Sea of Death: Blade of the Flame - Book 3

by Tim Waggoner

  Once again the party relied on those members with night vision to guide their way. They left behind the burned area of the forest caused by Tresslar’s blast, and the going was slow once again. The companions made their way through the thick tree growth and kept close watch for any signs of danger. Tresslar no longer bothered trying to detect the dragonwand. He explained that the process by which he’d converted the revealer into an enhancer couldn’t be reversed, at least not with the tools and materials at his disposal. He was, however, attempting to think of a way to repair Ghaji’s elemental axe.

  Tresslar worked through the problem by whispering to himself, speaking more for his benefit than any of theirs. “If the fire elemental is merely injured, it might be possible to restore it to full strength. But if it’s dead, then there’s nothing else that can be done but bind a new elemental to the axe. Provided I can find the time and energy to summon one, that is. Perhaps I could make use of the enhancer to …”

  The companions blocked out Tresslar’s monologue as they marched and soon, almost without realizing it, they found themselves leaving the forest. The night sky spread about above them, stars and moons bright and sharp as new-cut crystal. The ground was devoid of vegetation, barren and rocky, and in the nearby distance black hills rose up, forbidding shadows that blocked the horizon.

  “These are the hills where Paganus’ cave is located,” Tresslar said. “I’m sure of it!”

  They all were, for their path had been implanted in each of their minds by Solus. They had reached the dragon’s lair at last.

  The companions climbed the sloping hillside and entered the tunnel leading to Paganus’s lair. The tunnel was wide enough for the group to walk in rows of three: Ghaji, Diran, and Tresslar in front; Yvka, Onu, and Asenka in the middle; Hinto, Solus, and Leontis in the rear. From Tresslar’s memory of the place—a memory Ghaji now shared—the half-orc knew they had almost reached the cavern where Erdis Cai, Tresslar, and a handful of sailors from the Sea Star had once battled the dragon. The glowing mold clinging to the walls here was a dead giveaway. All they had to do was go around the bend just ahead.

  The cavern was huge, lit by luminescent substance covering both the stalactites and stalagmites. The dim greenish glow given off by the mold revealed no sign of life. However, that didn’t mean the cavern was free of danger.

  Ghaji detected the stink of poison gas before any of the others, and the half-orc quickly called the party to a halt.

  “I thought you told us the dragon died forty years ago,” he said to Tresslar. “From the smell, I’d say he’s still very much alive and breathing.”

  The artificer looked at Ghaji with concern. “Are your eyes burning? Are you having trouble breathing?”

  “I can’t say it’s the most pleasant smell I’ve ever encountered, but it’s tolerable enough.”

  Tresslar’s relief was clear in his voice. “Good. Let us know if you begin experiencing any discomfort. The fumes emitted by a green dragon are highly toxic, and breathing them is a quick way to an agonizing death.”

  Onu’s eyes widened. “Do you really think the dragon might still be alive?” He peered into the cavern’s gloom, as if he were hoping to see a green dragon come charging at them any instant.

  Ghaji grimaced in irritation. Of the two personae the changeling had revealed to them so far, he much preferred Onu’s natural one. It was the quieter of the pair—not to mention the less obnoxious one.

  “I don’t see how,” Tresslar said. “Paganus was clearly dead when we departed his lair. I suppose it’s possible he was restored to life somehow, but someone or something else would’ve had to do perform the deed, especially as the dragon no longer had possession of the Amahau.”

  “Before the shadowclaws attacked, Tresslar’s revealer indicated his dragonwand lay somewhere ahead of us,” Yvka said. “That could mean Nathifa reached the lair before we did.”

  “Traces of the lich’s foul presence linger here,” Diran said. He looked to Leontis for confirmation, and his fellow priest nodded. “I am certain Nathifa was in the cavern, but as yet I cannot tell if she remains nearby.”

  “But if she was here—” Yvka began.

  “The lich might have resurrected Paganus,” Ghaji finished. He turned to Diran. “Is it possible?”

  “Liches are powerful sorcerers, so Nathifa undoubtedly has a great deal of mystical knowledge to draw upon,” Diran said. “But to resurrect a being forty years after its death would require magic of an extremely high order. I’m not certain she’s capable of that.”

  “She does have Tresslar’s wand,” Hinto pointed out.

  “The Amahau could easily provide the lich with enough mystic energy to fuel such a spell,” Tresslar said.

  “Before we go further into the cavern, Solus should scout ahead using his psionic abilities,” Diran said.

  The psiforged nodded and stepped for the forefront of the group. The crystals covering the construct’s surface began to pulse with a soft inner light as he mentally surveyed the cavern.

  Several moments passed, and then Solus said, “I detect something, but I’m uncertain what it is. It’s not precisely intelligent in and of itself, but it does possess a rudimentary—”

  That’s as far as the psiforged got before an ebon serpent dropped from the ceiling and wrapped itself around the construct’s neck. It bit down on the top of Solus’s head, its curved black fangs penetrating as easily as if the psiforged were made of butter instead of stone and starsilver. The serpent’s eyes were a burning crimson, and they flared bright at the creature clamped its jaws tight onto Solus’s skull. The psiforged stiffened, and his eyes changed from a glowing green to a baleful vermillion, just like the serpent’s fiery orbs.

  Diran drew a silver dagger from his inner cloak and lunged forward to strike at the serpent coiled around his companion’s neck. At the same instant, Ghaji swung his axe at the giant black snake, not worrying about what might happen if he accidentally struck the psiforged a glancing blow. Solus might lose a chunk of rock from his shoulder, but he wouldn’t suffer an injury the same way a being made of flesh and blood would.

  But before either the priest or the half-orc could hit the serpent with their weapons, the psionic crystals on Solus’s body began to emit crimson light, and the two companions found themselves thrown backward, as if both had been struck by a pair of invisible fists.

  Yvka caught Ghaji beneath the arms, her elvish strength belying her petite frame, and Leontis caught Diran.

  “Whatever that serpent is, it’s taken control of Solus’s psionic powers!” Tresslar said. “We must put as much distance between us and the psiforged as we can before—”

  “Something like that happens,” Hinto said, pointing behind them.

  The others turned to see a dragon coming toward them. No, not a dragon, but rather the skeleton of a dragon, moving with an eerie liquid grace.

  “Diran!” Leontis shouted. “I cannot turn it!”

  Ghaji assumed Leontis had lost his silver arrowhead during the fireblast in the forest when his clothing had burned. Perhaps the intense heat had even melted the token.

  “I don’t think that thing’s a normal animated skeleton,” Asenka said. “If there is such a thing. Look at it. There are spaces between the bones. They’re not connected.”

  It was true. The conglomeration of bones that approached them was configured in the shape of a dragon, but the separate pieces hung floating in the air, moving in concert as if they were a single unified creature.

  “It’s Solus’s doing,” Tresslar said. “Or rather, the serpent’s. The creature is using Solus’s telekinetic power to manipulate Paganus’s skeleton!”

  Now that Ghaji looked more closely, he could see what Asenka and the artificer were talking about. The skeletal dragon glided toward them with sinuous reptilian grace, but there were clearly gaps between the separate bones. And though they did move in unison, the motion wasn’t perfect. Some gaps would widen for a second or two before closing up
again. Ghaji was put in mind of the way a marionette sometimes wobbled and drifted even when under the control of a skilled puppeteer.

  Hinto moved toward his friend. “Solus, whatever that serpent is, you have to fight it! You can’t—”

  The halfling reached out for the psiforged’s hands, and just as with Diran and Ghaji before him, the little man was flung backwards by an unseen force. Ghaji caught Hinto before the halfling could fly too far, and the pirate’s breath whooshed out of his lungs as he collided with the half-orc’s sturdy arm.

  Ghaji set Hinto down, and the halfling nodded to indicate that he was unhurt as he struggled to catch his breath.

  The skeleton of Paganus stopped less than a dozen feet before the companions and reared back on its hind legs, front feet clawing the air, wing bones spreading out behind it, head lifted high, jaws stretching open in a soundless roar. And then the dragon exploded in a shower of bone—the segments of Paganus’s skeleton flew through the air, the pieces moving independently of each other, swooping, darting, and dipping as they streaked toward the companions.

  Ghaji stepped forward and swung his axe, knocking a femur aside. The bone cracked but didn’t break, and it veered away, deflected but not destroyed. Asenka stepped to the half-orc’s side, gripping her long sword tight in both hands. Several detached ribs shot at her like curved white arrows, and she cut them into pieces with a single stroke of her blade before they could reach her. But though the ribs shattered, the fragments did not fall, and they continued swirling around Asenka’s head, like a cloud of ossified gnats. The majority of Paganus’s skeletal structure circled through the cavern air above them, with only one or two bones breaking away from the mass at a time to swoop downward to strike. Ghaji and Asenka were hard-pressed to stop the flying bone segments, but they managed.

  A thought struck Ghaji as he batted aside a section of Paganus’s spine. If all the pieces of the skeleton attacked at once, there would be no way that the companions could stop them all. They’d be killed within moments. But the segments only attacked a couple at a time, which meant either Solus was resisting the dark magic which had usurped his telekinetic abilities and he was retarding the skeleton’s assault, or he wasn’t trying to slay them at all, but rather keep them occupied. Perhaps both.

  Ghaji swung his axe and broke a rear claw into several pieces. Asenka, using one hand to swat at the bone gnats while holding onto her long sword with the other, struck at a spear-like curve of wing bone. The impact of her blade drove the wing bone into a nearby stalagmite, and the segment broke into a half-dozen uneven fragments.

  “The lich is responsible!” Leontis said, his voice close to a growl. Too close for Ghaji’s comfort. The half-orc couldn’t afford to take his gaze off the murderous flying bones to look at the priest, but he could hear the man’s words clearly enough. “Can’t you feel the stench of her evil wafting off the serpent, Diran?”

  “Indeed.”

  Ghaji didn’t have to imagine Diran reaching into his vest pocket with his free hand to remove his silver arrowhead, for he’d seen the priest perform the maneuver hundreds of times before. Ghaji continued batting aside flying bone shards and waited to hear the tell-tale hiss of a supernatural creature recoiling before the holy symbol of Diran’s faith. But he heard nothing except Diran’s strained breathing.

  “I can’t move my hand toward my pocket!” the priest said, clearly frustrated. “The serpent is keeping me from reaching my mystic symbol!”

  The dragon’s skull flew toward Asenka, jaws spread wide as if to devour her. The swordswoman leaped aside and swung her long sword at the juncture where the jaw attached to the skull. The blow knocked the skull to the ground, and the lower jaw shattered. Ghaji dashed forward and split the rest of the skull in half with his axe.

  Asenka paused to shout to Diran. “At least you know the arrowhead will work on the serpent, else the damned thing wouldn’t care whether you removed it from your pocket or not!”

  “I think I might be able to help!” Tresslar called out. “If nothing else, I can buy you a little more time to figure out how to free your arrowhead!”

  The artificer was just barely in Ghaji’s line of sight, and the half-orc was able to see what the artificer removed from his backpack, and knelt with it on the cavern floor before him. He opened in, reached inside, and pulled out what looked like a large soap bubble. Tresslar stood, cupped the translucent globe in both of his hands and whispered a rapid series of words that Ghaji couldn’t quite catch. He opened his hands and the bubble soared up into the air toward where the pieces of Paganus’s skeleton spun about like a whirlwind of death. As the bubble rose, a second separated from it and flew upward alongside the original. Then those two bubbles doubled, then those four doubled, and then those eight doubled …

  Within seconds dozens upon dozens of bubbles filled the air, with more appearing every instant. Each bubble oriented on a specific bone segment and then streaked toward it, growing, expanding, or lengthening to match the size and shape of the bone it headed for. As the bubbles touched the bones, they absorbed the pieces, covering them entirely. The segments of dragon skeleton continued to float in the air, but though they tried to break free of their spherical prisons, the bubbles did not burst.

  Tresslar smiled in satisfaction. “Thank you, Illyia,” he said softly, then more loudly added, “The water-globes won’t last long, so whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it fast!”

  Momentarily freed from the task of fending off Paganus’s bones, Ghaji turned to Diran. “We can’t get close enough to Solus to stop him physically. Can either you or Leontis affect him with a priestly spell?”

  Diran shook his head. “There is nothing either of us can do to mystically counter Solus’s power.”

  “We’d need another psionicist,” Leontis said, “or a full-fledged wizard.”

  Tresslar snorted. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that last comment. Solus needs to be able to see the bones in order to levitate them. Even his somewhat weak vision is enough, as long as he can maintain eye contact.”

  Solus had suffered a serious head injury when he became free of the Kalashtar Galharath’s control. Tresslar had done his best to repair the psiforged, but Solus’s vision had been weakened somehow during the process. When necessary, Hinto acted as Solus’s eyes, and while the psiforged didn’t seem to truly need the halfling’s assistance, it was obvious to the companions that the construct appreciated his small friend’s kindness.

  “What are you suggesting?” Ghaji asked. “That we blind him? We can’t get close enough, and if Diran threw a pair of daggers at him, Solus would just deflect them telekinetically.”

  Yvka stepped over to join them. She looked uncomfortable as she began to speak, as if what she were about to say went against her better instincts. Ghaji knew his lover was about to reveal something she preferred to keep private.

  “Maybe I can help.” The elf-woman rolled her left sleeve up to the elbow then stretched out her arm toward the psiforged. Ghaji gaped to see a shimmering dark blue design on the fair skin of the elf-woman’s inner arm. It was a dragonmark, one the half-orc had never seen before, and considering just how much he’d seen of Yvka—not to mention how often he’d seen it—he would’ve known if she’d possessed such a mark. This was something new.

  Yvka’s brow furrowed in concentration, and a circle of shadow the size of a large plate appeared before Solus’s eyes. The ebon circle darted forward and sealed itself over the psiforged’s green orbs, covering them as if with a flap of night-black flesh and cutting off their verdant glowing light.

  The instant Solus’s eyes were sealed by Yvka’s shadows, the dark serpent withdrew its fangs from the construct’s head and hissed at the companions. It reared back, eyes returned to their previous crimson color, its coils unwinding from around the psiforged’s neck as the foul thing prepared to leave its useless host for another.

  But before the serpent could launch itself from Solus’s shoulders, Diran manage
d to withdraw his silver arrowhead from his pocket, and the priest thrust it toward the dark reptile. The arrowhead flared with bright blue-white illumination, and the serpent shrieked its agony in a human voice—a woman’s voice. The creature’s scream died away, and it went limp as it slipped from Solus’s shoulders and fell to the cavern floor. Its sinuous form straightened and shrank somewhat, its head becoming white and separating into five fingers. When its transformation was finished, the serpent had become an arm clad in a sleeve of black cloth, withered hand covered in dead-white flesh.

  Diran stepped forward, continuing to focus the silver light of his arrowhead on the arm. He still held a silver dagger in his other hand, and he knelt down and plunged the blade through the back of the bloodless hand. The fingers spasmed once, and then both hand and arm collapsed into dust from which coils of sulfurous wisps like tiny smoke-serpents rose into the air.

  Diran stood. The silver arrowhead no longer gleamed with light, and the priest tucked the holy symbol back into its vest pocket. He continued to hold onto his dagger, and Ghaji didn’t blame him. There was an excellent chance Diran would have need of a blade again, and soon.

  Yvka gestured at Solus, and the patch of darkness covering his eyes dissipated.

  The psiforged nodded to the elf-woman. “You have my thanks, Yvka. I struggled to resist the serpent’s control, but there was only so much I could do. The creature was very powerful.”

  Tresslar turned to Yvka as the elf-woman rolled down her sleeve to once again conceal her dragonmark. The artificer was about to speak when the water-spheres dissolved with a series of soft pops, and Paganus’s bones fell clattering to the stone floor. Now that Solus was free of the serpent’s control, the bones lay where they landed, unmoving.

  “I believe that was the Mark of Shadow, was it not?” Tresslar asked.