Bladesinger (21 page)

With Yurz leading them, they traversed for quite some time through what seemed like an endless expanse of hidden caves, shadow-filled tunnels, and sloping passages that threatened to trip the unwary with rocky protuberances and rough, uneven ground. Taen stumbled a few times, cursing the weariness that grew within him at each step. Their battle with the wyverns, the distance they had covered, and the stress of moving like shadows in the territory of the enemy were taking their toll. Finally, after he had knocked his shin against a stalagmite for the third time, Taen called a halt.

“We have to rest,” he explained. “We’ll do no good if we arrive in the citadel too exhausted to deal with the traitor.” The others nodded, and Taen could see by the weary expressions on their faces that they were happy to agree.

“So we rest now?” Yurz asked. At Marissa’s acknowledgement, the goblin began to hop from foot to foot. “Excellent,” he exclaimed. “Yurz know perfect place to take friends for rest. Follow.”

With that, the goblin skirted into a small side passage no more than four feet across. Taen and the others followed as quickly as they could. As they moved, the half-elf noticed that the surrounding air temperature grew warmer. By the time they had reached the tunnel’s destination—a large circular grotto nearly thirty feet in all directions—steam wafted up into the air.

Marissa practically cooed with delight as she stepped into the cave. Taen wondered what could have made the druid so excited until he, too, entered the grotto. Glimmering stones and crystal of almost every color imaginable scintillated and flashed in the light of his arcane spell. It was as if the very stone of the earth were aflame, burning with jeweled incandescence. What’s more, the half-elf noted that the tunnel spilling into the room thinned, transforming into a small ledge that circled the entire grotto. Below it, a still pool of water filled the rest of the cave. Steam drifted upward from the surface of the pool like the trickle of smoke from a sleeping dragon’s nostrils.

The warmth felt good, a blessed relief from the constant cold threatening to suck the very breath from Taen’s lungs. He couldn’t help but let out a sigh of pleasure as the heated cavern air covered his body, wrapping the half-elf in its warm embrace. He dropped his pack and sat down on the hard ground, stretching legs cramped from the day’s exertions. He could see the others doing the same thing.

Yurz remained standing, a wide-mouthed grin splitting the harshness of his face. “Friends like resting place?” he asked.

Marissa laughed as she unbound a length of hair she had plaited for their journey into the earth. “Oh yes, Yurz,” she replied. “Very much so.”

The enchanted creature again hopped from foot to foot, clapping his hands together as he did so. “Yurz know all the secret places of the caves,” the goblin said. “We close to Flying Bridge and then”—he lowered his voice—”we enter the tombs of the man-castle.”

Taen relaxed even more at the fact that they were very close to their destination. Soon, he thought, they would finish what they came to do; then he and Marissa would have time to straighten out what lay between them. The half-elf stretched as he gazed down at the waters of the pool that steamed invitingly. He was about to suggest a relaxing swim when the half-elf caught sight of a ripple in the water’s surface. Looking closer, he could see a large scaled form cutting through the depths of the pool.

Taen jumped to his feet. “What is that?” he asked, pointing to the form swimming beneath the surface.

The others came rushing over, all except Yurz. “Pretty Lady and friends not worry,” the goblin said. “That just the water dragon. It not hurt you—unless you go for a swim.”

The others soon returned to their packs, stowing gear and pulling out the hardened trail rations they had brought with them for their journey. Taen, however, didn’t trust the creature that lurked within the hidden depths of the spring-fed pool. He watched the beast, unable to fall back into the relaxed mood he had just a few moments before. As the others ate and drank, exchanging stories and laughter in the wholly unexpected comfort of the cavern, Taen wondered what the renegade witch was doing at that moment.

A loud splash echoed through the cave as the water dragon dived into the black silence of the pool.

The Year of Wild Magic

(1372 DR)

The Old One sagged within his bonds.

More than a year of captivity, twisted and tortured by Yulda’s arcane ministrations, had reduced the ancient wizard to an almost insubstantial physicality. He was nothing, a shadow, a burning ember of power wrapped in a decrepit and decaying body—which was just as she wanted it.

Yulda gestured and the shimmering funnel of energy that connected her to the dying wizard spun away into nothingness. Her body brimmed with arcane energy, stretched, it seemed, to its limits with the pulsing eldritch power that raced through her very veins. For a moment, she feared that she had taken too much, had sucked the Old One dry, reducing him to a powerless lump of flesh.

He stirred, however, moaning softly into the shadowy cavern, and her fears subsided. The old man couldn’t hold out much longer. Despite what had seemed like an inexhaustible reservoir of arcane might, the Old One’s strength had begun to fade. Yulda knew that she had been drawing too much power from the wizard, depleting his reserve too quickly, but it couldn’t be helped. Her plans were moving forward, and she needed every ounce of eldritch might to keep her servants in line. Soon she would be able to rest, and the Old One would have a chance to regain the precious power that was all that kept his heart beating.

Soon.

But not now.

Another storm beat hard upon the rocks from which her demesne was forged. The wind moaned and shrieked with a bitter voice—one that she could hear even in the heart of the cavern. It mixed with the piteous sounds of the Old One as he wept and panted through his suffering.

“You… you,” he said through great gasping breaths, “you shall never succeed with your plan. The very heart of the… the land rises up against… against you.”

“Shut up, old man,” Yulda spat back, tired of his endless prattling. “I have already succeeded. You and those blind crones are just too stupid to realize it.”

The Old One began to laugh, a great wheezing gurgle of a sound that reminded the witch of someone drowning. “Even now,” the wizard gasped between great bouts of laughter, “Rashemen moves against you. You will… will fall, and your name will be but a passing shadow, soon forgotten and never uttered on the… lips of future generations of our people, you—”

“Enough!” Yulda shouted, smacking the wizard’s face with the back of her own gnarled hands.

She felt the brittle bones of his nose shatter like dried tinder beneath the blow. With a single moan, the Old One slumped forward, bereft of consciousness; blood spurted from his face, pooling beneath him on the frozen stone floor of the cave.

The witch spat in disgust and moved away from the unconscious wizard. He was a frail and bitter man, she knew, choking beneath the shame of his defeat. His words were like flies; they buzzed and hummed around her head but could not bite. Still, Yulda thought for a moment, she probably should check in on the fate of the erstwhile intruders she had banished to the wyverns’ cave.

She turned to find Fleshrender lying comfortably on the stone floor, tearing apart the corpse of a mountain hare. The telthor looked at her calmly as it ripped the rabbit’s soft flesh from its bones. Despite herself, Yulda couldn’t suppress a shudder at the creature’s actions. Telthor, she knew, did not require sustenance to live. The beast simply enjoyed the taste of death.

Careful not to disturb her feasting companion, the witch walked toward the back of the cavern, where an uneven hunk of blue-misted ice sat on a simple stone pedestal. She knelt before the pedestal, gazing deeply into the colored ice. Almost immediately, a dim light began to pulse within its heart, growing stronger with each beat, until an unearthly blue gleam radiated throughout the entire cavern.

Shadows began to emerge in the ice, silhouettes and suggestions of a scene that resolved quickly into a clear picture at a single word from the witch. Looking in the ice, one would think it a mirror, reflecting the interior of the cave in which it sat. Yulda, however, saw with deeper eyes. The cave she gazed at stood several hundred leagues from her demesne. With a sweep of her hand, the picture began to move, searching the lair of the wyverns.

At first she thought the cave empty, for there was no sign of the wyverns or her guests anywhere. Then she caught sight of a large shape almost completely hidden as it lay slumped against a cavern wall. Yulda smiled, thinking it the collected remains of her would-be assassins, but her smile soon changed to horror as she saw the hacked up corpses of the wyverns, bloodied bodies and slashed tails intertwined as they lay still and cold in a cave somewhere beneath her citadel.

How could those gods-blasted fools have escaped their fate, Yulda raged. The meddlesome intruders could be anywhere now! She extended her arcane senses deeper, pouring her newly regained strength into the scrying spell, bridging the great distance between her and the citadel with the merest thought. She scanned the tombs and lower dungeon of the citadel to no avail. With a frown, she went even deeper, magically peering into the depths beneath Rashemar. Through empty tunnels and echoing chambers her mind ranged, skimming over the rude consciousness of half-sentient creatures slithering through the subterranean realm, until at last she found her quarry—and something else.

Something of great power.

It beat against her senses with a wild, almost uncontrolled strength, shining like a beacon in the dark. She withdrew her mind, not wishing to alert whatever power was present. This, she thought, changed everything. Could those fools have been foolish enough to bring the Staff of the Red Tree right to her doorstep? Yulda’s craggy face cracked into a twisted, gap-toothed smile. Such a powerful item would only insure her success if she could bring it under her sphere of control.

It took only a few moments for the plan to coalesce in her mind. She sent an eldritch message to Durakh then called Fleshrender away from his dead plaything. Stepping into the mystic circle inscribed to the left of the stone pedestal, she disappeared.

Her last thought before the spell of teleportation activated was of the Iron Lord’s citadel burning.

The Year of Wild Magic

(1372 DR)

The Staff of the Red Tree shuddered in her hands.

To Marissa, it felt as if she were holding a living thing—an animal shivering in the chill cavern air or quivering with rage. The voice of the Staff of the Red Tree buzzed in her mind like a swarm of angry hornets and had done so ever since they had left the steaming pool. It was difficult to concentrate with the presence of the Staff of the Red Tree looming over her internal senses, but the druid managed to mark their journey from the spring-fed cavern to their current location—a quarter candle’s sojourn—well enough. Yurz had turned to say something to her at several points during that time, but Marissa could not distinguish the goblin’s voice from that of the staff’s angry hum.

She had simply nodded, hoping the creature hadn’t asked her anything important.

Now she and her companions gazed out at the vast expanse of a cavern. The druid shook her head, mentally forcing the voice of the staff to the back of her mind so she could examine her surroundings. Stone and shadow stretched out before her, well beyond the limits of arcane illumination and elf-sharp vision. What small portion of the giant cave Marissa could see resembled an ocean of petrified waves, their undulating crests and troughs stilled by the eyes of a giant medusa, fixed forever in this subterranean world—a world which tumbled down into the depths below her feet as much as it soared to the heights above her. The slightest sound, whether the soft scuff of boot on the rocky ground of the passage or the rhythmic exhalation of Cavan’s panting, reverberated wildly in the vast chamber.

Standing at the entrance to this massive cavern, Marissa felt as if she stood upon the edge of oblivion. Normally such a precipitous location would have spun her head with dizzying fury. It wasn’t so much the height that bothered her—she had spent time enough scaling high-trunked trees and outthrust cliffs—but rather the enduring sense of nothingness, as if one step would teleport her to a place where nothing existed, neither time nor physicality. The very thought unsettled her.

Thankfully, a wide-shouldered expanse of natural stone broke up the cavern’s emptiness. Dark rock, nearly as black as pitch, arced over the cave’s shadow-filled depths, presumably linking their passage with the entrance to the citadel’s tombs. In places, great stalactites reached down from the ceiling like giant teeth, almost touching the bridge’s uneven expanse. Here and there, Marissa could make out thick stalagmites thrusting upward from the bridge toward the cavern’s hidden roof. It seemed to her like a maze of hard black rock, difficult to navigate at any speed. That thought sent a frisson of unease up her spine. Anyone crossing the bridge would find it almost impossible to retreat if they faced an overwhelming attack.

The others had gathered around her, each of them casting a professional eye toward the bridge. Marissa took that opportunity to voice her concern. The others agreed.

“I was just thinking the very same thing myself,” Roberc affirmed. “Perhaps one of us should go ahead and act as a scout.”

“Not necessary,” Yurz interrupted. “Me know quickest way across bridge. Friends follow Yurz.”

Marissa caught the looks that the others cast among themselves. Clearly they still mistrusted her enchanted companion. She sighed. “Thank you for offering, Yurz, but I can send Rusella ahead,” she said, indicating the raven perched upon a gray stone ledge.

“You could do that,” Taenaran responded, “but anything keeping sentry in this cavern would know that something was up if it saw a strange bird flying through.”

Marissa bit her lip in thought. The half-elf was right. There was only one other thing that she could do.