The Seal of Karga Kul: A Dungeons & Dragons Novel (3 page)

What’s in the box?

“No,” Remy moaned. “Don’t.”

The vizier had warned him. If you open the box—if you so much as crack the seal that holds it shut—you might not die, but you will wish you had. And if you don’t die from what the box contains, you most certainly will when I find you again. You are a good messenger, Remy. Do not disappoint me in this.

With that, the vizier Philomen had disappeared through the curtains into his inner chambers, leaving Remy with the box he dared not open and a letter to present at the stable just inside the Undergate, in return for which he would be given a horse. Toradan was a week’s ride. Perhaps ten days if he made excellent time and encountered no trouble along the way.

Remy woke to the smell of stew. The odor of cooking fat hooked him and hauled him up from the depths of his fever into waking life. He shivered and opened his eyes, confused at first by the angle of the sun. Long shadows lay across the wastes and behind he heard conversation in low voices. He rolled over, legs tangled in a blanket that was
not his. He blinked the sleep from his eyes and pinpointed where the voices where coming from.

Like most residents of Avankil—or any of the settlements along the Dragondown Coast—Remy had only seen a few dragonborn. They kept to themselves, by and large, and their travels—for the dragonborn were a rootless and wandering race—tended to pause only in the company of other dragonborn. From time to time, Remy had seen them on board ships that docked Quayside. Once he had run a message from one such seafarer to the dragonborn clan enclave upstream of Quayside, near the Outer Wall in the oldest quarter of Avankil. On the whole, dragonborn didn’t spend much time in the settled coastal cities, preferring to spend their time in places more likely to yield adventure.

And there was one—a female, no less, armed and armored—stirring a small pot over a campfire off the road between Avankil and Toradan. She looked over at the motion and said, “Ah. So you did live. Praise to Bahamut.”

“Or to Keverel’s medicines,” cut in a halfling woman sitting at the dragonborn’s left. She nodded at a human wearing the holy symbol of Erathis and the sunburn of someone who spent most of his time under a roof.

“The cleric is honest in his worship. Bahamut does not consider the followers of Erathis enemies of the Law,” the dragonborn returned. “Be flip about something else, Kithri.”

The halfling stood and somersaulted backward. “I am flip,” she announced, and went over to Remy. “So. I’m Kithri.” Pointing at each member of the party in turn, she introduced them. “The humorless dragonborn there
is Biri-Daar. Keverel there saved your life with his clerical ministrations. He and Biri-Daar will bore you to death with their notions about Bahamut and Erathis. You ask me, there’s not much difference between a god of civilization and law and a divine dragon dedicated to justice and honor. The sourpuss with the bow is Lucan, and the quiet one in the wizard’s cloak is Iriani.”

She squatted and tapped Remy on the shoulder. “Now you know us. Here’s what we know about you. You were traveling from Avankil. You were attacked by stormclaw scorpions. You killed several of them. After they killed your horse and you slipped into your fever, something else came along and ate the horse.”

“You should feel lucky it didn’t eat you,” Lucan said from the other side of the campfire. He was an elf. His dress, leathers, and muted colors marked him as a ranger with long experience in the trackless wilderness of the Dragondown. Iriani, sitting quietly at the edge of the campfire’s light, also had the elongated, angular features that bespoke elf blood, but his aspect was more human. A half-elf, Remy thought. They were known to be drawn to the magical arts. Iriani had acknowledged Kithri’s introduction with a nod in Remy’s direction but had not yet spoken.

Already it was brighter, the shadows were shorter, and Remy realized with a shock that it was not evening but morning. He sat up and thought that he might attempt to get to his feet.

“How long have I been …?”

“Before we came along, who knows?” Kithri said. “A day, probably. And another half day since we found you. Probably other travelers passed during that time but didn’t think you had anything worth taking.”

“She and I disagree about that,” Lucan said.

“Lucan and I disagree about everything,” Kithri said. “It passes the time.”

“If there are stormclaws around, probably there’s a ruin nearby,” added the cleric Keverel. “They tend to congregate in such places. I believe this road dates from the times of Bael Turath, before the great war. There could have been an outpost …” He trailed off, looking around. “The land reclaims what the higher races abandon.”

“Higher races,” Kithri said drolly. “Speak for yourself.”

“Wonder if there’s anything to be gained from having a look around for that ruin,” Lucan said.

“Depends,” Biri-Daar said. “Are you taking our mission to Karga Kul seriously, or are you adventuring?”

“You say adventuring like it’s a bad thing,” Kithri said.

“Wait,” Remy said. He was having trouble following everything they said; it seemed like he was still feeling the effects of the venom. “I have to get to Toradan,” he said.

“It’s that way,” Kithri said, pointing down the road. “Maybe five day on foot. Not that it matters. If you go walking alone in this desert, you won’t live a day.”

“My errand is urgent. I—I thank you for saving me, but the vizier of Avankil will—”

“String you up by your thumbs? Run a ring through your nose and lead you around his chambers? Put you to work
in the kitchen?” Kithri winked, but Remy had no time or patience for jokes. He was frightened and confused and very conscious of the time he had lost on his task for Philomen.

“Please,” Remy said. “I have to take this to Toradan.” He showed her the box. Reflexively his fingers traced the runes carved into its lid.

“What exactly is the errand?” Keverel asked. His fingers traced the outline of his holy symbol, a silver pendant worked in the gear-and-sunburst motif of Erathis. “What does the box contain?”

“I don’t know,” Remy said.

“No one told you?”

Lucan tsked. “Never take anything anywhere for anyone unless you know what it is,” he said.

“And why they want it to go where they want it to go,” Kithri added.

“I already did,” Remy said. “And now that I’ve said it, I have to do it.”

“Admirable,” said Biri-Daar. “It is too rare that one finds that kind of commitment. But unless you want to walk the rest of the way by yourself,” the dragonborn went on, “you’re going to be traveling with us for a while. And scorpions are hardly the worst things you’re going to find out here.”

Having no choice, Remy went, at least until he could think of a better plan. He wasn’t going to get a horse from them unless he stole it, and he didn’t think that he could steal a horse. When he was a child, he’d stolen things here and
there, but to steal a horse from a party of adventurers in the wilderness … for one thing, they would hunt him down and kill him if they could. For another, it was wrong.

So, with the option of theft removed, Remy turned with Biri-Daar’s group—it was clear that the dragonborn, a paladin of Bahamut, was the leader of the group—and followed the road back toward Crow Fork. The sun burned down and morning haze lifted, replaced by the glimmer of mirage at the horizon. “Sometimes,” Iriani said, “you can see the mountains in a mirage. Then when you see them with your own eyes, you fear that it’s magic.”

Remy guessed that he wouldn’t mind seeing the mountains whether by magic or other means. Anything to get him out of the wastes. Around them, flat, salt-stained sand stretched to the horizon, broken only by the occasional small heave of a hill or protruding stone. No bird sang, no lizard crept. If life was there, it kept to itself.

Like stormclaw scorpions, perhaps, hiding under the earth until they emerged from their ruined lair in the cool and darkening evenings.

The welts left by their stingers still puckered angry and red on Remy’s legs and the back of his left hand. He had survived. He felt stronger, not just because of his five companions but because he had fought off stormclaw scorpions. They had not killed him. Whatever came next on the road—before he could finally get to Toradan with Philomen’s box—Remy felt that he was ready for it.

After the first day of travel, trying to keep up with a party on horseback, Remy was also more than ready to get
a horse again. Biri-Daar’s idea was that they would see what was on offer at Crow Fork Market, which they would reach the next morning—“If you can keep your pace up,” she added with what on a dragonborn’s face passed for a smile. “If not, it’ll be two days.”

As night fell they built a fire. “Just like last night, except this time you’re not rolling around sweating in your sleep,” Kithri joked to Remy. The evening meal was dried fruit, cheese, and bread; they’d had meat that morning, and would again the following morning. Then, with any luck, they’d arrive at Crow Fork Market and replenish their supplies before continuing the trek.

“Where are you going again?” Remy asked at the end of the meal.

“Karga Kul,” Lucan said. “The great cork stuck in the bottle that would pour the Abyss out into this world.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Remy said with a grin.

“It is,” Biri-Daar said. “I was hatched there. It is the city of my dreams, the city I would grow old in. The city I would die in, if I had to die somewhere.”

“Listen to Biri-Daar talk about dying,” Iriani chuckled. “She’s yet to meet the foe that can nick her sword, and yet she thinks about dying. You dragonborn.”

“Bahamut will decide,” Biri-Daar said.

At the mention of the god’s name, Remy caught a gleam of pale light beyond the glow of the campfire.

“You better hope something interesting happens between now and Karga Kul,” Kithri said. “And by interesting, I mean something that ends with some kind of booty. Otherwise
you’re going to owe Biri-Daar for a horse. She’s not forgiving when it comes to debt.”

“I’m not going to Karga Kul,” Remy protested. “I must get to Toradan.”

“Then go right ahead back the way we came. Give the stormclaws and the hobgoblins our greetings,” Kithri said.

Remy stewed. He knew he wouldn’t survive the road to Toradan on his own. Kithri was right about the hobgoblins. They controlled everything on the map between the few points of civilization, of which Avankil and Karga Kul were the largest. Even the substantial towns such as Toradan were on constant alert against hobgoblin incursions, and the roads between settlements were heavily preyed upon by the creatures native to the wastes.

“Erathis has brought us together, Remy,” Keverel said. “Whatever worldly errand you contemplate, remember that the gods dispose and we must follow.”

Again, as Keverel mentioned the god’s name, something shone briefly just beyond the light. “Did you see that?” Remy asked. He pointed into the dark, in the direction of the gleam.

The others looked that way. “See what?” The elf-blooded had better night vision; Lucan stiffened as he caught sight of something.

“Stay close to the fire,” he said, as a chilling cackle came out of the darkness.