The Dragon's Tomb

Chapter XIII

“Your father!” Jo exclaimed. Stunned, she stared in disbelief at Keeper Grainger. The others around her, even Karleah, in the shadows, leaned toward the woman beside the brazier.

The Keeper nodded. “Yes, my father, though so many times removed as to no longer hold the meaning you have for ‘father.’ He was the father of the Keepers—we who keep the memory of the abelaat alive. Aeltic was the last abelaat, and he took as his consort a human. Their offspring, a daughter who bore traits both abelaat and human, mated also with a human. And so it went for a thousand years, until at last I was born. I, the last Keeper, have only a bare trace of my father’s blood left in me.”

“This is all neither here nor there,” Karleah spoke up in her raspy voice from the shadows. “You are the last Keeper—tell us what we need to know.”

Keeper Grainger stared in the direction of Karleah’s voice. “You are bold, Karleah Kunzay of the Red Ones,” she said angrily. “Though I was but a babe when last we met, I thought it might be you ”

“The ancient traditions demand that you answer our questions, Keeper,” Karleah said sternly, drawing the blanket up to shade her features.

“I have denied my vows of tradition, witch,” Keeper Grainger rejoined, “for I have taken no mate. The line of Keepers ends with me.”

“Of course it does,” Karleah snapped. “But the time has come for you to give us what the Keepers have passed down from generation to generation—and you know that.”

Keeper Grainger’s face clouded over. Her pale skin flushed as she bent her head, and Jo had to strain to hear the woman’s voice. “You have come to find the abaton—what you call simply the puzzle box—which Auroch has unleashed on Mystara.”

“Yes,” Karleah said, her bony frame finally entering the circle of light.

The Keeper continued, “The abaton was created to save the abelaat race, to give them one final portal for entering and leaving Mystara.”

“Wait a moment,” Jo said, shaking her head in confusion. “ What good is a portal if there aren’t any abelaats to use it? In their home world, the abelaats are asleep—slumbering statues of stone, like you said. And those abelaats that are here are hideous monsters who wouldn’t think to use a gate.”

“The portal is not so much for the abelaats to cross,” Keeper Grainger replied, “at least not initially. The portal’s first function is as a drain, to draw magic out of Mystara and deposit it into the abelaats’ world. Only when it has drawn enough magic to awaken the first abelaats, only then will the abaton begin to serve as a portal for the creatures themselves.”

“But, why would they want to come to Mystara, where they are hated?” Dayin asked quietly.

The Keeper smiled wanly at the young apprentice. “The abelaats desire more than all else to draw their magic back to their own world. They want to revive their slumbering kin. After they are awakened, they will march upon Mystara, to reclaim it as their own.”

Jo turned and looked at Brisbois. The man was obviously confused. But she had a sudden revelation, a horrible realization that no one had voiced. “That must mean Teryl Auroch is in league with them!”

“Yes.”

“Because he, like Keeper Grainger, is part abelaat,” Karleah conjectured.

The Keeper nodded leadenly and added, “Teryl Auroch’s mother was a human sorceress who dared to travel to the land of the abelaat. She took enough magic with her to awaken one of the ancient creatures. She never returned, but gave birth to a son—”

“Who built the abaton to shift the balance of magic back,” Jo concluded.

The Keeper simply nodded.

Dayin whimpered slightly, tears running down his face. Jo knelt beside him, sliding her arm gently about his shoulders. “It’ll be all right, Dayin,” she said stupidly. Censoring herself for the platitude, she elaborated, “You are your own person now, Dayin. That man, Auroch—he isn’t your father any more than I am your mother. The evil that he’s done can’t touch you.”

The boy’s sky-blue eyes regarded Jo coldly. “You don’t understand,” he said, his voice uncommonly bitter. “I’ve got abelaat blood in me, too. You just heard about how they’ve been hunted and tortured. You’ve heard their tragic story. It has everything to do with me. Teryl Auroch is my father.”

Karleah sat down next to Dayin and held him in her arms. She said, “The boy is right, Jo. Let him feel what he feels.”

Brisbois had begun to pace nervously. “So, if we don’t intercept this—this stupid box, we’ll have an army of monsters marching down our throats. Is that what you are saying?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you helping us?” Jo blurted, suddenly, rising from Dayin’s side and clutching Wyrmblight nervously. “You’ve got abelaat blood in you, too—”

“Teryl Auroch is an abomination to the abelaats. He wants vengeance, he wants Mystara to suffer for stealing the abelaats’ magic. I don’t want that to happen. You must understand, Mystara is my world, the only one I’ve ever known. I don’t want it to be destroyed any more than you,” the woman said, finally standing from her place. “Besides, he will desire my death in his quest to purify Mystara of all its human traces. As his power grows, he will become more and more aware of me. He will come for me soon. I have seen it.”

“Come, Dayin, we must find other accommodations tonight,” Karleah whispered, slowly rising. She helped the boy to his feet, and he sadly clutched her side.

Jo shook her head in outrage and confusion. “There must be something we can do!”

“There is,” the Keeper said despondently, moving toward the door, which Braddoc pulled open. “Find the abaton. Remove it from any source of magic. Find a way to destroy it.” She paused and reached into a pocket in her dress. “Take this.” She held out her hand, presenting a beautiful amber crystal, eight sided and pointed on the ends. “It is a crystal from my father—the most powerful magic I can give you.

“Now I think you should go. You can find lodgings at the Maiden’s Blush,” the Keeper said. As she stepped out of the barn, she added, “Do not come this way again.”

Jo tossed fitfully in her bed, wishing they could set out for Armstead. But earlier that evening she had lost the argument about pushing on before morning. Even Braddoc had refused, saying that she obviously had never traveled through the Altan Tepes Mountains. Karleah, too, noted wryly that in order to capture the abaton, they must first reach Armstead alive. Despite all the good reasons for staying in Threshold that night, Jo wanted to leave, if only to pay Brisbois back for his sneering taunts. “I should have killed him in the alley,” she told herself, rolling angrily over.

Brisbois wasn’t the only surly malcontent. When they had checked in, Jo asked the innkeeper about sending a message back to Penhaligon and was answered with a stupid stare. The man was irritable enough, having been awakened after midnight, and that request sent him over the top. He’d even charged them for four separate rooms. Brisbois, of course, took full advantage, demanding a room for himself. Too tired to quibble, Karleah and Dayin, Braddoc, and Johauna each took the other rooms. The waste of gold irked Jo to no end, but, clearly, they would acquire no other accommodations tonight.

There was a shattering of glass, a man’s scream, and a pounding thump from the room above Jo—Brisbois’s room. As she leaped up from her bed, Jo heard Braddoc rise in the room next door, heard the rattle of his axe being lifted from the doorknob, where he had hung it. Jo’s hand reached for Wyrmblight but drew back: the sword’s great length would make it useless in the mans room. She slipped a shift over her shoulders and, grabbing her belt, slung it around her waist. She tore open the door and bolted up the stairs. As she checked to make sure her dagger was in its sheath, Jo heard Braddoc’s solid footfalls on the steps behind her.

Jo reached the head of the stairs, rushed for Brisbois’s door, and threw it open. In the wan light of an oil lamp, she saw Brisbois standing, stunned, beside a broken window. Shattered glass lay in glittering triangles across the floor, blood showing on a few of the edges. Then she noticed that the dishonored knight’s arm was bleeding.

“What happened in here?” Braddoc demanded, appearing in the doorway behind Jo and hefting his axe.

Brisbois gave a dismissing gesture and winced from the pain in his arm. “Nothing,” he slurred. “An owl or something was looking in the window at me.”

“Looking in the window?” Jo asked, glaring at the man. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

“No,” spat Brisbois. He suddenly straightened and, blinking, tried to look Jo straight in the eyes. “It was looking at me,” he insisted, his voice still thick with liquor. “I think it was Verdilith, the Great Green.”

With an expression of disgust, Braddoc turned to leave. “Yeah, Verdilith, the Great Green Owl. You’d better do something about that arm.” He disappeared from the doorway.

“So you thought you’d punch the window out to let this owl come in?” Jo asked sarcastically. She walked over to the window and peered outside, her heart pounding with excitement.

“No, my mistress,” Brisbois said with a mocking bow. “I tried to stab it with my sword.” He gestured toward the bloody blade, leaning in the corner of the room.

He’s a fool, a drunken fool, and nothing more, whispered a voice inside Johauna’s head. She felt the warmth of the abelaat stone in her belt pouch. Yes, Flinn, she thought, I know he’s a fool. She looked out the window toward the ground below. “Where’s this owl’s body?”

“I thought it fell,” Brisbois said, leaning over her shoulder to see out the window.

By the odd smell of Brisbois’s breath, Jo was sure he was drunk. She pulled away from him and snarled, “There wasn’t any owl, Brisbois, except in your drunken imagination. You didn’t stab Verdilith. You stabbed yourself. And you’ll pay for that window out of your own pocket, come morning.”

Brisbois whirled on her, some stinging retort on his lips, but when his eyes met hers, he averted his gaze and fell silent. Shuffling to a hook on the wall, he gingerly opened his pack and removed a small box. He flipped the lip back, revealing a bolt of gauze, a few sharp-edged knives and needles, and a small bottle. Uncorking the bottle, he took a swig, then spattered his wounded arm with the rest. Tearing away a piece of the gauzy bolt with his teeth, the man began to wrap the wound. Jo watched from across the gloom as he attended himself.

Brisbois paused long enough to glare at the young squire. “If you’re not going to help, get out.”

Jo felt an involuntary sneer cross her face. “I wish I could say the same to you,” she muttered under her breath. She stalked out of the room, leaving the door ajar.

The dishonored knight kicked the door shut with his boot and continued to bandage the wound. He smiled.

A poisonous tendril of gas rose from his nose.

Spring had only newly come to the Black Peak Mountains as Jo and her companions rode through the range. Jo set a north-by-northwesterly route, seeking the tiny village of Armstead, somewhere in the wilderness ahead. Although the path she chose wound through the mountains, her sense of direction was true. Unfortunately, the mountain paths were too treacherous to chance fast travel.

Lost in thoughts of the abaton, Jo didn’t notice when the mountains’ heights changed the climate from one of spring to one of winter. Patches of ice and unexpectedly deep snow lined the ravines and passages between the Black Peaks. Much of the rock was obsidian, which lent the range its name, as did the sheets of ice, black from the underlying obsidian, lingering along some sides of the mountains.

The trail was rugged, little better than forging across country. In fact, when the path turned east, the group abandoned it, preferring instead to continue to head north by northwest. At one point, Brisbois said he saw hoof prints whose horseshoes bore the emblem of the castle, but none of the others could spot them in the trampled ground.

At midday Jo held up her hand and halted the group. She patted Carsig’s neck and watched the horse’s white breath curl lazily away. The big gelding was holding his own. Jo blew on her hands and rubbed them to warm them; she pulled her woolen cape closer. She hadn’t really believed Sir Graybow when he had said she would need such a warm garment for the mountains, but she was glad now that the man had insisted.

Johauna looked up at the sheer rock and ice surfaces of the mountains surrounding her. “And I thought the Wulfholdes were rugged,” she murmured to herself. She had never seen mountains before. She let Carsig have his head so that he could snuffle the ground for something edible, and Jo jumped off to stretch her legs.

The few harsh grasses that could survive this arid land had not yet turned green with spring growth. Carsig and the other animals contented themselves with the dried blades, snorting puffs of frosty air as they nibbled the mountain grass. Every now and then a horse or mule would find a tasty, succulent snow crocus or other early blooming flower.

Jo joined her comrades. Braddoc was smiling to himself, and Jo realized the dwarf felt at home in these mountains. Karleah snorted and sat on a nearby, flat rock. She drank from her waterskin, oblivious to the walls of ice and rock surrounding her. Only Dayin’s expression remained one of wonder and disbelief as he stared at the cliff faces.

“Have you seen any more sign of the guards’ passage?” Karleah asked testily. The crone clutched the tattered remnant of a gray silk shawl around her bony shoulders. Dayin came and stood next to her.

Both Jo and Braddoc shook their heads. Braddoc said, “Not since this morning, Karleah. Johauna stopped us at a good point. There re two ravines ahead that could be the paths the guards took. I’ll scout ahead and see if I can find any more tracks.”

“It’s hard with all the rock and ice,” Jo said. “But maybe they’ll have gone through a snowdrift or two, and we’ll get lucky.” Johauna went to Fernlover and pulled out a loaf of bread and a chunk of dried venison. She returned to her friends and, using her knife, began slicing and handing out the food.

Karleah grunted her thanks, bit a huge bite from her food with her strong white teeth, and said, “Give me a minute to—heh, heh—‘wolf’ my food, and then I’ll check out the passages. Maybe I can scent something.” Karleah smiled, her canines gleaming in the bright light of the midday sun that shone overhead. An eagle, attracted perhaps by the travelers, circled above. Its piercing cry echoed off the mountainsides.

“Can I go with you, Karleah?” Dayin asked. He began to eat his food quickly, too. “Maybe I can scent something you might miss,” he said through a mouthful of bread.

The wizardess shook her head. “No, son. You’d only slow me down and be a cause for worry,” Karleah said. She pointed a thin finger up at the circling eagle. “She’d have you in her talons before I’d even hear her dive to the ground. Out here I can’t protect you like I could in my woods. There everyone knows not to touch my young rabbit.” The old woman took another bite. She chewed her mouthful and said at the same time, “Why you chose to be a cottontail is beyond me.”

“Karleah shapechanges into a wolf and you into a rabbit?” Johauna asked. She sliced another strip of venison and handed it to Karleah. At Braddoc’s nod, the squire sliced him a strip as well.

“Why a rabbit?” Braddoc asked. “And why can you change into only one animal? That doesn’t seem very useful.” He gestured at the bird flying above. “If you could turn into an eagle, I’ll bet you could spot the guards carrying the abaton. Then we’d know for sure which way to go—and could even cut them off, if possible.” The dwarf chewed his food slowly.

Dayin shrugged, his shoulders lost beneath the thick fur vest that Flinn had given him. “I like rabbits, and I wanted to be one,” the boy said. “They’re lots smarter than people give them credit for. Besides, they’re small and can wiggle into places most other creatures couldn’t. They’re fast, too.” Dayin smiled widely at the old wizardess. “I’ve given Karleah quite a run in the woods.”

The crone snorted, then turned to Braddoc. “To answer your question, dwarf, there are mages who can learn to shapechange into more than one creature, but they take on merely the animal form and not the animal spirit. When I am the wolf, I am that animal. I wanted Dayin to experience that same sensation, and he does.” She nodded her head toward the boy. “Gather up the animals, will you? It wouldn’t do to have them panic and desert us in these mountains.” Dayin agreed and left the others to their meal.

“But as a rabbit?” Braddoc asked again. Dayin frowned at the dwarf, ending the conversation.

Karleah reached for Jo. The younger woman held out her hand, thinking the older one needed support. The wizardess’s dry, bony fingers touched Jo’s palm, and then Karleah withdrew her hand. Jo looked down at her palm.

“This … this is a crystal from a real abelaat?” Jo asked. She held up the eight-sided crystal. It was fully twice as large as Jo’s other crystals. The sunlight flickering through it shed prisms of color into the young woman’s eyes, and she was dazzled by its beauty. She heard Brisbois gasp and move closer to her.

Karleah nodded. She said, “Yes, that’s what Keeper Grainger gave me. Her people have been the keepers not only of the history of the abelaats but also of their crystals. This is the last true abelaat crystal—a crystal made from Aeltic’s own spittle.” Brushing her hands and sniffing the wind, Karleah said. “Its time for me to change.”

Braddoc and Jo stared at Karleah as the old woman began her transformation. Her lanky gray hair shortened and then spread over her body while her face lengthened and ears grew. Karleah pulled off the last of her clothing as the rest of the shapechange occurred.

“How long will you be gone?” Jo asked the wolf-woman.

“Not long,” Karleah said in painful half-growl. “Take … care of… the crystal,” she continued. “It is my … only protection … from the abaton.” Her black eyes turned golden, and her pink tongue lengthened and fell out of her not-quite-changed jaw. The woman flexed her fingers as the digits shortened and claws grew. Karleah’s arms and legs grew leaner, the muscles rippling beneath her black fur. Finally, her torso changed shape and a tail grew. The old she-wolf yelped once and leaped away from Johauna and Braddoc.

Jo enviously watched Karleah’s sure pace carry her into the mountain passes. She said to Braddoc, “I wish I could shapechange. I think it would be wonderful to transform into a wolf like Karleah and roam the land, at one with it in a way humans never are.”

Braddoc shrugged noncommittally. “She’ll be back soon. I want to check the pack on the mule. I think it needs rearranging.” The dwarf stood.

“I’ll come with you,” Jo said. “I packed Fernlover a little quickly myself.” Dayin accompanied them to the animals. Brisbois, who had said nothing since discovering the original sign of the passing guards, moved solicitously out of the way. With a confused glance at the man, Jo began checking the bundles on her mule. Silent moments passed, then Jo said, “What are you looking at?”

Brisbois smiled slightly and shrugged. “What would you do if Verdilith attacked you right now, in these mountains?” he asked.

Braddoc stared up at Brisbois. Jo once again stood in silence for a moment. “What kind of question is that?”

“A legitimate one, I should think,” the man replied. “You’re so vulnerable out here, on an open mountain range, with no way to fight, nowhere to run.”

“You’re as vulnerable as we,” Braddoc interjected. Brisbois shrugged, “More so, I bet you think. After all, I don’t carry Wyrmblight, scourge of the Great Green, do I?” The man moved with reptilian grace toward Jo, his hand reaching out to the blade harnessed to her back.

Jo backed away, watching the yellowish steam rise from Brisbois’s nose. “What’s gotten into you?”

Brisbois withdrew to a nonthreatening distance and said, “You have a lot of faith in that sword. Too much faith, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Jo shot, checking the straps on Fernlover.

“You think that sword will save you,” Brisbois pressed, a gleaming grin on his mouth, “but it didn’t save Flinn.”

Jo whirled, wrenching Wyrmblight from its harness and leveling it before Brisbois’s heart. “You mention Flinn one more time, and I’ll cut your heart out with this.”

“Jo,” Braddoc said, with a warning glare.

Brisbois smiled and waved the dwarf off with a bandaged hand, “She doesn’t mean it. That sword is everything to her. She holds on to it and thinks she’s holding on to Flinn. But Flinn failed her, and so will the sword.”

Jo lunged forward, a snarl of rage on her lips. The tip of Wyrmblight sliced through the dishonored knight’s tabard, punctured his breastplate, and slammed the chain mail into his sternum. With a slight gasp, Brisbois slipped and fell to the ground.

Jo stepped up, setting the blade back on the gash and towering over him. Braddoc clutched her arm, trying to pull her back, but Jo gritted her teeth and began to lean onto the blade.

“Mercy,” Brisbois cried out with mock fear. “I beg you mercy on this battlefield, squire of the mighty Flinn. Will you kill me, though I beg mercy of you?”

A confused frown crossed Jo’s face and she colored. Her pressure on the sword relented as Braddoc pulled her away from the knight. As Brisbois painfully rose to his feet, the dwarf led Jo back to the mules and locked the gaze of his good eye with hers.

“You lost that one, Jo. Don’t let him manipulate you like that,” the dwarf said evenly. “Everybody already knows he’s an idiot. Don’t let him make an idiot out of you”

Something half-human and half-wolf suddenly streaked toward them. Karleah had returned from her search. Braddoc turned his head away politely as the wolf-thing transformed back into a naked old woman. The wizardess pulled on her clothing. She said with some asperity, “I’m sure a woman’s body is nothing new to you, Braddoc. Seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

“Not one as withered as yours, old hag,” Braddoc quipped, apparently to lighten the tension. He threw the crone a smile to soften the words.

Karleah responded with only a “Harrumph!” then said, “I found their trail. They’ve taken the western pass.” The old woman shook her head. “They’ve got a good day, day and a half, on us. They aren’t in any hurry, but I doubt we can gain much ground on them.”

“You know it’s cracked, don’t you?” Brisbois murmured to Jo as he wandered stiffly to his horse.

“What?” Jo cried, rounding on him with fiery eyes.

Brisbois busied himself with the straps and buckles of his mount. “A hairline crack. I saw it in the sunlight when I was on the ground.”

Jo held Wyrmblight up in front of her, studying the blade with anxiety. Looking up, her blush deepened in hue and she snorted. “I don’t see anything.”

The defamed knight shrugged casually and swung up into the saddle in one motion. “Let’s be off,” he said. “We re burning daylight!”

Braddoc’s hand gripped Jo’s trembling arm and he said, “Let it go, Johauna. Let it go.” He took Wyrmblight from her hands and began to snap it into the harness on her back. As he did so, his eyes scanned worriedly along the blade’s white steel.