The Dragon's Doom (dragonlance)

by Ed Greenwood

  And making its usual mocking laughter. Flaming oil dripped between the procurer's fingers, now; a dart had shattered the cauldron of the lamp.

  Overduke Delnbone snatched one hand free of his blazing burden-which must have been blistering the other-shook it to be sure it was free of flame and oil, snatched something from his belt, and hissed at Tshamarra, "My chamberpot, under the bed! Fetch quick!

  She spun and fetched, and he shook what he'd snatched into it. "Flash powder," she breaDied, comprehending.

  Craer grinned at her as he snatched up the chamberpot, ran back to the secret door, and hurled it around the corner, aiming high and dirowing hard.

  They heard it shatter against the passage ceiling-and Craer set his teeth and flung the flaming wreckage of the oil lamp around the corner to join it.

  Tshamarra hurled herself flat to the floor.

  Darsar exploded right on schedule.

  The blast flung the last of the Talasorns against the wall, bruising her shoulder, but the room soon stopped rocking.

  Tshamarra found her little lantern on its side, the floor already hot beneath it. She righted it and unhooded it just enough to make sure it was still lit and unbroken.

  Craer gestured furiously to her to quench even that tiny flash of light, and she did so, watching the dark shape of Craer crouching in the glowing smoke.

  The passage spewed that silently drifting smoke in profusion, and the procurer kept very low as he stepped into it, moving with the eerie silence that so awed Tshamarra. Oh, she knew a spell that could quell noise, but she could still hear her own swift breathing, the dying echoes of the blast still rolling and rebounding in distant, unseen passages, and even the faint roiling of the air around her… but not Craer.

  She waited one long, drawn-out moment, realized she was holding her breath, and carefully let it out in a gently measured sigh, still waiting for-

  The passage exploded in a sudden bright inferno, and raging flames burst back into the room. Magical, they had to be!

  Tshamarra ran frantically to meet them.

  "Craer!" she screamed-and the roiling flames spat a blackened, struggling figure at her, spinning in a ball of flame!

  8

  Many an Unquiet Knight

  The moon had not yet risen over Bowshun, so the night was very dark. Wherefore boots blundered, branches snapped, and men swore softly as they gathered by Marag Spring, halfway up the trail to Emdel's Glade. They were few, but all carried unsheaDied, ready weapons.

  "Eregar?"

  "Aye, Thunn. Who's with 'ee?"

  "Braumdur," hissed a deeper voice. "With my best blade: 'Twill be a pleasure to let air into the innards of that snake-priest!"

  "Aye," Eregar the hunter agreed, feeling his way to his favorite stump in the darkness. Then he stiffened and leaned into the night, muttering, "Who comes?"

  "Narvul," came the fierce reply, "with my ax!"

  "Good. That's all of us. Time to sword this snake of a priest 'fore he has time to wag his jaws o'ermuch, and turn our wives and lads into strangers, and set them to spying on us. I had a bellyful of that last time-and this 'Brother of the Serpent' is far less sly-tongued and handsome than the snakes hissing at us then. I'll be damned by the Three if I'll let Bowshun be torn apart again by the likes of him."

  "So you shall, indeed," said a new voice, dark laughter in its cold tones. The four Bowshun men barely had time to gasp before ale-brown fire blossomed all around them.

  It lit up Marag Spring, and showed the men of Bowshun each other frozen in gasping terror-literally frozen, only their eyes obeying their utmost straining efforts to move. Though the brown radiance was already fading, it held them like an iron-hard, unyielding claw-and its source was a cold-eyed man in robes now stepping carefully around trees until he could set foot on the trail. Other men walked with him, some in Serpent-robes and some in the motley armor of down-at-heel hireswords.

  "Fangbrother," Scaled Master Arthroon said in satisfaction, "make ready." A robed priest snapped orders, and hireswords lumbered forward to each of the four mute captives, drew a knife, and looked to Arthroon. He nodded and said flatly, "Now."

  Four throats were cut with savage ease, gurgling bodies slumped and toppled, and full darkness returned to the trail.

  "Kick them into the stream," Arthroon said sharply. "Off the trail, every trace of them. The moon's rising, and I want us gone from sight before the good folk of Bowshun answer the Serpent's call."

  Fangbrother Khavan conjured up a glowing, floating serpent's head that moved at his bidding. The Scaled Master gave it a sour look but said no word of rebuke, as the hireswords bent swiftly to work.

  By the time they were done, moans of awe and cries of "Look!" were coming from down the trail. The serpent-head had been seen.

  "Off the trail," Arthroon ordered quietly. "Stop as soon as you cross the spring." Obediently the Serpent-party melted into the trees.

  Cold blue moonlight was growing steadily stronger, and by its light the silently watching Serpents saw folk of Bowshun hastening past the sprawled, unseen bodies of four of their own men, to reach Emdel's Glade and hear the Serpent's call.

  Maelra came out of her scheming with a start. There! A throbbing, a twinge of awakened power!

  Intruding magic was trying to enter the largest scrying-crystal she'd enspelled. It couldn't be Uncle Multhas, for her own covert use of his smallest crystal was at this very moment displaying a wavering image of him hurrying up the staircase where Uncle Dolmur hung all those splendid paintings, through veil after veil of Dolmur's strong wards.

  She dared not continue that scrutiny for fear of being detected by whoever was sending this new magic. For a moment she raged-she must hear what Dolmur said-and then let her magic lapse, waiting for the contact she knew would come. Maelra emptied her mind, seeking calm by holding to a mental picture of glowing flames.

  For all her effort at control, she fell into a brief imagining of herself as a

  baleful rat crouched at a corner where two passage walls met while a guard came tramping past… and then the contact came.

  The spy was probing all of the crystals, to give himself-yes, the mind-touch felt male-many vantage points rather than one, and better chances of hiding from angry Bowdragons.

  It was Ingryl Ambelter, come to spy on the Bowdragon brothers. Triumphantly Maelra pounced on his probe, riding rather than challenging it. Images flooded into her, and she waited, letting the scenes flow over her, doing nothing as Ambelter made his own reaching to Multhas, found the hurrying black-robed wizard, and witnessed the entry of the Roaring-Bearded Storm into Dolmur's inner chambers. There came a little lift of excitement in Ambelter then, and Maelra used it to slip into his linkage, transferring her own spying from Uncle Multhas to the Spellmaster.

  Then she firmly withdrew her awareness, returning to herself sweating and eager. The spell lay ready, written out for this moment, and she was pleased to see that her hand trembled but little as she reached for it.

  It took a moment to dare to whisper the first words of the incantation- and then the spell was unfolding, and there was no time to look back, and this was all so easy…

  Alone in a plain and disused cellar of Maransur House in Arlund, Maelra Bowdragon finished her spell with a flourish, and began to magically trace the Spellmaster of Aglirta back to his lair.

  "Lady look down, Hawk," Embra murmured, putting her hands over both of her breasts to keep them from getting torn by passing hilts or buckles, "not your amor!"

  " 'Twould be wiser," Hawkril growled, settling heavily back down beside her in the great bed. Though she couldn't see him properly in the darkness, made all the deeper by the bed draperies, she could hear and feel that he was in his feast clothes, now adorned with the crisscrossing belts and baldrics of all of his blades scabbarded to him, and his great boots were still on his feet. "They'll have handbows when they come for us, if my guess is right."

  The Lady Silvertree sighed, patted her hip as she thought abo
ut how easily a dart or arrow would pierce the leather breeches covering them or the still-unbuttoned jack she wore above it, and murmured, "And plenty of time to fire them, while I'm still buckling and hoisting up plates and tightening them around you…"

  "Lass, lass, you make it sound as if I wear more barding than three horses! I haven't spells or a Dwaer-Stone to keep me safe when traipsing around Stornbridge Castle barefoot, like you do!"

  "I put my boots on as I was taking the nightgown off," Embra told him teasingly. "I thought you'd be looking."

  The armaragor snorted. "I was." He half-drew his sword experimentally and added, "But for secret doors popping open, and panels sliding to show me ready bows, and such, not at your feet-or a pair of boots slung fetchingly around your neck, either. You look marvelous in leather, mistake me not, but your own bare hide's far more to my liking."

  Embra smiled. Ah, but 'twas nice to be wanted. By the strongest and yet most gentle man in all the Vale, too. "I wonder how long it'll take the seneschal to find my guards entranced, and charge in to hack apart the fell sorceress."

  Hawkril chuckled. "Well, we're certain to hear it when he does. You left the usual blast-trap spell as your welcome?"

  "I did," Embra said a little grimly. "How dare they give us rooms apart? And treat us like prisoners? After donning my leathers, I put my gown back on over them, opened the door to stroll out-and they set steel to me, forbidding me to set foot outside my chamber doors until escorted out come morning! Forbidding me! What do they think 'Overduke' means, anyway?"

  " 'Enemy,' probably," Hawkril grunted. "And after all, they'd be right about that, wouldn't they?"

  It was Embra's turn to snort. "After someone tries to arrowfall us on the road like a brigand, and then threaten and belittle us in converse, and then feed us poison on our platters, that someone should hardly expect us to think of them as anything less." She sighed, and stroked his arm. "I'm sorry, Hawk. I'm squawking like a chambermaid. Even after using the Dwaer twice, I don't feel right. Something's still crawling through me. I… I wish Sarasper was here, to heal us all properly."

  "I wish that winter never came again, and that everyone in all Darsar was so happy and wealthy that they'd never have to raise sword or ax or hoe, and that every day would have splendid weather, with all tables in every realm constandy groaning under the weight of food put there fresh and ready by the Three without anyone having to sweat in a kitchen," Hawkril replied, "but do the gods listen to me?"

  "No," Embra told him dryly, "they're always too busy listening to Craer. His tongue provides endless entertainment enough." She yawned, and then turned to bury her nose in the warmth of Hawkril's doublet and added sleepily, "Wake me when the trouble starts."

  Hawkril reached a long arm across them both to pat his lady's behind affectionately, and rumbled, "To do that, I'd've had to start slapping and jostling you when you were about nine-and that's only counting the trouble you personally started, on purpose."

  "Don't remind me," the Lady of Jewels muttered, yawning again. "We none of us get to choose our lineage, only whether or not we'll be like our parents. That wasn't much of a-"

  There was a creaking or cracking sound from one side of the room, echoed by a like sound from the other direction.

  "Under," Hawkril snarled in Embra's ear in a clear order, giving her a shove into the darkness. He plunged in the other direction, and Embra heard the scrape of his shield being plucked up from under the bed. She almost lost hold of the Dwaer in her haste to get under the bed without transfixing herself on the dagger on her own belt-and by then, the clash of steel had begun, shockingly loud and very close on Hawkril's side of the bed, and the thunder of many boots racing toward her was growing loud indeed…

  "Craer!" Tshamarra hissed, rolling him over. "Craer! Speak to me!"

  The smoldering man under her hands made a husky, rattling cough, and then spat something onto the floor and gasped hoarsely, "I'm alive. I think."

  The Lady Talasorn snatched back one of her hands from him as his leathers beneath her fingers suddenly flared up into open flame. She sprang up, whirled to snatch the ewer of drinking water, and emptied it over him.

  The result was a loud hiss, much smoke, and a sharper stink than had been arising from him up until then. Craer groaned, and the sound almost made Tshamarra miss the scrape of a stealthy footstep in the passage.

  She rose, quivering in silent anger, and stepped carefully forward in the near darkness, as catlike as she knew how. Though she could hear herself moving, the noise she made was far less than the stealthy sounds of someone advancing cautiously along the passage toward her.

  The Lady Talasorn mouDied an incantation, uttering all but the last word. She had few enough battle-spells left, and several overduchal lives might depend upon not wasting a single one.

  Behind her, Craer groaned again and rolled over, shedding flakes and ashes of his scorched leathers. He reached his hands and knees and swayed there, head down and softly spitting curses, arms trembling in the aftershock of violent magic. The stealthy advance in the passage continued.

  Tshamarra watched with icy eyes, waiting… waiting…

  Something moved amid the darkening smoke still eddying in the mouth of the passage, and the sorceress breaDied the last word of her spell as tenderly as any lover: "Harandreth."

  And from her outstretched fingers streaked tiny teardrops of wriggling flesh, surrounded by their own twinkling trails of force. They flew like vengeful wasps, growing little fanged jaws and dark smudges of eyes as they went. Plunging into the drifting smoke, they darted and-struck.

  A hitherto-hooded lantern crashed into brilliant life as it tumbled, its bearer staggering back with a hoarse cry and clutching at his face. Something dark and wriggling was gnawing at one of his eyes, and he shrieked and tried to tear it from his face. The skin of his cheek bulged as he tugged- and then his cries sank into desperate, strangled gurgles as another of Tshamarra's spellspawn darted into the man's throat, striking as hard as any arrow, and started its own gnawing.

  The shattered lantern spilled flaming oil across the floor, and in its light Tshamarra saw the boots of other stumbling men-cortahars, a hostler, and a chamber knave, still in his livery-behind it. They seemed to have lost any enthusiasm for proceeding out of the passage as they hacked, tore, and slapped at her conjured attackers.

  Tshamarra had never found the more powerful spell that gave the wizard casting it some of the life force drained by the spellspawn… so the poison raging through her might still bring her death before dawn. With that savage drought bitter in her mouth, the sorceress helped her dazed and burned Craer to his feet.

  He was dying, too, all because they'd taken one road at Osklodge and not another. Still, the Dwaer they were seeking and the foe wielding it might be lurking somewhere in this cold, hostile castle. Aye, and perhaps Sirl ladies were wearing their sashes a fingerwidth shorter this month, too…

  Staggering under Craer's lurching weight, the Lady Talasorn called back one of her spellspawn to dart ahead of them and light a way to the door. It faded and flickered, her spell almost spent-which was why she had to get out of here, and find Embra and the Dwaer. It could power the simpler spells for both of them, and old Blackgult too, if his wits weren't too wavering…

  The spellspawn collapsed into sparks and then nothing as they burst out of Craer's room together, the procurer wincing and cursing but running more steadily now, getting back his balance.

  "On, Lightfingers," Tshamarra hissed in his ear, dragging him around to the right. "We've got to find Hawkril and the rest!"

  "Hawk's this way, yes," Graer gasped. "Blackgult… back behind… 'tother way…"

  They rounded a bend in the passage, and lamplight flickered ahead. Standing in it, waiting with grim smiles and swords drawn, were a dozen cortahars, with a handful of chamber knaves behind them.

  "Those who do murder in Stornbridge can expect but one fate," one Storn guard called-as they started to stalk forward, in carefu
l, menacing unison.

  Ezendor Blackgult had lived long enough to earn himself vivid dreams. Dying faces, stabbing blades, cold battlefield mornings, and slender hands clutching ready daggers behind welcoming thighs. All of these were familiar visitors, frequently shattered with bright Dwaer-fire, remembered explosions, and the hate-filled faces of shouting mages. Nor was the Golden Griffon any stranger to coming awake shouting himself, in a cold sweat or with a sleeping fur clutched in his hand as if it were the throat of a hated foe.

  But this time the pain seemed real, as he was jolted from dark slumber by agony as great as he'd ever felt before, a red tide of burning pain that brought him awake and straining to rise-in a sticky wetness of his own blood enlivened by two snarling faces above him, in the glaring light of a lantern.

  Those faces belonged to men he'd never seen before, but their intent was clear enough. He was staring at the ceiling of his sleeping chamber in Stornbridge Castle, between the tall and lancelike cornerposts of his bed-one that lacked a canopy, thank the Three, or it'd be aflame right now, and cooking him!

  The intent of the two chamber knaves above Blackgult was clear because their hands were on the hafts of the two spears that had pierced right through him-one from either side; orderly fellows-to pin him to the bed.

  The eldest baron of Aglirta, and sometime Regent of the Realm, could only writhe as they laughed and bore down. Already he was both numb and afire, red mists of pain threatening to overwhelm him entirely.

  "Bring that lamp herel" someone snapped from the foot of the bed, as Ezendor Blackgult slapped his hands against the two spearshafts, and fought to close trembling fingers around them. They glistened with his own gore; his hands slipped, and then slipped again. He fumbled his way higher up the shafts as the lamp bobbed around from his right to somewhere beyond his knees.

  "Ah, the great Griffon struggles," the same voice gloated. "Fitting. Let him the struggling, knowing the Serpent has collected his life at last!"

  A head came into view above Blackgult's knees-a bald, cruel head, of a man who stood with the cowl of his serpent-adorned robes thrown back. A small, vertical coiling serpent was branded on one of his cheeks; it gave his smile a crooked appearance. The man was smiling now, as he slowly drew a wavy-bladed dagger and held it up to the light for Blackgult to see.