The Realms of the Dragons 2

QUEEN OF THE MOUNTAIN

When the great wyrm Amrennathed, in peace and solitude, gave her last breath to the mountain, the village of Orunn died.

She knew it would be her last by the way the stone shifted, a final, protesting grate against scale and ribs that had shrunk to hold barely the breath of three men. Centuries had reshaped the mountain, sculpted it around her sinuous body, until bare stalactites plunged deep into her back, wormed thorny roots into her spine. There was no room left for life that was not stone.

Amrennathed couldn't see the changes in the mountain. Her far-staring eyes, bored out by stone into painful, dust-choked blindness long ago, gave her no hint as to the passage of time.

The dragon did not care to see her death approaching, nor had she acknowledged the loss other eyes. She had not cared to look at anything outside her mountain for a very long time. Do you hear me?

Her body was dying, but Amrennathed's mind was alive and working as furiously as it ever had against a foe. Time was her enemy now-only so much of it left to communicate her wishes, to pass on her legacy. Her thoughts were a fever raw and unfamiliar to the sedate mountain, and some of her words and desires may have been lost in the contest of wills.

Mountains, by nature and custom, are not easily stirred to speak, even to a dragon.

I have been patient. The dragon's mind-voice rumbled, banked against stone like settling embers. I have waited for you to slay my body, in your unhurried, meticulous way, a gift I would give to no living being. It is time for you to take the rest.

And from the mountain, in its unhurried way, came answer.

Aged as you are, we measure the centuries a pace apart. I will claim you, in time. We will become dust together a thousand years hence, as Faerun is reshaped, remade again and again.

Too long! Impatience flared-rock and slab felt the blow of the dragon's desperation. There must be certainty. I must know that what is in my mind and breast will not be left to scavenge.

If you leave nothing behind, will it be that Amrennathed herself never was?

This time, Amrennathed wasn't certain if it was the mountain speaking or her own traitorous thoughts.

It does not matter, the dragon insisted.

By the measure of your kind, will you have failed?

I am the measure of myself! Pride had not left Amrennathed's mind, though the mountain had laid waste to her body.

Arrow-bright, an image flashed before the stone. Unused to the hard color, light, and sound, the mountain shuddered at the sudden barrage of all three.

A Zhentarim spy crouched on his knees, head thrown back in agony as a purple-hued claw caressed his spine, shredding black robes and peeling a fine layer of flesh.

Radiances pulsed and fed from the man's slack mouth into the claw. Amrennathed's mind-voice was soft, at first coaxing, then demanding, as the man shrieked and sobbed and gave the last vestiges of the spells he'd gathered in his long life to the dragon.

The image dissolved in screams, and another memory swelled in its wake.

In a filthy Skullport loft, Iamras Sonmaire crouched before an altar of metal and bone, a bloodied dagger point thrust into the crooked planks next to his knees.

Runes glowed from the altar and the spine of the thick tome perched upon it. Their magic flooded the shuttered room with a sickly green light. Iamras trembled, wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve even as he fought to keep his other arm steady over the book. Blood flowed from a clumsy gash in his wrist into the runes, and the book hungrily drank.

Amrennathed felt amusement stir at this memory. She'd left him knowledge of the book's location and power but stripped the memory of how much was required for its opening from his mind. He would bleed out well before he re-learned what she had stolen from him.

I have raped the secrets of folk across Faerun entire, made hoard of them in place of coin-mountains, she whispered to the stone, as if all Faerun was indeed bent to listen. I have knowledge stored that kingdoms would bleed for and may still, if it is not allowed to pass with me. My body, my mind joined to yours, will be safe.

Safe from a fate you fear, from ghosts of the minds you've stolen.

Again, Amrennathed wondered if she was hearing her own voice echoing in rebuke. Either way, her once clever and manipulative mind was too weary to deny or circle the truth.

Yes. Safe. They will look for my bones and find empty stone. No one will beg secrets from a mountain. I will bury them in the deepest crevices where the lowliest creatures walk. Let them know the secrets ofFaerun's evils and her beauties, where great powers hide and sleep. Wisest of all, they will give no thought or care to my legacy. That is my wish.

None of us can know all that we leave behind.

But the mountain sensed the great wyrm fading. Its words became a sigh as it yielded at last, opening to Amrennathed's oldest, most closely kept magic.

Stone within stone within buried stone shifted and sighed in turn, bent, melted, and burned, reshaping ages of the world in one small space, for the beast that had slumbered within the mountain's breast for untold centuries.

Outside in the clear air, hundreds of feet above the joining, a pair of sharp-shinned hawks nested on a crooked slab of rock where the sun was kind. Beneath twig and talon, the mountain shuddered, heavy with the scent of burning rock and dragon death.

The female of the pair shrieked a cry and took flight, terrified as the unnatural scent wormed its way into the nest. Her talons came down in a rush of wings and scattering feathers onto her own eggs, crushing the shells.

Clouds of feathers separated and drifted down on the wind, far and down. They came to rest in a pool of soapy water at the bare feet of a woman who was singing softly to herself.

The old woman sang and scraped clothes over a wooden washboard in the same back and forth motion she'd used since her fingers had been straight and smooth with youth. She plucked stray feathers from the suds, added more soap and scraped harder, until her knuckle grated on wood, and came up raw from the water.

She didn't notice when the moss-covered rock behind her changed.

The green carpet joining stone to the nearby trees ran dark, purpling like a new bruise. It covered the tree in thick veins, blotting out the hot sun streaming behind.

Cast in sudden shadow, the old woman turned on her knees to look as the first wave of magic slammed her.

She overturned the bucket in her fall to the ground. At first, she thought it might be that her heart had finally failed her, a death, living alone on the mountainside, she had always assumed would be hers. She'd accepted, even welcomed that fate. It was not a bad way to die, not an undignified way. In the end, the pain would have been brief.

Gods' laughter, this was none of those things, the old woman thought, gasping for air and clutching her chest reflexively, though in reality it was her head that felt as if it would burst from the pressure.

Images careened through her mind: a mountain that spoke-her mountain-to a dragon that looked like it was made of purple stone.

"Am-Amrennathed." Dry lips formed the word, and a wave of fresh agony rippled over her. The name crowded more images into the old woman's mind, of wizards being drained to husks even as she was being filled up-up and over with… what? To her, it was only pain. She was drowning in it.

The old woman shuddered up to her knees and crawled blindly to the side of the mountain, grabbing at roots and stone to drag her body up the slippery rock.

"Please, lady," she sobbed out, as if the dragon might hear her, "I don't w-want this-"

Roots snapped, and she was falling again, but her ankle remained tangled with skirts and mountain. There was a second, harder crack, and the world went blessedly dark.

She returned to consciousness slowly, to the sound of a voice-her own voice, pleading with the empty air as the dark trees and mountain loomed over her prone body.

"Lady, be merciful. I don't know… what to do with this."

She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes until stars swam. The memories were still spinning themselves out inside her head. If she concentrated hard enough, she could separate and see them.

In one, there was another dragon in a very different mountain, tossing in a fevered dream of madness and death. In another, a man was on his knees before a glowing altar, screaming in agony as his life's blood spilled onto the stones. And more, so many more…

Whimpering, the old woman curled into a ball. Her quivering lips picked up her work song again. She sang, low and unintelligible at first, then louder, faster until she was screaming to drown out the memories flitting across her thoughts as if they'd always been there.

Beneath the shuddering pain and the drumming of her heart, she didn't notice when the mountain began to shake.

And as Amrennathed's clever mind finally slowed, joined and shaped to the grace of the mountain, the stone began to tremble.

The entire exchange had taken no more time than the dragon's last, faltering breath, but outside the trembling mountain, seasons passed, the land was reformed… and the village of Orunn died.

25 Flamerule, the Year of Wild Magic (1372 DR)

"Set it on fire and burn her out then!" The wizard pressed furiously trembling hands to his face and cursed as they came away ribboned with blood.

Bahrn did not immediately reply. He stood at the edge of a high cliff and gazed down on the ruins of a house that had suffered that precise fate.

From any perspective, the village of Orunn had already seen enough abuse by fire. To put torch to one more of the sagging dwellings in the midst of the devastation caused by looting and abandonment seemed as arbitrarily cruel as a child squashing five ants because the first four weren't sport enough. Still, he could sympathize with Arlon's mood. Diadree had always had a temper.

Intact, her home perched less than ten yards from the ledge where he stood. Bahrn's dizzying view straight down ended at a lake called the Fox Ear, a sapphire triangle closing off the horseshoe of tiny houses and surrounding farms. Years ago, several men from the village had insisted on erecting a thick plank fence along the treacherous cliff edge for Diadree's safety.

He recalled vividly the old woman's wrath at the perceived insult.

"More likely they're afraid I'll push one of their little bratlings off the edge into the lake. A fence won't cure that temptation!"

Bahrn wasn't surprised to see the fence dismantled, a few stray planks sticking slantwise up out of the ground.

"You're, ah, wizardly cousin did not appear happy to see you," he said as Arlon continued to curse.

Actually, Diadree had come up behind Arlon as they searched for her and leaped, screeching, atop his back. Before he could wrench her off, she'd set both hands at his cheeks and raked from eye line to bony chin. She'd then barricaded herself inside her home and refused to come out.

Arlon wiped a spot of blood from the cleft of his chin and glared at the mercenary. "You could subdue her," he suggested. "For her own safety, of course."

"Of course." Bahrn cocked an ear, listening as Diadree continued her tirade behind the door. Eventually, it leveled off to wordless squalling punctuated by the thud of what sounded like furniture disintegrating as it hit the wall. "I could overpower her," he acknowledged. "I could also pin her to the ground with my morningstar-" he ignored the distinctly hopeful look Arlon shot him-"but she stands less chance of being harmed if we allow her to wear herself out first." He paused as another crash and shriek rang out. "Considering her current state, it shouldn't take long."

Arlon eyed the trembling walls skeptically but didn't argue. He settled down on the ground to wait, scrubbing at bloodshot, tired eyes and the beginnings of dark stubble at his cheeks.

"What kept you awake?" Bahrn asked, recalling the young man's restlessness the previous night as they drew closer to Orunn.

"Nothing-startled by a dream."

Bahrn turned his attention from Diadree's door and found Arlon looking at him, as if quietly daring the mercenary to find humor in that. He had portrait eyes-slow to move and barely noticeable when they did. Yet he still managed to draw in and absorb the space and people around him so completely, Bahrn wondered if the wizard had ever been denied anything in his short life and if those who had dared the defiance were still alive.

"What kind?" asked Bahrn.

"I dreamt the earth was shaking."

"You weren't dreaming," Bahrn said. "The tremors are the reason the village stands empty today. Orunn was abandoned this time five years ago." He pointed down to a bare patch on the opposite side of the lake where crops had once been sown. A jagged crack cut across the barren soil into the foundation of a nearby house. "Almost overnight, the land became too unstable for farming or living."

"What caused them?"

Bahrn shrugged, the armor plates at his shoulders creaking.

"Caprice of the Gods? Magic? You, wizard, would be better qualified to speculate than I."

Arlon snorted. "You're capable of many things, Bahrn- claiming ignorance is not one of them. Qualification was the reason I hired you. You know the roads south of Ironfang Deep, when I wasn't aware there were mercenaries, especially educated ones-" he swiped a vague finger at the double painted dots creasing Bahrn's forehead-"who traveled extensively through this area."

"I grew up here," Bahrn said and smiled blandly as Arlon's face tensed, "Since we're discussing qualifications…" Then he added, "Yes, I knew Diadree had no family… and that she is no wizard."

There it was, spoken aloud, the lie that had followed them all the way from the dwarven city, where Arlon had paid him to act as guide to Orunn to find Diadree. Bahrn had been surprised a foreigner had even known of the tiny village's existence.

Comprehension dawned on the wizard's face. "The burnt home you were staring at over the cliff." "Mine."

"I do not understand you. Why did you agree to lead me here, then?"

"I never thought we would find her," Bahrn admitted. "But, if we did, to ensure nothing happened to her." "You think I intend her harm?"

"Few have ever borne her love." Himself included, Bahrn thought. "What do you intend now we've found her?"

"Foremost, I intend to staunch this bleeding," Arlon's eyes slid away from Bahrn's, and the easy manner he'd adopted during their journey to Orunn was back as he busied his hands tending to the cuts. "And I will question her-in your presence, of course. What can you tell me about her?"

"There's little to tell. When I was young, Diadree rarely left her home here on the mountain." Though insignificant amongst the Mountains of the Alaoreum and greater Tur-mish, the broad peak easily held both the village and the Fox Ear in its shadow. As far as Bahrn knew, Diadree had lived on the mountain all her life. "She is harmless."

Arlon dabbed at the bloody marks on his cheeks. "Forgive me if I doubt you."

"She was angry."

"She is out of her mind," Arlon said. "She's been living alone in a dead village for a very long time, and it's cost her her sanity."

Silence followed the pronouncement. Bahrn's eyes darted to Diadree's house. It had ceased shaking.

He positioned himself to block the front door just as it burst outward, Diadree following in a rush. Bahrn snagged her round the waist as she flew by and lifted her gently off her feet.

Gods, she has a bird's bones, he thought. How long had she gone without a proper meal?

The rest of her, if possible, looked worse, like a garden grown wild from seasons of neglect. Her long gray hair hung in the same thick braid he remembered, but it had not seen soap or brush in all that time. Greasy mouse-tails of it escaped all over, hanging down in her eyes and trailing over loose cords of flesh in her neck. She wore a patched apron on top of filthy skirts, all of which gave off a jaw-clenchingly unpleasant smell.

Diadree flailed arms and legs, but Bahrn simply gathered her in against his armored chest.

"Well met again, Diadree. It's been a long time," he said.

Bones cracked as the old woman swiveled her head around and up until they were practically chin-to-chin. To his surprise, recognition flashed in her milky blue eyes.

"Bahrn? Norint's son, Bahrn?"

"You remember me?"

She grunted. "Bahrn the bully-the fat one with crooked teeth who used to slobber and stare in my windows with his bully friends." Her eyes narrowed. "I broke a broomstick over your head for it."

"Did she? Practically harmless, Bahrn, I agree."

At the sound of Arlon's voice, Diadree resumed her violent midair kicking. Bahrn allowed her to slip down to the ground, but as soon as her feet were planted, he dug in, and forced her to stand in place.

"We're not going to hurt you, Diadree," the wizard soothed in a voice that prickled the skin at Bahrn's neck.

"In that case, you can turn around and follow the cracks back the way you came," Diadree snapped. "Watch you don't trip and fall into one."

She tried to back away as he approached, and she stumbled.

Bahrn steadied her and noticed a dark brown stain soaked into the hem of her torn skirts.

"You're hurt," he said.

"It's nothing-old." Diadree shrank back as Arlon bent and gingerly probed the bone. "Healed now, as best it can be. I don't feel it on level grass, but walking up and down the mountain puts me in the Nine Hells of hurt."

"It's a miracle you've survived on your own for so long," Bahrn said.

"Why? Because of the ores and other uglies scattering through here to pick the houses clean?" She laughed scornfully. "They don't come up here. No one does. No one needs to."

"We've come to take you out of here. You're not well, Diadree," Arlon said, straightening.

Diadree smiled unpleasantly. "You mean I'm crazy. Yes, I heard you. It's true I am many things." She paused, her hand straying to her cheek to scratch at the grime darkening her face. "Crazy might be one of them," she conceded, as if she'd never given fair consideration to the possibility. Her eyes snapped to Arlon's face. "You are many things as well, some of which may even be true." She wrinkled her nose. "You smell of magic even if you don't flaunt the power." She jerked her head at the wizard's pale, bare forehead. "And I'm sure you're highly intelligent, for someone who reeks so thoroughly of magic, but you're looking for the wrong woman-"

"But the right mountain," Arlon interrupted. "I'm looking for Amrennathed's home."

Diadree went rigid under Bahrn's hands and said, "Amrennathed is even less your affair than I am."

"Who is Amrennathed?" Bahrn wanted to know.

"A dragon. In local legend you know her as the Queen of the Mountain," Arlon explained. "I came here searching for her."

"For a children's story?" scoffed Bahrn. "You've wasted your steps. The mountain has no queen but Diadree, and she's not a dragon, except in speech." The old woman's shoulders quivered with what might have been laughter. Bahrn couldn't be sure. "Your queen was used to scare children into good behavior."

"Never worked," Diadree muttered.

"Amrennathed is a dragon of amethyst, older and stronger than this mountain," Arlon persisted. "By all accounts, she came here a great wyrm and rarely left the lair she made for herself." His voice rose with excitement. "Don't you see? When you were a boy, she was practically beneath your feet, and you never knew."

Bahrn was unconvinced. "What does that have to do with Diadree?"

"Nothing," Diadree interjected, but the wizard was smiling at her.

Arlon turned, murmured something Bahrn didn't hear, and stepped close to the cliff wall. The grass and dirt shifted, as if a swift, momentary breeze had passed over them, and Arlon lifted his arm into the air. He clutched a dirty scrap of cloth between two fingers.

Diadree made a small, constricted noise of fury in her throat. Bahrn recognized the piece of the old woman's bloodstained skirt. The breeze plucked the fabric out of his grasp and bore it on the air for several seconds before allowing it to float gently to the ground. The rush of air streaked away from the cliff and blew toward the back of Diadree's home, ruffling flowers and bushy plants from her garden in its wake.

"This way," Arlon said, following the breath of magic.

A rocky outcropping rose up behind the small dwelling. The trail they had been following ended there, cut off by a steep climb up the rocks.

"A blood scent spell," the wizard explained when Bahrn came up behind him. He pointed to the rock wall.

Puzzled, Bahrn walked farther around the outcropping.

Roots of small trees and brush sticking out from the cliff formed an ascending carpet of rough stepping places and handholds. Halfway up the roots were torn, and there was a dark stain dribbling down the rocks.

"You tried to climb this?" Bahrn asked, turning to Diadree. "This is where you broke your ankle."

"She must have been looking for something terribly important," Arlon remarked. "I wonder what it could be, Diadree." His tone was conversational, but his eyes were fixed on the mountain, as if with enough force of will he could draw in and open the rock.

Murmuring under his breath again, he levitated up vertically along the cliff wall, steadying himself against the wind by grasping at outthrust rock.

"Follow him!" Diadree shrieked. She grabbed Bahrn's arm as the wizard disappeared from sight over the outcropping. "She won't like it if he finds where she slept!"

"Who won't?" Bahrn asked, his patience rapidly thinning. "Arlon's dragon? She's dead, Diadree, if ever she existed at all. Either way, she's not going to care who visits her grave."

"He's looking to pick through whatever she might have left behind. That's what they do, don't you see?"

"If that's all he intends, he's welcome to…" He trailed off as Diadree's face went livid.

"Stupid, insolent child," she spat. "Why did you come back here-bringing a sniveling, arrogant, cult mage in tow!" She shoved at him. He half-expected her to reach for the nearest broomstick as she had almost two decades before.

Bahrn raised his hands. "He hired me to bring him-for you. I didn't know what he was. Why does it matter what he takes?"

"Doesn't it matter to you? Of course, seeing your own home picked to bones by the vultures didn't seem to slow you, so why should I be surprised?" Diadree snorted with disgust and swiped at him again.

Deftly, he plucked both her fists out of the air and forced them away from his face. "A pile of sticks, to my memory. I only came back to see if you were well."

And if Arlon was a cultist, as Diadree claimed, he'd brought her much more trouble than he could have saved her by staying away.

Diadree's grip slackened, but her eyes remained raw. "I don't understand you."

Bahrn sighed and stooped, offering his broad back to the old woman. "Neither do I, at the close of most days. I'll carry you, but only as far as the roots go up."

Diadree closed her eyes briefly. "Thank you." She wrapped her thin arms around his neck and said, "I was wrong. The years have changed you a little. You're much less a fool than you used to be, even if you are traveling with the Cult of the Dragon."

"How do you know he's a cultist?" Bahrn asked as he began to climb. "He's not mad, not like-" he stopped and clenched his jaw.

"Like me." Diadree cackled. "You turn the same open mind toward the world you did as a child, Bahrn. You'll want to be careful of that in the future. You've seen his look. Amrennathed knew ones like him would get around to coming after her eventually. She was prepared, don't you doubt it."

Bahrn did doubt and refused to ask how an imaginary dragon might have prepared against the fanatical cult or how Diadree would know about it, but he felt compelled to make some argument.

"I am not the same boy you chased with a broomstick, Diadree," he said.

"That's true. You didn't have this when you were a child." She thumped his armor beneath her knuckles.

"I didn't have it because I was a child. I left Orunn when I was thirteen."

The old woman shook her head impatiently. "I mean your father didn't pass it on to you. Norint was a farmer."

"Yes. I turned mercenary after he died."

Bahrn glanced back as he felt her hand rest on his shoulder. Her fingers absently traced two of the spiral designs on his shoulder plate, carved into the metal like a second set of eyes. Inlaid with lapis lazuli, the swirling patterns appeared in mottled blue-white pairs all across his armor, contrasting sharply with his darkly tanned face and black mustache. Frankly, he enjoyed the superstitious notion of having extra eyes to guard him, though the patterns resembled no human or elf orbs he'd ever seen.

Watching Diadree stare into them was uncannily like watching a child gazing at her reflection in a mirror.

"Why did you stay, when everyone else had left the village?" he asked quietly.

She looked up, and smiled. "Because I'm old. Bratlings and cult mages have driven me mad, and I'm too feeble to move on, no matter how hard the earth shakes my bones."

"The tremors could have killed you," Bahrn pointed out.

"Yes, but they were not her fault." Diadree sighed. "Be grateful at least one dragon managed to pass out of this world with so little fuss, boy."

"You believe Amrennathed's death caused the tremors?"

"Why not? The power of a dragon dying-one so old and tightly linked to the earth-is bound to be felt, no matter how gentle she tried to be."

"You wish to protect her memory." Bahrn shook his head. "Yet she destroyed Orunn-not in fact, but as a result of her death."

"It was her time, and she chose to go as her dignity-greater than an army of greed-driven cultists-demanded. I can only hope to be offered that same grace someday." Diadree tensed. "Careful now, the mountain's about to have another fit."

"What-? " Bahrn cursed as the rock beneath his fingertips shifted, and began to tremble. Metal armor rattled against stone, jarring both of them, but Diadree seemed at peace with it.

Hooking an arm around the thickest root he could reach, Bahrn pulled the old woman in close until the shaking slowed and finally subsided.

"How did you know?" he asked when the rock was firm beneath them again.

Diadree didn't answer. When he craned his head around to look at her she was gazing back down at her house. From the high vantage, Bahrn saw that a section of the roof had collapsed in on itself.

"Diadree," he pressed, and she blinked and turned away from the sight.

"Keep climbing," she said. "We're almost there."

Bahrn followed her eyes to a ledge snugged against the cliff several feet above them. At its back hung a tunnel.

Diadree slid off onto the ledge when they reached the top. There was enough room for both of them to stand comfortably outside the tunnel. Squinting into the darkness, Bahrn thought he caught the glimmer of tiny lights.

"Arlon!" he called out, but the lights didn't move. He slipped a torch from the pack on his shoulder and spent a moment lighting it. When he raised the flaming end inside the passage, Diadree was already several steps ahead of him, examining the tunnel walls. He caught a flash of colored light against the flame and blinked, thinking he'd imagined the sight.

"What is that?" he asked, then answered the question himself: "Amethyst."

He flattened his free hand against the stone. In the shadows, deeply embedded, the formations were a mural of sparkling purple and white, swirling designs not unlike his armor.

"Watch your step," Diadree cautioned as gravel and something firmer crunched under Bahrn's boot.

He stepped back quickly and shone the torchlight over a dirt-caked bone that had been snapped nearly in half under his weight. He noticed a skull lying nearby.

"Human," he said. The entire back portion of the skull was caved in. "Others have come here?"

"Several others," Arlon's voice echoed out of the darkness ahead of them. They heard the wizard's footsteps as he trotted into the torchlight. "There are other sets of remains in the larger cavern," he said, then shot the mercenary a look of triumph. "And two eyes," he added, motioning for them to follow him back down the tunnel.

The ground sloped downward for several feet, emptying into a dome-ceilinged chamber. Directly ahead of them loomed two identical, man-sized oval alcoves buried a hand-span into the wall.

The cavern was full of the sparkling amethyst. Crusts of it speared out from the wall and druzes carpeted the ground around his boots like a crystal maze in miniature.

Arlon moved his palm over the largest of the spears. Light haloed up from the crystal, illuminating the entire chamber in painful, lavender light.

Bahrn could pick out other glittering objects strewn about the floor-gems of varying colors and sizes amongst gold and silver coins.

"She was here," Arlon said. "These are remnants of her hoard. Tell me where she is!" he demanded, whirling on Diadree.

"Arlon." Bahrn casually pivoted between the pair, ignoring the dark look the wizard threw him. "You truly believe she's hiding Amrennathed in one of her pockets?"

"For a brief time, I thought she was the dragon." He spoke to Bahrn in that same easy manner, but the wizard's eyes followed Diadree's every step around the cavern with the glittering fascination of a man who does not realize he is being observed.

Bahrn was observing though, and Arlon's eyes told him more than enough. The mercenary's hand slid to his waist, where the handle of his morningstar waited.

"The others who returned from the mountain never found this cave," Arlon went on. "They claimed the only living soul on the mountain was one crazy old woman… a woman who refused to leave Amrennathed. They didn't know she was speaking of the dragon, the Queen of the Mountain. Only a very few know her by name."

Diadree paused and glared back at him, her hand raised at the ridge of one of the stone eyes.

Bahrn thought of Diadree's reflection in his armor. He shook the memory off. "That's absurd. She isn't a dragon, she-"

"I know that!" Arlon said. "But she knew the dragon's true name. She tried to get up here herself. Why?" The wizard scraped up a handful of coins, jewels, and dirt from the floor and hurled it at the wall inches from the old woman. "Not for this! You're not a looter, not an ore, are you, Diadree? However much you smell like one. Where is she? Where are the dragon's bones?" he shouted.

Silence reigned in the cavern. A single coin from the wizard's tantrum rolled to a stop at the toe of Bahrn's boot. The mercenary glanced down at it and caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

For a moment, Bahrn thought the left eye of the cavern had blinked, but it was only Diadree, shifting restlessly beneath the low-hanging stalactites suspended above the hollow in thick-set lashes. He opened his mouth to call her back to his side.

And one of the rocky spears broke away from the wall. Not a stalactite, Bahrn realized-at the same time his voice shouted to the old woman to move-and it wasn't falling. It was crawling down the wall.

Detaching from a cluster of stone, the thing shuffled down into the circle of purple light cast by the enspelled amethyst. Bahrn could make out an anvil-shaped head that swiped, pendulumlike, from side to side, and four stony feet dragging awkwardly across the ground.

Its body swung toward Diadree as she stumbled away.

Bahrn drew his morningstar and ran forward to push her aside, but Diadree's ankle had already given out beneath her.

She slid to the ground as the creature charged by, raking her side with its stony belly. Diadree cried out as she was dragged forward, bare flesh caught on protruding shards of rock and crystal.

Bahrn swung the morningstar underhand at the creature's other side, taking both front feet out from under its body in a cloud of dust and shattering rock. The creature skittered wildly across the floor like a puppy on slick cobbles, allowing the old woman to fall free.

Bahrn wheeled around for another strike but checked the swing as Arlon's hands began cutting rapid patterns in the air. The coins and jewels and chunks of stone he'd hurled earlier rose up from the floor and shot toward the creature like a dozen tiny sling bullets. More pieces of the creature's stone body fell away as the pellets impacted. Stung, the beast swung its attention immediately to the wizard.

"Watch her." Arlon raised his hands again. "I don't want her dead yet," he snapped at the mercenary.

Diadree lay curled into a fetal ball against the cavern wall. Her shirt was shredded-stone and bits of sharp crystal were embedded in her side.

"She's protecting herself," Diadree moaned as Bahrn tried to tend the cuts in the dim light.

"Arlon will kill it," Bahrn soothed, adding silently, and perhaps he'll move on to us. "It appears your dragon left a few pets behind to guard her lair."

"No," Diadree said. "They're like children, only not, not really. She's left pieces of herself behind."

"That thing isn't alive, Diadree," Bahrn assured her. "It's made of mountain rock, and gold and gems. I pulled some out of your wound." He pointed to the bloodstained pieces of wealth on the floor beside him.

The old woman lifted her head from her hands and reached for him, her fingers finding and clutching an exposed bit of tunic. Her eyes, dulled by pain, focused on him, pleading.

"Could you take the rest?" she begged.

Bahrn's heart wrenched. "They're all gone, lady, I promise you."

"No, they're not. Amrennathed's not. The pieces are still there." She tapped her temple hard with a dirty nail. "It's not her fault I got some of them. I'm stubborn-I loved the mountain as much as she did. I wouldn't leave."

"What are you saying?" Bahrn gripped her shoulders as she began to tremble. "Where did Amrennathed go?"

"The mountain. She was old and didn't want to leave or be scavenged after her death. Would you, if you had lived half so long, want your bones looted for trophies? I didn't blame her. I watched it happen to Orunn. So she joined her body with the mountain. It upset the balance of… everything-shook the earth, these caverns. Everyone left the village except me. The mountain and I… somehow the pieces got mixed, and now I've got some of her in me and… and I just wanted to stay in my home, to be safe." Tears welled in her eyes. "Or maybe that's her voice, her wishes. I don't know anymore. But it doesn't matter if he kills it," she moaned. "There're still too many pieces."

"Gods, Diadree," Bahrn said, feeling helpless. He rubbed his hands over her shoulders as she cried, trying to calm her.

His hands stilled abruptly as her words sank in. Too many pieces.

Bahrn squinted at the walls of the cavern, letting his eyes become absorbed by the rocky fixtures and shadows. He remembered as a child lying on his back on the Fox Ear's shore, hunting for cloud shapes in the sky. As he looked, his eyes picked up more of the vaguely serpentine shapes sprouting out of the rock at various points around the cavern. They remained still and silent.

Behind them, Arlon dropped to his stomach as the stone wyrmling twisted, slamming its hindquarters into a rocky shelf jutting out from the far wall. It fell hard to the floor and shattered.

The wizard stood and said, "The amethyst dragons are powerful psions. I should have realized-wyrms animated from stone. Amrennathed allowed her body to waste away into the mountain, and her mental essence followed intact. But your proximity to her and the mountain-somehow a bit of that essence seeped into you."

He strode toward them, his expression frozen on Diadree in triumph as he began to mouth the words of another spell.

Bahrn wasn't about to wait to find out what magic it might be-at best, a spell to kill or contain them both, anything to keep Diadree's mind intact.

His hand moved to his weapon, but he hesitated. The wizard was too far away. If Arlon ducked, if he missed his target, he and Diadree were dead.

He scanned the wall, following the spines of serpentine, stone bodies, as if he could will them to move, to leap down upon the wizard.

Arlon raised his hands.

Bahrn smiled grimly and hurled his morningstar into the space between them.

Arlon's eyes bulged. His left hand trembled violently, but he continued to weave the gestures of his spell even as his right palm spasmed weakly, pinned between the cavern wall and the head of Bahrn's morningstar. Blood streamed down the rock into the dust, but he kept speaking, spitting the words of his spell with flecks of saliva.

He didn't see the rock shifting behind him, stirred awake by the impact of the morningstar on stone.

Two more serpentine bodies uncurled. They caught Arlon's movement as he completed the gestures of his spell.

"Stay behind me," Bahrn commanded as Diadree tried to raise herself up to a sitting position.

They watched as a tiny wisp of flame hovered into being above Arlon's unruined palm, flowing and expanding into a blue-orange sphere of fire.

"Get ready to run," he hissed, knowing that Diadree would never be able to get out of the way of the flowing missile.

The sphere burst in the air where it was forming as a third anvil-shaped head swung out from the wall next to Arlon's raised hand. It struck the glowing sphere and the wizard in the same movement.

The magic dissolved as the anvil drove Arlon's body into the uneven cavern wall as the morningstar had buried his hand. His head snapped back against the stone, and he slid, limp, to the floor.

Bahrn held himself rigid. He pressed Diadree behind him as the wyrmlings came down from the wall. They stalked the cavern with their sightless eyes, heads drifting from side to side as if they could scent the air like bloodhounds on a track.

Finally, finding nothing moving, they slowed and collapsed to the cavern floor in a pile of rock. After a moment, they became indistinguishable from the other stone formations.

"Is he dead?" Diadree asked, looking from behind Bahrn's back at Arlon's still form.

Bahrn nodded. "Are you ready to go home, Diadree?" he whispered, hardly daring to breathe for fear the stone dragons would awaken again. "Amrennathed is sleeping again."

"Not yet," Diadree answered. "I have to stay."

Somehow, he wasn't surprised. He doubted she was in any condition to make the jostling trek back down the mountain. Her eyes were glazed, staring at something far away, and the hollows of her cheeks seemed deeper sunk into her face. It struck Bahrn that despite all of these things she looked much the same as she always had, back to the time of his childhood. She had been old then and was old now. He could never recall a time when she was young. He wondered why he was just realizing that.

"For how long?" he asked.

"Long enough to get the pieces out," she said. "Don't ask me how much time it will take. I've no idea."

"I mean how long have you lived here, Diadree-on the mountain?" He hesitated. "You knew Amrennathed, didn't you? You spoke to her."

"You're implying, I suppose, that she, I, and the mountain are of like age?" She offered a raspy chuckle. "No, boy. I'm not as old as the mountain-not quite. Amrennathed told me her name and exchanged words with me because we understood each other-two old women wanting a good place to live and die in peace. The mountain suited us." Her eyes turned heavy, dark. "Wouldn't you prefer that, human man, or would you be skewered on the point of spear and sword?"

"I am not a dragon, lady." Bahrn spoke gently, but for the first time since he was a boy staring in a window, he felt unsure and a little afraid of the old woman. He swallowed, forcing the feelings away and a smile to his lips. "Neither are you, Diadree, despite all accounts."

"This is no way to die either." Her eyelids fluttered-the darkness passed from her face, and a bit of the old humor returned. "Don't listen to me. If I stay here long enough, she will take them-the rest of the pieces. I hope."

Bahrn didn't know what to say.

"I'll mend your roof for you before I go," he found himself offering. "When you decide to go home."

"That's kind of you. You've not turned out too badly at all. I'm shocked almost to the point of exhaustion." She laid her head against the mountain and slept, a satisfied half-smile curving her lips.