Key of Living Fire (The Sword of the Dragon) (34 page)

From a small tunnel the dark figure of a man emerged. He strode down the long cavern, head bowed. A growl spiked his words as he knelt before the water skeel. “I fear you not, mighty one. Only I seek to bring my consortion with the spirits to a new depth. I would be joined with them as the Reaper was.”

“Ah, a boon you ask of me?” Cromlin slid down the pinnacle and smote Auron with a massive flipper. The traitor flew across the ice, collapsed to the floor, and Cromlin sped after him. “A request and a favor. Would I grant such a thing when you hold me in such disdain? This thing you desire cannot be found through your master. He would instead seek it for himself.” The creature lowered its face within feet of the man’s and snapped its deadly jaws. “Knowing this, you came to me. For you know that I have no use for such trivialities. But instead of falling in fear on your face, you insult me with that sneering scarred face of yours.”

The creature raised its flipper as if to strike, but Auron stood and held forth the upper half of his wizard’s staff.

Cromlin pulled back his head in a laugh that echoed into the adjacent caverns. He held out a flipper, and ribbons of color snaked along the ice floor, merging beneath it. A geyser sprouted from the ice between the man and the water skeel. When the water fell away, Cromlin held an ornate staff of ice at least twenty feet tall. A sphere atop it faded into every color imaginable. “If you would have a duel, little wizard, then let us fight.” Cromlin snaked his neck around the pole to gaze into Auron’s face. “Who do you think would win?”

Falling to his face before the creature, Auron sputtered apologies. Cromlin’s staff melted into the floor, and he turned his back on the man, sliding back to the ice pinnacle.

“I beg thee, mighty king of the water skeels! Please, without this quest I am nothing.”

“Beg?” The creature warbled, and the cavern faded into strips of yellow and pink. “That, my small friend, is what I like to hear.” It spun to face the man, gesturing with a flipper. “Now, come to me.”

Auron trembled as he walked the length of the cavern. He knelt before Cromlin.

With a smile on its monstrous face, the creature smacked the ground on either side of the traitor. The man bounced, fell to his face. “To shield you from all eyes, Auron, I give you garments of ice.”

The ice around Auron melted until he lay in a pool. When he tried to rise, it pulled him back down with fingers of water. Small waves danced in the pool, washing over the traitor. The man stood, and a sheet of transparent ice covered his body from his hair to his boots. Auron gasped. In agony he doubled over. His body trembled; he glared up the creature. “What hast thou done to me?”

Looming over him, the water skeel smiled. “In truth, I believe you
will
find this ancient master. I had considered ending your life—as I saw no use for you—but then I saw that look of desperation in your eyes. Ah! And that
look
gave me assurance that you will journey until you find this Realm you spoke of. But the journey is long and speed I desire.” It lumbered in a circle with him at the center. “At this moment you must feel as though your skin is on fire, and you are probably hoping it is a temporary condition.”

“Please! Release me from this curse!” Auron screamed and rolled on the ice.

Cromlin warbled a laugh. “This ice shield will render you perfectly invisible on your journey. And it will continue to burn as long as you remain in Subterran.” The creature straightened its course, slid to the pinnacle. Two of the sentinels descended from their perches and shoved Auron toward their king. “There is a secret I wish to share with you, fallen one. For I was in this world long before you, and I remember the war of the prophets and the wizards. When it ended, the prophet’s great city lay buried, yet, as
you
said, Valorian sleeps there still. Go now to the ancient portal through which Letrias sent his minion. Until you pass through the portal, the ice shield will burn your skin.”

The traitor screamed as Cromlin scooped him in one fin and shoved him toward the ice pinnacle. Water streamed from the skeel’s nostrils. The water struck the pinnacle, and a tunnel opening appeared at the pinnacle’s base.

Specter slid down to the ice floor. His heart pounded as he raced across the vast floor and drew near the mighty creature. Cromlin had said that Valorian slept in the Hidden Realm. Was it true? If so, he prayed that age had conquered the ancient dragon wizard. Over a thousand years ago, Specter had fought against Valorian, and the dragon had beaten him. It now appeared that Auron wished to take on the mantle of the Grim Reaper. Specter shuddered at the thought, for he knew it had long ago been rumored that Valorian had created the Grim Reaper. But why was Cromlin helping Auron in his quest?

Specter stayed out of the path of the water skeel’s green eyes, skirted behind it, and grasped the edge of the tunnel with his ice fingers. Too small for a full-grown water skeel, the tunnel dropped like a drain into darkness.

“Here is your exit, little wizard.” Cromlin tossed Auron into the tunnel.

Without a moment to ponder, Specter slipped into the tunnel. He plunged into darkness feetfirst, landed on more ice, and slid without any sense of direction. The terrified, angry screams of the traitor rang back to him, and behind him the ice tunnel entrance iced over.

Specter shot out of the ice tunnel into blinding daylight. But as his eyes adjusted, a green lake spread before him surrounded by hills laden with trees. A butterfly danced on a warm breath of air, and from a nearby bush a bird twittered. A frog croaked.

Dropping to his knees in the soft earth, he smiled up at the blue sky. Normalcy at last! He raised his arms, but his ice hand melted, forming a puddle on the ground, and his scythe drooped, then cracked apart. It fell into a hundred ice fragments, and his merry spirits fell.

A short distance away from him stood Auron, crying. The traitor could not see Specter, for he was still invisible. Auron shivered inside his ice armor, which glistened in the daylight.

Striding to the lake’s edge, Specter knelt and cupped his hand under the water. He blinked and submerged his stub of an arm and looked down. Out of the water he raised a new hand of ice. Closing his eyes, he envisioned the scythe and submerged his ice hand. His fingers closed over something firm, and he opened his eyes, raising a transparent green scythe from the lake. Drops of water fell from it as it solidified. He stretched out his new fingers, flexed his new fist. It worked and felt strangely warm.

Auron cried out, and Specter shifted his attention to the man. The traitor’s body shimmered and blurred. As the traitor gazed in the opposite direction, Specter willed his cloak to render him visible. As he shifted into the visible spectrum, Auron vanished.

So, the water skeel’s gift will truly hide thee, my fallen apprentice—hide you from all eyes except mine and God’s.

Perhaps Specter should have reached out, closed the short distance between them, and slain him. But if he followed Auron, the traitor would lead him to Valorian. Specter gritted his teeth, then smiled. “I will be the angel of death to you, my fallen apprentice,” he whispered. “And to Valorian you will lead me, so that I may exact justice upon his head as well.”

17

SWAMP GUIDE

A
s the viper slipped around her arm and slithered to her neck, Oganna accepted Whimly’s invitation to eat breakfast. “Please, if you will, have a seat, Oganna. I will call your companions.” He disappeared into the other room and returned with Caritha and a sleepy-eyed Ombre.

Whimly pulled out a chair and gestured for Caritha to take it. The seat had no legs; rather, it was woven like an upside-down basket. Caritha sat, and Oganna could tell that Ombre felt cheated, for he had been a step behind their host. But her uncle put a finger to his lips, signifying he didn’t want the Art’en to know.

They sat down and ate a most curious porridge made of wild oats and interspersed greens from the swamp. The porridge tasted delectable, and she took three helpings. Ombre, she noticed, took five. On the more cautious side was Caritha, eating slowly and taking a second and smaller helping.

The gentle wheezing in her ear affirmed her suspicion that the viper had again fallen asleep. Its tail started to slide off her shoulder. She pushed it back into place so that the creature would not fall.

Whimly Janvel was more than a little taken with Caritha. They conversed about the weather and the food, told one another a bit about themselves, and smiled all the while. “You have four sisters? All almost identical to you?” Whimly crooned, “Perhaps one of them is looking for a husband?” He wagged his head at Ombre. “Lucky you are, sir, to have so—so exquisite a wife.”

The color ran to Caritha’s cheeks and drained from Ombre’s. They stuttered for a few minutes until the Art’en’s eyes darted between them and a puzzled expression filled his face. Finally Ombre managed to make him understand that he and Caritha were not married, and the creature leaned back, though with a quizzical frown. He shifted his gaze between them, and then turned to Oganna.

“They are playing games with me,” he said.

“Oh no, Whimly! They wouldn’t do that. They really aren’t married.”

He frowned still deeper. “Lovers then?”

She smiled and peeked sideways at her aunt. The woman kneed her under the table as if to tell her to hold her tongue, yet she couldn’t resist the urge and felt the need to tease them. “Hmm, I’m not sure, Whimly. Sometimes I think not, but at other—”

“Ah, yet I
am
sure that my eyes have not deceived me. Either they are, or they will be.” With a broad grin he slapped Ombre hard on the shoulder. “And you
are
a lucky one—whether admit it you do, or you don’t.” Suddenly he gripped his head in both hands and closed his eyes, cringing as if in pain.

Oganna rushed to his side, and her companions did so too. “Whimly!
Are you all right?
” She felt his forehead. It was normal, no temperature.

Whimly’s gray head tilted back and his eyes opened, though they appeared to stare at nothing, as if he was seeing something that they could not. His hands dropped to the arms of his chair, and he clung to them until the knuckles on his fists showed white. His wings spread to their full span. Speaking in dark tones, he voiced what could have been nothing less than a prophecy.

“Beware, O daughter of the great dragon, for thy bed will be prepared in the dark places of the world, and you will sleep where you do not wish it. In a day of flame and water, you will be powerless and none will save you. Beware, for—should time be allowed—you will be lost in the tapestry of history. And where you are, only One may follow.”

As his eyes returned to normal, the Art’en fastened his gaze on Caritha, and though she could not explain why she believed him, Oganna did. “That was for you, dear lady.” Whimly seemed dazed. When they asked him to elaborate on the prophecy, he could not. “The foretelling is not something I am able to recall, nor is it something I can repeat,” he said. “Trust that God means for it to help you. Yet, for your sake I wish that I could elaborate on this, for then you would know what to do when the time has come.”

Having finished the thing he wished to say, Whimly Janvel stood and showed them back into the other room, which he called his parlor. Oganna offered to clean the table, but he would not allow it. “We do not need the table until noon, so what good would it do to clean it now? Let it be! We will clean it then.”

Settling into a fur-covered bench, Oganna found it easy to forget Whimly’s dire prophecy and her nightmarish experience of the day before. But Whimly brought up the subject. He pulled a reed out of his pocket and chewed on it, then offered some to his guests. One sniff and they admitted it smelled too swampy for their taste.

“This swamp has been my home for a long time,” the Art’en began, “and I know it like the feathers on my wings. These waters are strange and unpredictable, constantly changing in depth and varying greatly in temperature from one pool to the next. Currents run fast, and then slow, and the creatures are unlike any I have found elsewhere in Subterran. Take, as an example, the Aquagiant you faced. Fierce creature, nearly killed all of you; it is accustomed to burying its victims alive in the swamp slime and then eating them later. Its blubbery arms grow as long as its body and can heal themselves rapidly after most any injury. Only one weakness, it has, and that I have learned to take advantage of. Its eyes, having no lids, are vulnerable. Yesterday I poked the Aquagiant’s eyes to free you.”