Authors: Dennis L. McKiernan
“Be ready to flee,” sissed Egil. “They are too many to fight. We must at all odds avoid capture by that monster inside.”
Aiko growled, but said nought.
Now several Drôkha marched out to peer over the precipice and down into the cove.
Horrified screams came wailing from below, shrieking up and over the rim, followed by keening and blubbering and then more terrified shrieks. And a troop of Foul Folk came trampling up the final switchback and onto the verge above. And stumbling among them and jerked along, shackled and screaming and pleading, floundered a weeping one-eyed old man.
Alos.
A
s the Drôkken band dragged screaming Alos into the fortress and the portcullis clattered down, Egil declared, “We must rescue him.”
Aiko, nearby, in a toneless voice said, “If we attempt to do so it will jeopardize the mission.”
Egil turned his head toward her and replied, “If we do not, he will die horribly.”
Ferret hissed, “But this is the man who said if we were captured he would not lift a finger to help us.”
Egil now faced her. “He was not put to the test.”
Aiko said, “If he had been, he would have failed.”
“Would you have us fail, Aiko?” asked Egil. “For it is we who are now being put to the test.”
Aiko looked at Egil impassively and said, “Do you ask that we balance the life of a single man against all those to be lost should this mission fail?”
Delon hissed, “Regardless as to whether we weigh the needs of one against many, we must go forward now while the guards are occupied with the spectacle of a shrieking old man in chains.” Delon began crawling forward, toward the base of the tower, depending on the concealment of his cloak as well as the distraction of Alos’s capture to see him safely to his goal.
The others followed after…
…and in a trice they had reached the spire.
Still the old man’s screams drifted on the air, but suddenly they were chopped off, as if a door had closed.
Delon stood in the darkness below the tower and examined the stone. Beside him Ferret ran her hands across the blocks and said, “Rather effortless, I would think.”
Delon nodded, then turned to the rest. “The blocks are
large and rough and the mortar sparse. We should all be able to free-climb, though I will snap a short line from me to Dara Arin, while Burel does the same with Egil.”
“But Burel and I must both be unfettered in case there is a need to fight,” protested Egil, examining the stone. “In spite of my inexperience, I think I can manage this.”
Delon looked at the Fjordlander, then said, “Burel, stay near him in the event he needs aid.”
Aiko said, “I will lead.”
They shed all unnecessary equipment, and even though they planned on using no climbing gear, still they donned the harnesses and attached ropes and lanterns and hammers along with rock-nails and snap-rings, for as Delon said, “We simply don’t know what might lie above.”
Aiko and Burel rearranged the straps and buckles of their sword belts to sling the weapons across their backs. Arin slipped her bow and quiver across her shoulders, and then Delon snapped a rope between himself and the Dara.
Finally all was ready, and with Aiko in the lead and Egil immediately after, up the fortress wall they clambered, the Ryodoan whispering instructions to guide his hands and feet. To Egil’s left and slightly below climbed Burel. Delon followed with Arin trailing after, Ferret at her side.
Up they scaled, up the rough stone, some blocks with knobs and sharp projections on cragged faces, others smooth as if worked. But in the main it was cracks and crevices between the blocks they used to ascend, toeholds and footholds, fingerholds and handholds. And neither Arin nor Egil, with their lack of experience, found the going difficult, though at times the diminutive Dylvana had to stretch to grasp the next purchase.
Up the outer wall they climbed, in the darkest shadow, for torches atop the fortress walls yet illuminated the night. Now they mounted past the level of the parapets, depending on the girth of the spire to shield them from the warders on patrol. Up past dark arrow slits they scaled. If there had been alert guards inside the spire, perhaps then the climbers would have been detected. Yet there sounded no alarm and in darkness they ascended.
Climbing in virtual silence, soon they were more than
halfway to the top. Then nearly three-quarters. Of a sudden Aiko stopped, and in the starlight and dim cast of torch Egil could see her pointing down and away. As the others paused as well, Egil set his fingers hard into the crevice, and then he turned his head, his gaze to follow Aiko’s outstretched arm. Down in the cove below, and by the torchlight at the pier, he could see the
Brise
moored next to the dhow at Ordrune’s dock. Egil silently groaned, for not only had the Foul Folk dragged Alos here, they had brought the sloop to Ordrune’s doorstep as well, and he knew they needed a ship to escape from the Wizard’s lair. Yet how could they get to the
Brise
undetected and slip away unseen?
Aiko began to climb again, and Egil set the problem aside and followed after, the rest now ascending as well.
Finally Aiko reached the level of the windows atop. She began to sidle toward the western aperture, moving toward a place where she would be exposed should any warder look up. Egil climbed to the same level and then followed her, Burel coming after. Slowly Aiko moved out from the darkest shadows and into dim torchlight, and she paused and set her fingers, then leaned out slightly to scan beyond the girth of the tower and down at the length of the western banquette. Satisfied that no sentry was looking, she edged on toward the window.
In a step or two she reached the side of the dark gape. Now she listened carefully and finally risked a glance. At last she drew a sword and then stepped across and onto the sill and then disappeared within.
Egil followed, and without hesitating at the window he stepped in after her.
Aiko had lit her hooded lantern, and a thin slit of light shone dimly in the circular chamber, though not enough to glow outside. Egil found her closing the drapes on the other windows as planned, and he joined her as Burel squeezed through the gap. Then Delon entered, followed by Arin and finally Ferret.
Delon unsnapped the rope between himself and Arin, then quickly closed the last drape across the window they had entered, and now all were covered. Aiko and Burel with weapons in hand took a stand beside the stairwell
door, and Egil opened the shutter of the lantern a bit wider to look for the chest, quickly finding it.
Then Egil and Delon drew their weapons and moved to join Aiko and Burel, while Ferret, with Arin at hand, squatted beside the ironbound box with its three locks. Using her lantern, Ferret carefully examined the whole of the chest without touching it, seeking traps and trips and alarms. Finding none, Ferret glanced up at Arin. “Dara, use your special sight and see if this is charmed.”
Arin nodded and gazed at the chest and attempted to
“What does it mean?”
“I do not know.”
Ferret drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Well, alarm or not, trap or not, we’ve got to get inside. Watch it closely for any change.”
Ferret then looked at the three locks, scrupulously investigating them as well. Finally she unrolled a leather-wrapped set of lockpicks, and selecting one, she looked at Arin and then touched the rightmost latch.
“No change.”
Now Ferret inserted the lockpick within, and again there was no shift in the aura.
Ferret began probing within the keyhole.
Time eked by.
click!
Ferret glanced at Arin. The Dylvana shook her head.
Ferret set the shackle aside, then moved to the leftmost lock, this time selecting a different pick.
Once more time crept, and the only sounds to be heard were the soft susurration of breathing and the tiny scritching of brass within steel.
click!
Again Arin shook her head.
Now Ferret moved to the center lock and peered long at the peculiar keyhole. Finally she sighed softly and selected two picks, inserting both within.
Time passed and time more, and in the distance they heard a call and the tramp of feet, the sounds muted by the heavy drapes. Egil looked at Aiko and murmured, “The change of guard?”
“Perhaps,” she replied.
“What does your tiger say?”
“She is greatly agitated, and has been so ever since the fortress came into view, though the closer we got, the more disturbed she became. Right now she is yowling that peril is at hand.”
Egil took a deep breath and then let it out. “Even so, Aiko, we can do nothing but wait.”
Still time eked past. Finally Ferret took up a third pick and prodded it into the clasp past the other two. She hissed through her teeth, as if in great effort, and muttered nearly inaudibly to herself.
click!
Releasing a gust of air, Ferret looked up at Arin. The Dylvana murmured, “No.” Ferret set the third lock to the floor, then ran her hands about the lid of the chest, and cautiously, carefully, she raised it a crack.
Arin gasped. “The aura shifted color.”
“A trap? An alarm?”
“I do not know.”
They listened carefully, but no alarum sounded without.
Finally, holding her breath, Ferret raised the lid an inch and then stopped.
“No change,” said Arin.
Then Ferret raised the lid steadily, until at last the chest stood gaping.
She waited.
Nothing happened.
Peering inside, she said, “
Merde!
Nothing but papers.”
Now Arin moved forward. “
Vada!
They all glow.”
With Ferret’s help, Arin began examining the scrolls within. One by one they unwrapped them; some they cast aside immediately, others they paused to read. And those Ferret could not cipher she gave over to Arin. The floor about the two became littered with parchment. Of a sudden, Arin hissed, “Listen to this:
“Here I have hidden the green stone, a jadelike talisman of power, now chained by the Kraken Pool in a chest of Dwarven-made silver. The pool itself lies deep inside the rock of Dragons’ Roost, with but two ways in. One
entrance leading down to the chest stands on the great ledge, a shelf the Dragons jealously guard, for it is their crossing point to the Dragonworld of Kelgor. Straight down the sheer stone from the ledge the other entrance lies, just under the churning surface of the Boreal Sea. Underwater a crevasse splits deeply down a mile or more, a great crack cleaving back into the mountain stone, and through this chasm and outward hurtles a powerful current, a flow so strong no swimmer can brave, driven, I deem, by the Great Maelstrom spinning in the distance nearby. From this underwater entrance a pathway leads a furlong or so back to the Kraken Pool where the chest of the Dragonstone is chained; at high tide, the path is submerged nearly the full of its length, but at low tide only the outermost hundred feet lies underwater, though none can swim in against the current.”
Arin looked up from the parchment. “This is the one!”
In that moment soft laughter sounded, and a voice said, “I wondered what brought you here.”
Glass shattered.
An odor filled the room.
As Egil’s mind spun down toward darkness, light filled the chamber, and stepping forth from an impenetrable cast of arcane shade at the side of one of the tall cabinets, a dark-robed Mage emerged.
“Ordrune, you bastard,” choked Egil, and he feebly raised his axe, but it fell from his numbing fingers to clank upon the floor, to Egil’s ears the sound deafening, clanging like a great bell of doom in the absolute blackness that engulfed him whole.
E
gil’s own pulse hammered through his skull with thunderous pain. He was lying in something damp and a sour odor filled his nostrils and he came near to gagging. Groaning, he rolled onto his back, a dank squash accompanying his movement. He opened his eyes to flickering torchlight. Dark stone met his sight. He raised a trembling hand to his head, pounding with the aftereffects of whatever vapor the Mage had used. Wincing, he levered himself to a sitting position and looked about, his gaze falling on stone walls, stone ceiling, stone floors, stone pillars, and iron bars embedded in stone. He was in a cell, and ranging to the left and right were adjacent cells, with another row across the way. At one end of the corridor stood an iron-clad door with an iron grille over a small warder window. He sat on damp, rotting straw, and just beyond the bars of his cage stood a rope-handled bucket, while just inside sat a wooden bowl with a wooden spoon, both crusted with long-dried porridge. He did not need to ask where he was, for he had been here before, long past: these were Ordrune’s foul mews.
In a cell opposite he saw faint movement in the shadows. His heart plunged into the depths of despair, for he could see that it was Arin, the Dylvana yet unconscious, she, too, a prisoner of the monster Ordrune.
The worst of his nightmares come true, in wretched desolation Egil stood, and the moment he gained his feet, to the right and in a far cell someone began to hiss and weep.
It was Alos.
“Egil,” he wailed. “Egil.” But then his voice broke into great howling sobs, and although he tried to speak, his
words were lost among the blubberings and yowls and gasps.
In individual cells between Egil and Alos, lay Burel and Delon, those two yet rendered senseless by Ordrune’s foul gas, though they were beginning to stir. Aiko and Ferret were caged across the way in cells next to Arin. Ferret was completely stripped, her clothing strewn about the cell. As Egil watched, Aiko rolled onto her back.
Egil stepped to the bars of his cell and looked into the bucket. Water. He kneeled and reached through to take up a handful. As he remembered, it was foul-smelling; even so, he splashed it onto the back of his neck to ease his aching head. It gave no noticeable relief.