Perhaps they should have left the sorcerer alive and had him work the crystal’s magic. Perhaps they should go find another sorcerer…

  “I should look at that wound.”

  Dhamon reluctantly glanced up from the crystal. “It will heal on its own. It’s not deep.” Dhamon idly stirred some of the steel pieces with a talon and drew back from the crystal ball. The silver wisps disappeared. He grunted irritably.

  “We’ve got enough treasure, that’s for sure. Pouches of steel pieces, ivory buckles, pearls. We should get far away from here, take the treasure with us.”

  “The treasure is meaningless,” the dragon said. “These steel pieces—as valuable as these things might be, they’re worthless to me, yet I find that I want ever more. More!”

  The draconian was startled by this statement, and he nearly dropped the light globe and the pouch of pearls. The light flickered and Ragh had to concentrate to make it brighter again.

  “I can’t walk into a town with a bulging coin purse and rent a room at an inn or buy a lady’s company, can I, Ragh? I don’t need expensive clothes. I certainly don’t need to buy fancy food. I can eat my enemies when I’m hungry, though the gods know those bakali tasted horrid. I can’t spend a single steel piece, no matter how many thousands upon thousands I hoard.”

  “The places where I would he welcome to spend them, Dhamon, I no longer care to go either,” Ragh whispered plaintively.

  “So why do I—why does any dragon hoard this stuff?”

  Ragh padded over. “Dhamon, I…”

  “I want more. Like a man who craves ale, I crave wealth.” He shook his great head, the barbels knocking loose steel pieces from the mound. The dragon stretched his neck and caught Ragh’s stare. Dhamon’s eyes held a great sadness. “Senseless for me to have bothered collecting all this from the men Sable sent against me, senseless for both of us. Whatever possesses me to want all of this?”

  “Perhaps, Dhamon…”

  “Maybe it’s a dragon’s instinct… this collecting. Maybe whatever shred of humanity is left in my soul thinks I will someday need these coins and jewels. The gods know that when I ran with Maldred we were always after treasure—never could get enough in those days either. Maybe that piece of me thinks that one day again I’ll be able to stroll into a tavern, drop some steel on the bar, and order a tankard of dwarf spirits.” He settled his head back down on the coins.

  “Yes, maybe someday you’ll be human again,” the sivak offered consolingly. “There’s magic in the world again. You’ve been consulting the crystal ball about the possibility. I’ve seen you try it many times. Dhamon…”

  Dhamon let out a chuckle, the harsh sound bouncing off the walls and causing the stone floor to shudder. A row of spears that had been propped against a wall shifted and a few of them toppled over.

  “Ragh, my friend, I stopped being human almost a year ago, remember? You were there when it happened in the mountains, and you followed me here—you, my only friend.”

  The draconian nudged some spilled coins with a foot. The light caught an old gold one and made it softly gleam. “Of all the places to settle, Dhamon,” he scolded. “You could’ve picked someplace far from an overlord’s land. There’s nothing special about this damnable swamp— except the constant danger.”

  “Sable claims it. That’s special to me, and I’m claiming some of it as my own—more and more and more of it.”

  “Stop raging against her, Dhamon. You can’t win.”

  “At least I trouble her.”

  “Dhamon…”

  The dragon raised what amounted to a large, scaly eyebrow.

  “Dhamon, this swamp isn’t safe anymore, if it ever was. Isn’t there someplace you’d rather be? Let’s leave this place. Let Sable have her damned swamp.”

  “As I said, I didn’t force you to follow me here.”

  The draconian dropped the pouch of pearls and shifted the light globe to his other hand. “I’ve no friends either, save you. Where else was I to go?”

  Dhamon wrapped his tail around his side, the gesture oddly catlike. After a moment, the sivak tried again.

  “You’ve got wings, Dhamon. You can go anywhere. Don’t you want to explore the world? We could go to the Dragon Isles, visit places I haven’t seen in decades, places you have never seen—maybe places where even a dragon and a draconian can spend some of this wealth.”

  “Places that are safe?”

  “Places that are safer than this.”

  The dragon’s expression made it clear he was tiring of the discussion. “I have no intention of leaving because of Sable. In fact, I think I’ll start expanding my territory some more tomorrow.”

  “Fine!” The draconian tossed the light globe up and let it hover just below the ceiling. Its glow paled just a bit, and Ragh knew that away from his hand it would go out within minutes. “Fine. Fine. Fine.” He ground the ball of his foot against the stone. “Let’s go exploring tomorrow—maybe find ways to expand your territory, add to your hoard, whatever you want. Fight all of Sable’s armies. Why not…?”

  A rumble raced through the cavern floor and sent everything to jangling.

  “Aw, Dhamon, there must be some place that interests you…”

  The dragon stared at the crystal ball. “Some place? No. But there is someone.”

  2

  She wore tattoos on her face not terribly long ago—a lightning bolt and a jay feather, the latter symbolic of her favorite bird, the former declaring
that she once claimed a pack of wolves as her family. Fast as lightning the pack used to race along Southern Ergoth’s sea cliffs—sometimes in pursuit of prey, but most often just for the sheer exhilaration. It was, perhaps, the best time in her life. There was beauty in the simplicity of those wild days. Now when she thought of that blissful time, she swore she could once again feel the soft, thick-bladed grass beneath her feet and the cool of the woods’ afternoon shadows. She could still imagine the sweet, salt-tinged breeze blowing east from the Sirrion Sea and the pleasing sounds of the gulls and blue herons. All of that was several years ago and many, many miles from here.

  She hadn’t run with wolves since the overlords arrived. The white dragon Frost had descended on the island continent of the Kagonesti elves and turned nearly all of it into a frigid wasteland. Not many of the wolves survived the dragon’s coming. Not many of the Kagonesti chose to stay and struggle against the harsh conditions. They left for other lands. Feril left too, though not with any of the nomadic bands of her kinsmen. She struck out on her own, roaming, backtracking, circling, never staying in one spot for more than a few days… until she crossed paths with Dhamon Grimwulf and his rag-tag crew—all champions of the legendary mystic healer Goldmoon. For a reason still unknown to her, Feril defied her solitary nature and joined them. She fought at their side, grew close to them, to Dhamon in particular. She gave every ounce of her nature-magic and physical strength at the Window to the Stars, an ancient portal where the dragon overlords gathered one night. She and her companions couldn’t best even a single dragon there, but they experienced some measure of victory and gained hope that mortals might someday triumph.

  After the Window they had parted company.

  The leaving was hard for her, but fated to be, she thought at the time. Necessary, she told Dhamon, when he tried to persuade her to stay. She then went to the isle of Cristyne and aided refugees who had fled there from her homeland and elsewhere. The work was hard and rewarding and distracting—she rarely thought of Dhamon. After a year she moved on again—to Witdel, then Portsmith, Gwyntarr, and Caergoth, where at a shop near the docks she paid an old sailor to remove the tattoos that so easily branded her as a Kagonesti. She wasn’t trying to hide her elven heritage, as she still wore the fringed leather clothing favored by her people and made no effort to conceal her pointed ears, but she was trying to put distance between herself and her past, and the tattoos were a symbol of the past.

  She cut her hair a month ago. Once it had been a gorgeous, unruly mass of curls that cascaded past her shoulders like a lion’s mane. Now she was keeping it cropped short, too short to festoon with hawk and jay feathers and painted wooden beads like she used to do. She told herself it was a practical measure, as she was living in the forest now, and long tresses would only become tangled in the lowest branches. In truth, it was one more step in creating a new identity.

  Another new start, another new home—this time the Qualinesti forest of Wayreth. There were wolves here—she’d seen their tracks and spoor several times—and right now she was watching one that sat a dozen yards away, across the creek she was bending over to slake her thirst. The gray was a young female, large and well fed, and her eyes met the Kagonesti’s, making Feril remember those days of racing along the sea cliffs.

  Run with me, the wolf teased with her eyes. There was no misreading the invitation, as Feril understood animals far better than people. Run with me along this stream. Discover where the water takes us. Run with me, sister.

  A part of Feril wanted to shout yes. Let’s fly like lightning! This new identity came with new responsibilities, albeit self-imposed ones. She sadly shook her head. Later, my wolf-sister, her eyes replied.

  “There are men I must find this day,” she said aloud. “I have serious work to do.”

  The wolf tipped her muzzle back and howled softly. Other wolves concealed in the trees to the north answered the cry. A last look at Feril, and she ran toward a copse of river birch to join the hidden pack.

  Feril dipped her hands in the creek and splashed water on her face and the back of her neck, cutting the heat of this late summer day. She drank her fill and stood, looking to the trees for some last sign of the wolf, then reluctantly turned in the opposite direction. Keeping after the tracks she’d been so diligently following for the past day and a half, she loped through the high grass and cherry laurel.

  There were four or five men, she thought, though she couldn’t be entirely certain. It had rained briefly last night, which, though making the forest smell fresh and wonderful, made following the tracks challenging. Fortunately the men were armored and were wearing hard—soled boots. There were other signs she relied on, too—fallen twigs that had been snapped by heavy footsteps, crushed beetles, broken branches on a crowberry shrub, a scraped piece of bark. The men hadn’t been building a fire at night, though she could tell where they camped yesterday because of the tamped-down grass and a few discarded apple cores.

  “How far ahead are you?” she mused. She knelt beneath a gnarled, striped maple and thrust her fingers into the moist earth. Closing her eyes, she reached out with her senses, her mind touching the husks of long-dead insects, brushing up against the tree’s spreading roots. She envisioned herself as the earth, felt low-spreading evergreens and chamomile herbs growing, worms and earwigs gently and tenaciously burrowing. She sensed a doe treading lightly a mile or so away, a rabbit near the doe, two ground squirrels cavorting, a young wolf running. At the edge of her senses was a wild boar in rut. There was no trace of the men. She wasn’t near enough yet.

  “I will find you,” she vowed. “I must.” Her new life, in this new place, her self-imposed responsibilities, her pledge to keep the people in these woods safe all depended upon it.

  For the better part of the day she continued to track them, stopping from time to time to converse with animals—a family of woodpeckers making its home in a yellow walnut tree, a large starling paralleling her path, and an elderly fox that proved most helpful. The fox had watched the men come this way after dawn. He couldn’t tell Feril how many there were, as numbers were unknown to him. As many or more than the woodpeckers in that tree, he tried after she persisted.

  Four or five, Feril translated, which was already her guess.

  The trail led her through an idyllic glade—weeping birch and thin, graceful larches, the bases of which were ringed by hostas, creeping dogwood, and spreading ferns. She slowed her pace for a few minutes so she could better appreciate her surroundings, then, when she passed through the glade and the foliage drastically changed, she started to run.

  Abruptly the forest turned repulsive, the trees for the most part dead, the scant living ones scrawny and twisted, looking thoroughly corrupted. The devastation went on as far as she could see—it was a much larger section of scarred woods than what she had passed through a few days ago. Dark magic was in large part to blame, Feril realized, as she noted the scorched perfect circles on the ground and the trunks completely stripped of bark. She’d traveled with the great sorcerer Palin Majere long enough to recognize the remnants of certain spells. But other forces were also responsible; she spotted patches of burned bark and places where hatchets had slashed deeply into maples and elms. To the west she saw the charred remains of a few cabins. To the south of the cabins were large earthen and rock mounds marked by carved, weathered staves. She suspected these were mass graves gone months untended, most likely holding remains of numerous Qualinesti elves. She considered stopping to pay her respects to the fallen, but she did not want to tarry in this unpleasant place. The sooner she was back in a vibrant part of the forest, the better she would feel.

  By late afternoon she had passed beyond the bleak woods and was running along a game trail. The section of forest she traveled through now was very old. The giant pines stretched more than two hundred feet into the cloudy sky, and there were oaks with the circumference of a small cottage. Feril had been to the Qualinesti woods some years ago with Palin, when the great overlord
Beryl held sway. She had seen with her own eyes how the dragon had used magic to age the trees and cover every bit of earth with something growing. The distorted lushness was a perversion of nature, Feril knew, but she had to admit—then and now—that it was somewhat to her liking. Though the dragon overlord was dead, Feril was pleased the gargantuan trees remained. If only men and creatures left the dragon’s woods alone, she thought. If only they didn’t have to destroy things…

  She stopped suddenly, hearing some noise beyond a tight row of poplars.

  Feril dropped to her stomach and crawled forward, the aroma from the grass and the rich earth beneath it heady. She found herself distracted by the scents, and it took some effort to force her senses to flow through the ground and past the poplars, down a small rise and across a clearing that was cut by a branch of the White Rage River. The men she sought must be there, on the far side of the river. Looking small because of the distance, they were standing in the growing shadows of a thick stand of maples and sycamores. The setting sun was making their dark armor shine, flickering amidst the tall grass and the river, making the muddy water that churned against the banks sparkle like bits of gold.

  There were fourteen Knights of Neraka, the ones she’d been tracking having met up with others. A small force as far as the Knights were concerned, and only some of them were wearing the traditional heavy black plate mail of the Order. As she edged through the poplars and to the crest of a rise, she could make out more details. There were raised lilies on the pauldrons and breastplates and on shields that had been propped against tree trunks. Half wore coats of plates, leather jerkins with pieces of black metal riveted on them—not warriors, these, perhaps scouts or agents of the knights, perhaps assassins or trackers. As she watched, another knight joined the group, hinting that there might be yet more camped beyond the trees.

  “Fifteen now,” she whispered. “Quite a nest of vipers I’ve found.”