Shadow Of The Mountain (43 page)

“At first the southerners had rallied behind the black, but the appreciation soon turned to worship as the beast laid waste to any free dragon roaming too close to its territory, a territory which grew each day.

“Elevated to political positions of the highest order, the original mystics present for Mir-Saad’s hatching ruled the desert people, believing in the certainty of their nation’s prominence beyond all doubt. Each beast their dragon faced in combat was vanquished and every carcass was brought to the city center. Polished dragon skulls the size of wagons festooned their walls and buildings—dozens at first, then hundreds. Mir-Saad was the fiercest dragon in all of Endura.”

The man paused for the first time, looking down at young Tenlon. “Are you certain you wish to hear the rest?”

“Yes, I am certain. And I have heard it before.”

Satisfied, the man nodded and continued on. “What came next is still argued amongst historians, as there are few documented accounts of the South’s final days leading to the Pestilent War. For the first time in its life, Mir-Saad released his dragonbreath, and it was not a river of fire that screamed into the air, but a smog of unimaginable poison.”

“Some say it was the ruling Danaki mystics who succumbed to the strange illness before anyone else, that they were the first exposed all those years earlier in the chamber of its hatching and now Mir-Saad no longer needed them. Others believe the black dragon raked the desert city from above with his toxic cloud, and within months the sickness spread north as the Danaki people fled from the misery. No matter the disparity of facts, all can agree on one thing: the black dragon’s breath was death.

“The inflicted suffered skin clustered with boils at the neck, face, and joints. In time the inflammations would turn black and rupture, and shortly after their flesh would begin to slide off their bodies like rinds from rotting fruit. Millions died from this disease, and the realm was cast into darkness for over a decade. There is no way to calculate the total loss of life, for as panic spread with the plague, wars broke out amidst the nations of the north to reach all corners of the map. The world of man, if it could ever be called that, was coming to an end.”

“Until Draxakis and Shadowfist arrived,” Tenlon prompted.

The man raised an eyebrow. “You skirt the sadness, young scholar.”

Tenlon bit his lip. “I don’t like the part where we forced the people out to sea. It wasn’t their fault, and banishing them changed nothing.”

“It is the tragic errors that we must examine most carefully, so they won’t be repeated. The unobserved stupidity of our present will always be a gift of wisdom to our future. Others will look back on the decisions we’ve made today and wonder how we could have been so foolish, how we could have blundered along at the expense of so much. The realm was desperate back then, and desperate people will often turn to radical solutions.”

“We made it right, though, didn’t we?” Tenlon insisted. “Draxakis made it right.”

“The bronze played its part, but there were others who sacrificed their lives so that the land could heal. When the world is in ruin, buried in shadow, always there will be those who rise up through the dark to set it right…”

His trunk was pulled from the water sooner this time and dropped to the floor. He could feel the difference as one side landed first, bouncing against immovable stone instead of the table. Tenlon heard the clasps snap open. Something was happening, he thought vaguely.

Now what was to come? His trials hadn’t even begun yet, he realized. This was only the commencement, the opening act. He didn’t dare imagine how many scenes of torture he’d be starring in, but Darien’s candlelit performance appeared to be what they would be closing the curtains with.

His trunk opened and the light of the lantern burned brightly above, nearly blinding him. He had no idea how long he’d been locked away. Probably minutes, but he felt older somehow, as if years had been taken from him.

Hands grabbed him. He tried to resist but only succeeded in vomiting up water. Vomit was a sign of defiance, wasn’t it?

So much of the muck rushed out of him, more than he thought possible. Every time he opened his mouth, the fluid gushed out cold and rank.

He was pulled from the trunk. A terrible pain sliced through his ankle and he screamed. They had moved to bladework, these Volrathi villains. Tenlon hated them with every fiber of his being! If only he could strike them, or cause them pain!

“What have they done to you?” one of them asked.

Tenlon’s vision slowly returned and he was on his stomach, facing the ground. Hands were patting his back, and he saw his blood splattered on the floor.

Rolling over, he tried to crawl away, but the hands gripping him were strong.

Turning to his torturers, he instead saw Desik kneeling before him, his tattooed hand gently squeezing his shoulder and locking eyes with him. He had the greenest eyes Tenlon had ever seen. He’d never truly noticed them until now. They were so green he thought he might cry.

“You’re a fighter, boy,” Desik said softly. “That’s for damn certain.”

Two short swords rested at either side of him, both red with blood. Behind Desik were the still forms of Vakka and Nelkin, towers of flesh toppled over.

Vakka was face down on the floor, blood dark as wine spreading in a pool around him. The top of his scalp was cut open in a wide, greasy-haired flap, exposing a blood-smeared gray skull. His right arm lay nearly severed at his side, hand still gripping a curved blade.

Nelkin sat on the floor against the doorway, tunic soaked wet and black. He coughed once, the strain of it sending a stream of blood to gush from a gaping wound at his throat.

When their eyes met, Tenlon saw him feebly lift the haft of an axe, dragging the head against the floor as if it were heavier than a tree trunk. Nelkin tried to lean against the propped up weapon and stand, but the motion caused more lifeblood to stream like a river from his throat and unseen places inside his shirt.

Slowly he settled back, resting in a puddle of his own death. His head dipped forward and his eyes shut. The axe slipped from his hand and dropped to the stone.

“You killed them?” Tenlon asked.

Desik didn’t answer. He rummaged around Vakka’s belt before finally removing a pouch of pipeweed. Smelling the contents, he recoiled before tightening the drawstrings and pocketing it.

“They were great warriors,” Tenlon found himself saying. “Songs were sung of them in their drinking halls.”

“They were just men,” Desik said, sheathing his swords and helping Tenlon to his feet. “No more than that.”

***

He held the lantern aloft as Desik used an axe to free Lesandra from her chains. Tenlon’s words regarding the wolf quickened the warrior’s hand. Neither of them wished to linger in the house when the Magi could return any moment and the Volrathi were at their doorstep. They were to make for the
Lancer
at speed.

Once free, they found she hadn’t the strength to walk. Desik took her in his arms and carried her from the basement. Tenlon followed them, listening to the remaining links of her chains rattle softly as they climbed the stairs.

“Tenlon,” she said to him weakly from the top of the landing. “The books. You must burn them. The books, the house, all of it. Burn it all.”

Tenlon turned at the foot of the basement steps, holding the lantern up to the vast collection of scrolls and texts. They were priceless, many of them. But he knew that many others were dangerous spell books that could not be allowed into enemy hands.

It caused a strange pain in his chest, but he knew Lesandra was right. They had to burn.

He hobbled over to the bookshelves, the pain of his ankle swelling with each step. The Volrathi swordsmen must have twisted it when he was pushed into the wooden chest. It hurt horribly, but he had to be swift.

The wind and rain thrashed outside as he swung the lantern about.

“Tenlon!” Desik snarled from above. “Faster!”

Quickly he searched the glass bottles and vials, uncorking three before finding one that burned his nostrils. He flung its contents across the bookshelves before knocking over a table of jars and potions, sending everything crashing to the floor.

Already he could smell the oily liquids and other incendiary potions filling the air. Moving again to the stairway, he pulled the lantern back and swung it forward to throw…

But stopped.

The arcing light of the lantern lit up the spine of a single book on the top shelf, letters glistening in gold for an instant before vanishing.

“Tenlon!
Now!
”

The
Book of Aramid.

Just minutes earlier he had been dying. Locked in a trunk, alone and helpless. He lived now, not because of his own strength or courage, but only because that of another.

Such reliance must change. He had promised himself that he would fight next time, that he would not remain on the hillside while others battled for life, for freedom. The second chance he had prayed for was given to him and such promises were not to be taken lightly.

Quickly he ran to the shelf and removed the book. A weathered case of leather slid into its empty space, with
The Lost Lagreans
carefully handwritten on the cover. Shoving both the heavy text and memoir into a discarded pillowcase found on the floor, he swung it over his shoulder and returned to the stairs.

“
Tenlon!
”

“On my way,” he said under his breath, tossing the lantern out into the center of the basement and hopping up the steps.

The lantern crashed and a great rush of air brightened the basement behind him, but he was up the stairs and through the doorway before feeling the heat.

Exiting out the front, he found Lanard sitting atop a white mare with Lesandra in the saddle behind him. Another dark mare was next to him and he recognized it as Fenton’s mount from their ride through Killian Forest. Desik was nowhere on the deserted street.

The rain was coming down in sheets and the sky was black. Lesandra’s hair lay like a stringy wet curtain over her face and her arms looked white as they wrapped around the musician’s purple suit jacket.

“Explosions, assassins, Volrathi warriors,” Lanard said with a smile, holding his wide-brimmed hat tight against the storm’s wind. “You live quite the adventurous life! One day, my dear boy, you’ll have to tell me what all this is about. I’ll make a song of it.”

“Why does everyone keep speaking of songs?” Desik asked, coming out of the house with a heavily laden saddlebag over each shoulder. Already Tenlon could see smoke spilling out of the doorway.

“You, my friend, will have a song of your own,” Lanard told him. “What greater gift could be given?”

Desik swung the bags over the mare’s back, both rattling with what Tenlon figured to be Volrathi coin. “A warm fire and too much wine?”

“Now that you mention it, both do seem rather appealing at the moment.”

The warrior vaulted into the saddle. “Best we go see what new nightmares await us, yeah?”

Taking Tenlon’s hand and swinging him up behind, the four of them set off for the docks beneath the pelting rain.

“Desik?” Tenlon asked, their mount splashing through rivulets and puddles of rainwater. “I need to ask you something.”

“I paid the stable boy to ride him out a few minutes before I got to the house,” he answered, already knowing what was on Tenlon’s mind. “Took the rest of my silver to persuade him, but the lad rode out at speed for his uncle’s ranch, just north of Galla. Put it from your mind. Darkfire is gone from this place and so are we.”

***

The street they rode on was desolate, and forgotten lanterns swung unlit upon poles in the storm’s bluster. Buildings on either side soon turned to rock as their path angled down toward sea level, the wind deafening and rain stabbing their faces along the descent. After several minutes their cobbled thoroughfare gave way to what Tenlon imagined had once been a dirt path but now was a thick expanse of mud.

Their horses trudged along, plodding through the slop as the path curved to the left. At Tenlon’s right, the wall of rock gave way to open air and the storm gusts assaulted them with renewed strength. Silently he feared the
Lancer
would be long gone from these waters, fleeing the push of war along with their most precious cargo, but as lightning burst from the sky he was given a momentary glance of the harbor and wharf below.

In the distant water was a three-mast ship, sails furled to ride the rolling waves of the storm. Tenlon knew it to be the
Lancer
. Despite their hour, Hagart and his men had waited for them.

Again lightning split the sky, illuminating the tall cliffs that lined the shore. Escaping the mud, their path leveled to reveal a strip of sandy beach about a mile long that was soon snuffed out by more vertical cliffs. Reaching into the harbor were long walkways of wood, looking desperately fragile against the explosions of seawater that burst up from their planks and pilings.

Several docks still held small crafts being flung in all directions by the violent swells, their mooring lines stretching and pulling through the onslaught. To their far left Tenlon saw one of the docks collapse from the strain beneath another flash of thunder and lightning, the timber platform condemned to the Venda so suddenly that the darkness hadn’t even had time to settle. A few pieces of debris bobbed on the surface before he lost sight of it through the pelting rain, and the next flash of the storm showed no sign of the dock at all.

Three men were on shore some distance ahead, their long jackets and hoods buttoned up tight, slick and glistening in the rain beside a small skiff that had been hauled onto the sand. Tenlon shivered against the cold. No one else was in sight, not a soul.

Angling their horses toward the men, Desik dismounted before them.

Hagart pulled back his hood, handing a heavy crossbow off to one of his crewmen. “You’re late!” he yelled through the wind. “And two passengers heavy!”