Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two (33 page)

I was dead the moment I left Fairhaven, Aric thought—as soon as I left Kelas’s office. Sevren, Zandar, and Vor died when they agreed to accompany me. The rest was just the completion of the journey.

“I will leave you to meditate on that thought,” Farren said, standing. “I’ve seen your heart, Aric.”

Aric looked up sharply, not sure what to expect. The orc paladin’s face looked troubled.

“You take your vow tonight.”

T
he catastrophic avalanche in the canyon had cost over a dozen lives, but—as Haldren pointed out—it saved what might have been weeks of work chipping away at the stone. When the rubble and bodies were cleared away, Ashara led a team of artificers and magewrights to examine the crystal and the rock that remained around it, and they declared that the excavation was complete—the front face of the azure monolith was fully exposed, and the work of building the Dragon Forge could begin.

Ashara tried to explain to Cart what the various parts of the forge were for, but it was mostly lost on him. The first step was the construction of some sort of reservoir, to hold the magic energy that poured out of the crystal. Two large cylinders studded with gemstones flanked the blue slab, and a delicate tracery of swirling gold inlay connected them to an ornate ring at the center point between them. The inlay took as long to complete as the enormous cylinders—the work was excruciatingly slow, as artificers scratched the shallowest possible grooves in the crystal’s surface and filled them with minute amounts of gold. The forward-leaning angle of the monolith made the work more complicated, requiring the artificers to defy gravity with their magic to keep the gold in place.

As a further complication, the darkness within the crystal shadowed their every move—watching over their shoulders, as it were, in case they made any slip that might allow its escape. Ashara put the artificers on short shifts, so no one had to endure the fiend’s scrutiny for too much time at once. Even so, its constant, visible presence heightened the anxiety that already gripped the camp, shortening tempers beyond even Haldren’s ability to soothe.

The miners, meanwhile, began digging into the canyon floor, creating the trenches and chambers that would ring the forge itself. Though they were well away from the crystal and the darkness inside it, they were just as edgy and unsettled as the artificers. Cart hoped they would not turn their mining picks and shovels on each other.

During this phase of construction, the soldiers had nothing to do, and what Cart had thought would be a much-needed respite, helping them calm their nerves and rest their weary bodies, actually gave them opportunity to drink heavily and brawl. Cart had to break up at least one all-out fight each day, as well as a few smaller squabbles. When a soldier actually stabbed him, he decided it was time to bring the matter to Haldren’s attention.

“And what do you propose we do about it?” Haldren asked.

“They need work,” Cart said, shrugging. “Ashara tells me that it will be another two or three days before she can give them anything to do.”

“Let them hunt the damned worgs.” The worgs had been howling each night, further troubling everyone’s sleep.

“I’m loath to risk their lives like that. Every fight with the worgs has ended with at least one soldier dead.”

“That wasn’t a suggestion, soldier,” Haldren snapped. “It was an order. You may organize the parties as you see fit, but I want everyone in this camp who doesn’t have other work to do hunting worgs. Today.”

Cart stared at the Lord General. He had not noticed the lines of fatigue on Haldren’s face, the darkness under his eyes. His hair was growing long again, and he looked almost as old as when he first left Dreadhold. And no wonder—of the three allies who had rescued him, only Cart was left. Darraun had been a spy, and he was dead. And neither Cart nor Haldren had seen Senya since the battle at Starcrag Plain. Haldren might as well have been in Dreadhold again, and he knew it. He had nothing left—nothing except Cart, at least, and now he seemed determined to drive Cart away as well.

“Is there a problem?” Haldren said. “Do you take issue with my orders?”

Cart was the soul of obedience. He was made to be a soldier, and he would be the best soldier he could be. “No, Lord General.” He turned and strode out of Haldren’s tent, Ashara’s words nagging at his mind.
You’re a hero
.

Cart gave Tesh a promotion, putting him in charge of half the remaining soldiers. Cart led the other half himself. By dividing the soldiers into only two parties, Cart hoped he’d increase their chances of surviving contact with the enemy—and perhaps decrease their chances of encountering the enemy at all. He’d made their orders clear. They should kill any worg they found. To Tesh, he stressed that they should make no particular effort to find any worgs. The real purpose of the excursion was to keep the soldiers busy for two days, to make sure they didn’t kill each other. If worgs killed them, it defeated the purpose.

Cart’s team would make widening arcs around the head of the canyon, while Tesh’s group patrolled the length of the canyon itself. They’d go out from the camp for a day, then work their way back on the second day. Ashara promised him that she’d speed the artificers along so there would be work for the soldiers when they returned.

“I wish I could come with you,” she told him as he prepared to go.

“You’ll be much safer here,” Cart said. “What makes you think I want to be safe?”

“I … I don’t—”

She smiled and clasped his arm. “Good luck, Cart,” she said. “Sovereigns keep you.”

Cart led his team a short way down the canyon, to a point where they could scale the wall and begin their first arc around the head of the canyon and its terrible crystal. They stayed close to the edge of the canyon for their first pass. Cart was pleased to see the mood of his soldiers lighten, especially once they realized that they weren’t really looking for worgs. He was sure it helped that they’d put some distance between themselves and the fiend imprisoned at the camp.

But tensions grew again as the morning slipped by and they spotted the camp below. At about the time the azure monolith came into view, one soldier stepped on the heel of the man in front of him, who wheeled and shoved the offender, nearly sending him over the edge into the canyon. If Cart hadn’t lunged to grab the toppling soldier, he would have fallen. At that point, he ordered the soldiers into a wider formation and they marched in silence. He caught himself warily eyeing the crystal as it came nearer, and he noticed the others doing the same. They were not fools. They could sense the evil trapped inside.

As they rounded the canyon, it was hard to take his eyes off the blue stone below, and the course of their march always seemed to drift closer to the edge. When another soldier nearly toppled over, this time just because he wasn’t watching where he was going, Cart called a halt. He altered their course to go directly away from the crystal, widening their arc around it.

That new course led them up a narrow ridge and back down a gentler slope into a valley running parallel to the canyon. Mounds of dirt and rubble piled at the bottom of the valley told Cart immediately that something was very wrong, and he put the soldiers on guard. As they continued down, Mirra—the resourceful sergeant—pointed ahead and to their left.

“Captain,” she said, “there’s a mine shaft.”

Cart called a halt, and the soldiers stopped their march, shuffling uneasily as they came to rest. “Has anyone heard of mining activity in these hills?”

“We had to bring miners from Breland,” Mirra pointed out.

“Can’t teach a farmer to mine,” another soldier added. Aundair was known as an agricultural nation, not for its mineral wealth.

At a glance, Cart guessed that the shaft drove into the hill in exactly the direction they’d come—straight back to the crystal. Had the worgs found another way to access the object of their devotion? Could worgs dig? He’d seen dogs bury bones in the ground, but dig a shaft through solid rock? He ran his fingers absently over the plates covering his chest, remembering the wounds the worgs had dealt him. They had claws and teeth that
could tear into adamantine—certainly they could dig a tunnel through rock.

“We didn’t go looking for worgs,” he said, “and we all hoped we wouldn’t find them. But I think we have, so we need to prepare.”

As he spoke, he was trying to formulate a plan. They needed more information, but his group was too large to watch the mine without alerting the worgs. Were there worgs inside? They couldn’t attack them there—the defenders would have a decisive advantage, even discounting the worgs’ innately superior strength. And Cart wasn’t about to discount that factor. He wanted to keep as many soldiers alive as possible.

He decided to gamble on worgs being inside. They hadn’t seen any worgs in the area, and he would have expected at least a single guard at the shaft if the rest of the pack was elsewhere. So he led his soldiers closer to the shaft entrance, fanning them out to form defensive lines around it. The shaft was dug into a low bluff in the side of the valley, one place where the gentle slope formed more of a wall. He hoped to close the wall with a ring of swords and spears to hold the worgs in place, but he didn’t have time. A warning bark erupted from the shaft entrance, answered by what seemed like a symphony of howls. The howls echoed in the shaft, certainly, suggesting that the worgs had greater numbers, but that knowledge didn’t keep him from fear’s grasp.

“Steady,” he said. The worgs wouldn’t erupt from the shaft unless they saw that they would soon be trapped.

And just as his soldiers were about to close the trap, worgs sprang out of the entrance and bolted for the narrow gap that remained between Cart and the rocky bluff. They came like arrows loosed from a single bow, one at a time in a stream of a half-dozen.

There was no way Cart and the soldiers with him at the front of the line could stop all of the charging worgs, and only a handful of other soldiers were close enough to help. He fell back, leaving room for the worgs to pass. The worgs weren’t any more interested in a fight than Cart was, so he let them go. As soon as they had passed the soldiers’ line, they scattered to the winds.

“Mirra,” he called, and the sergeant scurried to stand before him. “Take two squads back to the camp. Tell Haldren what we found, and come back here with miners—as many picks as the camp can spare.”

Mirra saluted and went to gather her two squads. Cart pulled the other soldiers together and started preparations to spend the night at the worgs’ den.

No one slept. Camped outside the entrance to the worgs’ shaft, the soldiers were in constant fear of worgs, and the shaft itself loomed like a constant, vigilant presence. Soldiers who glanced that way turned away quickly, and Cart felt a slow pulse that resonated in the metal cores of his limbs, a sensation that hovered just at the edge of pain. He wondered how far the shaft went—had the worgs already succeeded in clearing a path to the crystal, opening a channel for its awful presence to extend into the neighboring valley?

As soon as the sun’s light faded completely from the sky, the worgs launched their first attack. They struck at the weakest point—a relatively small cluster of soldiers a short distance from any reinforcements. It was a quick and brutal strike, leaving two soldiers dead, then the worgs retreated before any help could arrive. Cart pulled the troops closer together, and they nervously awaited the next attack.

The worgs always came just as the soldiers began to relax or grow tired, letting their attention wander and loosening their grips on their weapons. Each time, they left at least one soldier dead or grievously injured, and as far as Cart could tell, the worgs had suffered no significant wounds. As the night wore on, the attacks became less frequent as the tension among the soldiers grew, but each one took a greater toll as fatigue slowed their reactions and weakened their hands. Cart managed to bring down one worg when the beasts made their only significant mistake—attacking too close to where Cart stood guard.