by Court Ellyn
Tarsyn dropped to his haunches amid the trail. “Thank you, Mother. I thought we’d never stop.” His face had turned an ashen hue and he gulped air like a fish. Laral dug dried apples from his pack and stuffed them into the boy’s mouth.
“How’s the arm?”
“Throbbing,” he said as he munched.
“We’ll get you medicine inside.” Laral hoisted him to his feet.
The cave was little more than a cavity twenty feet deep, twelve wide. Gouges from picks and chisels proved that the shelter had been as hastily built as the trail leading to it. The flooring sloped gently upward to keep out rain and snowmelt, though a few rodent bones and splatters of bird droppings testified that eagles or ravens frequented the place. At the back, the floor leveled out with room enough for bedding and a firepit. The donkeys huddled near the entrance, their rears turned toward the encroaching night, the cold, and the wind. Vosti untied a bundle of kindling from one of the packs, and soon a crackling fire burned away the clammy chill. A jar of spiced mead heated in the embers, and No’ak passed around a ration of salted elk, dried highland cherries, bread rounds, even a crock of butter. Living against rock and sky didn’t mean the dwarves subsisted without the luxuries. When their bellies were full, they filled the darkness with a tawdry song about a lost pickaxe, with tall tales, with laughter. Tarsyn managed to keep his eyes open for all of half an hour, but medicine and mead soon worked their magic on him. Drys wasn’t far behind. He occupied a corner that amplified his snoring.
“A bear,” Kalla groused, flinging out her blanket. “That’s what he’s kin to.”
The dwarves settled themselves upon the floor as if the stone were as soft as goose down.
Laral wrapped his blanket about his shoulders and sat staring at the fire.
“You need to sleep,” Kalla whispered from her bedroll. “No’ak will have us up before dawn.”
The darkness seeping through the cave mouth weighed on him like guilt. “Remember when we rescued Wren from her uncle?”
“Of course. I thought we’d never leave Brengarra with our hides intact.”
“I promised her I’d never let anything hurt her again.”
“Oh, Laral, don’t. You can’t—”
“Why do we make stupid promises like that? We think we know what life will hold, but haven’t got a clue.”
“Exactly,” Kalla snapped. “So stop blaming yourself.”
Sure. As simple as saying it. Who was this Lord Daryon, and why should he put Wren’s life into his hands? If No’ak was wrong, if Daryon’s help couldn’t be bought, the time it took to backtrack could cost Wren and the children dearly.
Exhaustion soon saved him from his torturous thoughts. But when he slept, he dreamed of snakes. Black serpents oozed up from the stone and writhed at his feet like nubile women, cold and hungry with desire, their tongues flicking over his skin, their breath hissing. One struck his ankle. He woke, kicking at shadows.
The hissing remained, separate from the moan of the wind, separate from the sizzle of the fire. Maybe he hadn’t dreamt it. He sat up searching for snakes. The embers throbbed red, casting dull light against the ceiling, upon the faces of his companions. Kalla frowned in her sleep, as if she too battled nightmares.
No, not snakes. More like one breathing raggedly through teeth, as if shivering in the cold. He saw the woman crouching across the fire, where she hadn’t been a moment before. She rocked, rocked on the balls of her feet, and the hissing matched the rhythm of her rocking. Wild hair the color of shadow was the only garment she wore, and her skin was bone-white. Long white hands reached for the smoldering embers as if to thaw an aching chill, but she drew them to her breasts again and exhaled a long voiceless hisssss like a sigh. She stared into the fire. Her irises were too large, too black, like marbles carved of obsidian, but they reflected no light.
Was this the spirit that gave the mountain its name? She was hardly a giant.
As if she had heard Laral’s thoughts, she raised her face and pinned him with that glassy black stare. Pale lips curled, opened sensually, revealing a row of small pointed teeth. If Kelyn’s account of the rágazeth was to be believed, the demon had had teeth like that. Teeth filed to fang-like points. The woman leaned forward and uncoiled from her crouch. A long, leisurely uncoiling because she was taller than Laral had suspected. Taller than he, surely, but not by much. On hands and knees she crawled through the embers toward him. Her long shadowy hair whipped wildly as if in a storm-wind, and her pendulous breasts cavorted in a swaying dance.
Laral scrambled back into the cave wall and ducked his face. A breath, moist and flagrant, slid across his cheek. The cold touch of a corpse’s hand slithered across his fingers. He dug inside the bracer on his wrist and tore free Lesha’s kerchief. Her parting gifts to him had long been charms that bolstered his courage. He pressed the embroidered wrens between his fingers and clung to thoughts of his daughter’s sweetness, her innocence, her purity.
The hissing ceased. The shadow receded. Warm air full of living bodies and lingering firelight swept over him. He opened his eyes. The woman was gone.
An eye flickered at him from a bedroll. “What did you see, lad?” asked No’ak.
“Nothing.” Laral’s voice was loud and flat with forced denial.
The dwarf grinned sleepily. “Aye, ‘tis safer to pay ‘em no mind. Heard tell of one fool, my mam’s third cousin, who saw … something … every time he passed a certain pool deep down in the mine. He began talking to her, to find out who she was.”
“Did he find out?”
“Dunno. He was found drowned in six inches of water, his clothes torn to tatters, his skin half flayed from his bones by a thousand bites.”
Ghost or not, the woman could have done him bodily harm? Those teeth… Laral shuddered. “Did you … just now?”
“No,” No’ak said a measure too firmly. “Sleep, lad. No matter what you hear, sleep. You’ve a long while till sunup.”
~~~~
40
As soon as soft golden light glimmered upon the cave ceiling, Laral was on his feet. He said nothing about the woman, and no one asked. While they furled their bedrolls, Tarsyn complained about nightmares, and Drys replied, “Aye, each mountain is worse than the last. But, mmm, she had these lips … till she opened her mouth. But ain’t that always the way?”
He said it to get a rise from Kalla, but she wasn’t game this morning. Her glance was evasive, her silence uneasy. She wasn’t stupid; the nightmares hadn’t been ordinary, for they’d all dreamed of the same woman. Laral knew his friend well enough to know that the things Kalla saw had offended her sense of decency.
The donkeys proved more argumentative, too. They bawled and snapped at shoulders and earned a cussing from Vosti as he repacked the gear.
“How far today?” asked Tarsyn, trying to sound optimistic. Laral wondered how many more mountains the boy had in him.
“We’ll be there by midday,” No’ak said. “Though I can’t promise if Daryon will see us.”
“What do you mean he might not see us?” Laral demanded. “You brought us all this way on the off-chance—”
“He’ll see us,” No’ak retorted. “It just might not be today. He takes his time and does what he likes, like any king of the mountain. He once kept me waiting four days. I guess he finally got tired of me throwing rocks at his door. Afterward he told me the stubbornness of dwarves amused him. He’d wanted to see how long my patience would last. I replied that, once, I found disrespect amusing as well, but then I grew up. He’s not above testing a man, so I warn you: keep your temper in check.”
To Laral’s delight, the trail was all downhill. The party hiked at an eager clip around Skynhault’s southern shoulder and onto its eastern face. There the trail clutched at cliffs that plummeted down to the Mist. The roar of the river rode the winds, but Laral dared not approach the edge to peer down. The yellow-gray stone reflected the light of the rising sun and soon grew too hot to touch. Across the rav
ine loomed a mountain more blunted than its neighbors. It looked somehow tamed, as if all its wild majesty had eroded from its slopes. “Is that Gray Mountain?” Laral asked.
“Aye, that’s the one,” No’ak grumbled.
“There’s a bridge, I assume.”
“No, we have to jump. ‘Course there’s a bridge.” No’ak cleared his throat. “Apologies. Daryon makes me cross. Don’t even have to be in his presence and he starts getting under my skin. No wondering why. Look there.” He pointed skyward. A falcon hovered on the updrafts, keeping pace with the party. Its black-helmeted head cocked to inspect them. “One of his spies. Nothing much happens around Luenhault that he don’t know about.”
Tucked below the summit of Gray Mountain, tiers of stone were stacked atop each other. A quarry, perhaps? “Is that man-made?”
“Careful,” No’ak said. “Elaran-made. You look upon the ruins of Tánysmar, once the greatest Elaran enning in the Drakhans. According to legend, she was once a jewel whose towers reached as high as Luenhault’s summit. She needed no walls. The gorge before and the cliffs behind were her bastions.”
Laral recalled the history lessons from his squiring days at Ilswythe, when Etivva taught him about the Elf War. He couldn’t imagine how humans had managed to breach such a mighty city. “How was she defeated?”
“Betrayal from the inside, I hear. Now Daryon makes it the seat of his personal kingdom.”
“He lives among ruins?”
“Aye, his is a self-righteous sort of martyrdom. For that, he’s none too fond of humans, though he’s half human himself.”
“Then why would he help us?” More and more Laral regretted having come all this way.
“He owes me. Though I’m not sure what he thinks of the debt. Ah! Here we are.” Massive stone lintels cut from the cliffside marked the presence of a mineshaft and the end of the tunnels that wormed through the heart of Skynhault. Sun-rotted boards were bolted across the gaping throat, and from the darkness came the chirping and musty sweet odor of bats. The flagstone road unfurled from the tunnel like a parched gray tongue, and there the narrow earthen trail ended. Good to be on broad, solid footing again.
The road led the party around an outcropping of red granite and abruptly to the bridge. Skinny stone pillars and iron girders painted gray spanned the Misten Gorge. Viewed from the side, the construction looked too delicate to hold up a spider, much less ten dwarves, four humans, and five donkeys. Still, the paint was fresh, the stone free of lichen, the geometrical carvings deep as if the bridge had been completed only yesterday.
“Now, don’t rush onto it,” No’ak warned. “Step where I step.”
“Is it rotten?” asked Kalla. The blood had drained from her face. Copper freckles on her cheekbones stood out as stark as blood blisters.
“Not rotten. Trapped.”
“Trapped…” Tarsyn echoed. “As in for-real booby traps?”
“Aye, for real.”
“Can you disarm them?”
No’ak shrugged. “Why? Ogres learned the hard way to avoid the place. Besides, they aren’t the kind of traps that can be disarmed. Trust me. Just go where I go and don’t stray off. Any of you color-blind?”
Laral shook his head; the others did the same.
“Good. Somehow Daryon learned that ogres can’t see the color yellow. Avoid touching anything yellow. At all cost.”
At the foot of the bridge, two stylized dragons greeted them. Majestic wings stretched skyward. Jaws gaped in silent roars. A vestige of gold paint clung to the undersides of the wings, the graceful throats, the eyes. Did gold count as yellow? Laral refrained from touching the sculptures, just in case. The bridge itself was wide enough for merchants’ wains to pass each other unhindered, but to Laral’s horror, each and every plank was painted yellow.
“How the hell are we to cross?” cried Tarsyn. His panic echoed across the gorge.
“Keep your knickers on,” No’ak said. “This way.” Following the right-hand rail was a stone walkway, two feet wide. No’ak walked upon it confidently. Laral stepped out gingerly, a hand tight on the railing. His companions eased onto the bridge behind him. The rest of the dwarves and the donkeys brought up the rear. There was a similar walkway below the left-hand rail, but some of its stones were painted yellow. A massive gate of towering wooden doors and iron beams reared up halfway across the bridge. One of the doors was also yellow.
“When you need to trade,” Laral asked, “how do you get your carts across?”
“We don’t. We lug our ore and our goods on our backs. Or we use calm donkeys like these.”
Tarsyn cleared his throat. “For curiosity’s sake, exactly what would happen if one of the donkeys decided to run across the bridge?”
“Exactly?” No’ak paused, gripped the banister with a hand as strong as a vice, and pressed a hobnailed toe to the nearest board. It slipped from place and plummeted toward the river. Gracefully it somersaulted, yellow-gray-yellow-gray, like a leaf sailing from its branch in autumn. By the time it reached the Mist, it was too small to see.
Kalla gasped and for the rest of the way she shuffled sideways, both hands gripping the rail.
Reaching the gate, No’ak dug inside his shirt and fished out a bronze key almost as long as his forearm. Five keyholes studded the unpainted door. All but one was painted yellow. Daryon builds things, dangerous things. Laral snorted. Clearly. The key opened only a narrow sortie door, one too small for most ogres to squeeze through. The donkeys had trouble with their packs of supplies. Their handlers untied this and that, leaving some things behind, carrying some through on their shoulders, and went to great pains to keep the donkeys from balking toward the middle of the bridge.
Once through the door, Laral breathed with relief. The planks on the Gray Mountain side of the gate were treated with creosote and nothing else. The party spread out. Tarsyn hurried to the other side to take in a view of the Mist tumbling in a white fall. Safe or not, Kalla refused to trust the planks and clung to the railing until both her feet landed on solid rock again.
“Keep your eyes open,” No’ak warned, “and keep your hands away from your weapons. We’re in Daryon’s territory now.” The road ascended in long leisurely slopes, passing friezes that once had been elaborate in detail, though now Laral had trouble making them out.
“No’ak!” Drys exclaimed. “Someone’s following us.”
Laral turned and glimpsed a shadowy hood ducking behind a lichen-splashed carving.
“Course there is. Keep moving. Just one of his lackeys.” The dwarf projected his voice for the scout’s benefit.
Now that he was on alert, Laral noticed other shapes moving among the rocks, not all of them flesh and blood. A glint of metal caught his attention. A … thing, round and bladed, raised a glass eye over a boulder, then spun out of sight. The thing wasn’t painted yellow, but Laral suspected it should’ve been.
Jumbles of cut stone peeked out of ferns and tall grass. The remains of houses, perhaps. Further on, to each side of the road, the stones had been stacked into walls twice as tall as a man. Laral didn’t need to see the eyes lurking there to know every twitch of his whiskers was being monitored. Beyond the fortifications loomed the remains of halls too vast, too expertly constructed to pull down. Domes had cracked like eggs, towers leaned, columns lay in segments like scattered vertebrae. But even beneath the overgrowth the city’s former grace and glory was apparent.
No’ak led the party along an ancient, warped road, once a grand thoroughfare that cut through the heart of the city. He appeared to be aiming for the remains of a palace nestled against the mountain.
“Um, m’ lord?” Tarsyn gave Laral’s sleeve a tug and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. Peering back, he counted eleven, no, twelve Elarion trailing them out in the open, bows in hand, feet whispering on the flagstones.
“This means he’s going to be a right pain in the arse,” No’ak grumbled. “I shoulda sent him warning.”
“It’s not as bad as the
time you forgot to bring his ale,” Bjorni said. “I mean, these are just people. Ale is ale! Besides, you saved his life. He won’t have forgotten that.”
“Hnh! No, but he’s liable to make me regret it.”
A clanking, a chuffing, a clatter of shod feet echoed along a side street, like an armored horse and rider approaching at a gallop. A monster of metal and wheels rounded the corner and lunged. Laral backpedaled but two iron paws struck his chest, knocking the air from him. He landed on his back. His lungs protested, unable to draw breath. Black clouds swirled in his eyes. The choking stink of hot grease filled his nose. Cold iron jaws closed around his throat and pinned him to the ground. Teeth shaped like the tips of daggers poised against his skin. One wrong move and Laral would bleed out right here. He forced himself to lie still and glared up at the monster’s profile. A large, glowing purple eye glared back.
No’ak ranted and stomped. “Damn you, Daryon! This man has business with you. Let him up!”
An Elari glided from around the beast’s haunches. Her hair was as pale as sunlight, her eyes bluer than the untarnished sky and as merciless. “We know not these,” she said, her voice gliding water.
“Oi,” No’ak said with a sigh. “We haven’t time to dally with you gate-wardens, Brionyth.”
“An Elari has eons. We might stand here till then, and I’ll watch the flesh rot from your bones, baerdwin.”
“As appealing as that sounds, this man’s family may not have days, certainly not eons. Let him up!”
Brionyth consulted the iron beast in her own tongue. After a moment, as if the thing had the faculties to weigh its options, the dagger-teeth slid away. Laral scrambled to his feet. His fingers found blood oozing from a gash under his jaw. The beast sat back on its haunches and flicked a long segmented tail, irritated as a cat. The glowing glass eyes took a slow measure of the humans. Brionyth watched the machine intently, waiting for its decision. A dragon, Laral decided, the thing most resembled a dragon, from the copper horns on its head to the plated spikes parading down its back. It even had vestigial wings between its shoulder blades. At last, the thing creaked onto all fours and ambled off toward the palace.