The Realms of the Dragons 2

THE ROAD HOME

21 Marpenoth, the Year of the Shield (1367 DR)

"Worthless band o' cutthroats, scoundrels, and knaves," the dwarf spat, climbing atop a scarred oak table. His hard eyes searched the war weary faces of the crowded inn. "Who among you slakes his thirst with blood and fills his belly with battle? Who in all of Moradin's creation has so little fear of death?"

"The Company of the Chimera!" the dwarf bellowed, answering his own query with a triumphant roar. "The finest company of rogues ever to cast dice with the Gods of War!"

The common room erupted with cheers that shook sawdust from the ceiling. Flagons were raised high and naked blades flashed in the smokey light of fat-lamps. For two tendays the Company of the Chimera had occupied the Inn of the Seven Silvers, cowing the locals until none dared to pass the inn's double doors. Hired to guard over the Sembian waystation and twenty miles of the Dawnpost highway, the mercenaries had done more damage and caused more terror than any brigands in memory.

"Join us, dragon-tribe girl!" Tombli stabbed a blistered finger toward the long-limbed barbarian sitting by an open window. "Or are the women of the North as icy as their winters?"

Clad in tanned pelts and an oiled sealskin cape, Saskia was immune to the frosty draft that had driven her companions close to the crackling hearth. With pale white skin and crystal blue eyes, she might have been cunningly carved from ice herself, were it not for the raven black hair that spilled to the middle of her back. A notched sword rested against her shoulder, the barbarian's only companion. She surveyed the company, their noses red with drink, their bellies soft and full.

"Keep your toasts," Saskia said. "I'll take my drink with warriors."

"If the copper-counting lords of Sembia choose to pay our band to watch over their packs of ratty bondsmen, then I say let them pay!" Tombli dropped from the table. "We've earned our season's keep and not a Chimera has fallen."

"Your peace is killing us, little man."

Tombli loosened the jeweled dagger at his waist, the symbol of his devotion to Abbathor, the dwarf god of greed and avarice.

"As captain of the company, I command you to drink."

The barbarian wrapped her arms around her bastard sword and pulled the hood of her cape down over her eyes.

Snarling, Tombli stole a brand from the crackling fire. He kicked the door of the inn open wide and cast the log into the darkness. It spun to a flaming halt in the center of the road.

Tombli slammed a flagon onto the table before Saskia and challenged, "Drink or fight."

A chill breeze cut through the room and Saskia's eyes flashed from beneath the trim of her hood. The inn erupted with cheers and catcalls when the barbarian pushed the flagon away.

Saskia rose slowly and stretched like a cat, her lips pulled into a grim smile. Wagers were made and grimy coins changed hands. By the time the barbarian had shed her cloak and tied her sleeves up, every warrior sober enough to walk had stumbled outside. Laying her sword to the side, Saskia strode out into the street to drunken shouts and wild applause.

A biting pain erupted from the back of Saskia's thigh. The barbarian fell to her knees in surprise, a war dart buried deep in her leg. Tombli stood silhouetted in the doorway, another dart readied to throw.

"Civilization is making you slow," Tombli laughed. "Half a year ago, it would have been impossible to hit you. Now I'd have to try to miss."

He drew back his arm to throw again.

Cursing, Saskia flung herself to the ground. A dart hissed past, but she was prone, with no way of dodging the others that were sure to follow. With a swipe of her hand, Saskia hurled a scattering of gravel at the dwarf. It was a desperate move. Nothing could distract the dwarf lord's trained arm.

Tombli's laughter was cut short when a pebble exploded against his chest in a flash that lit up the night. The dwarf staggered back, momentarily stunned. Saskia was equally surprised, but a life spent hunting beasts on the wild tundra had trained her to seize every opportunity, no matter how improbable. Saskia's vision went red and she sprang at Tombli, roaring like a tiger. The pair fell back inside the inn, Saskia's fierce blows raining down on Tombli's face.

It took half a dozen Chimeras to pull her off the dwarf. Tombli sat up slowly, his face pulped and bloodied.

"Hold her down," he mumbled through a swollen lip. Tombli tore a tankard out of the hands of the nearest Chimera and stumbled forward until he stood above the barbarian. His beard was soaked with blood and his forge-hardened face grimaced in pain.

"To the Company of the Chimera!" Tombli shouted, raising the tankard high. The company echoed the dwarfs toast with sullen murmurs. Gripping Saskia's hair in his fist, he emptied the tankard over her head. "To the Company of the Chimera. Many heads, one purpose."

"Lie still," Grummond ordered, his greasy hands working the tip of the dart from Saskia's leg. The company's surgeon was a smashed nose half-ore who had seen more battle with his one good eye than all the rest of the company together.

"Fightin' the captain," Grummond scoffed. Pressing his hands to either side of the wound, Grummond leaned into her leg and sank his teeth into the tip of the dart. With a jerk of his head he tore the dart loose and spat it onto the floor. "Were you half drunk or half daft?"

"The dwarf thinks too highly of himself," Saskia said, "and he's guiled you all into fearing him."

"Tombli's a war-caster o' Abbathor. Nothing but trouble, that one." The half-ore poured a rust colored syrup over the ragged wound and gave her thigh a slap. "His father was an exile o' the Rift Clans, his mother a duergar princess. Ain't no dwarfhold gonna adopt a half-gray bastard. Tombli's been takin' that pain out on the world ever since."

"If he's such an almighty priest, how come you do all our healing?"

"Not every priest's a healer," Grummond said, his one good eye on the door. "But if n you hate him so much, why stay with the Chimeras?"

Saskia shrugged. "A wolf needs a pack, an Uthgardt needs a tribe. It is the way of things."

Grummond studied her. He had known many barbarians, but there was something different about Saskia. The North-lander had no mirth to match her melancholy. She didn't fight out of bitterness, like Tombli, or greed, like the company. Instead it was as if a war-worm had curled up inside her belly, giving her a hunger for battle that refused to be sated. The only challenge worthy of her respect would be the one that killed her. Anything less merited only disdain and scorn.

Grummond turned to put away his oils and salves and said, "So how'd you witch up that bit o' magic?"

"What do you mean?"

"The flash, the boom!" Grummond laughed. "I lost a pair o' gold crowns to that pretty little trick."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Saskia growled, something ancient and cruel flashing in her blue eyes.

"All right," Grummond held up his hands in defense. "Didn't mean nothin' by it. You know who your friends are."

A shout went up from the common room.

"Gruumsh's blood," the half-ore swore. "What now?"

Tombli leaned into the room, jerked a thumb at Saskia, and said, "Get up and put some civilized clothes on. I need your eyes."

A band of trappers had ridden into the waystation. The company gathered to meet them, crowding around the men and their heavy iron cage. By the time Saskia had limped outside Tombli was already engaged in a shouting match with a swarthy Calishite, trying to drive down the trapper's price by bluff and bluster.

The man's armor was brutally torn in several places and a long bandage wrapped the length of his leg. Whatever was in the cage had given the trapper and his fellows a hard time of it.

Saskia eased through the crowd then stopped short.

The trappers had caught a dragon.

Saskia had seen images of drakes before. She had seen the likenesses of great wyrms inked onto scraped hides, carved from ivory and wood, gilded in gold and silver, and painted on cavern walls. But the miniature dragon, no larger than a cat, had something every representation had lacked. Like an exotic sword polished to a razor's edge, the dragon was beautiful.

Long lines of sinewy muscle tensed and corded beneath glossy scales the color of wine. A pair of sharp horns curled above dark eyes that flashed violet, framing a savage maw filled with needle-sharp teeth. Its delicate wings strained anxiously against the tight confines of the cage, and the body ended in a serpentine tail tipped with a single ivory barb.

Tombli whispered from Saskia's elbow, "What in the Nine Hells is it?"

Saskia struggled to translate the Uthgardt word to Common, but the best she could manage was a vulgar approximation of: "Apseudodragon."

Tombli snorted. "A sort-of-dragon?" He spun back on the Calishite and shouted, "Cheating son of a djinni! One hundred golden lions and not a falcon more!"

While Tombli and the Calishite fell back into vicious bargaining, Saskia knelt before the cage. The wyrm's gemstone eyes were timeless, utterly indifferent to the concerns of man. Its scaled kin had reigned long before the press of cities and farms, and would exist long after the last eldritch tower crumbled to dust.

Free me, sister.

Saskia flinched. She hadn't heard Uthgardt spoken since she had fled her home. The dragon hissed with impatience. Again the words leaped into her mind.

Free me!

As a girl Saskia had been plagued by dreams in which entire flights of great wyrms filled the skies. Worse, her dreams had worked tiny miracles on the world around her. When Saskia had nightmares, lights danced across the northern skies, sentries reported watch fires flaring blue and red, and rusting blades were made bright. The tribe's aging shaman, terrified of what he couldn't explain, declared her visions to be portents of evil and did everything in his power to purge her of the wicked taint. But every ritual and ceremony failed and in the end Saskia was branded a witch, damned by an untapped potential she couldn't control.

Free me!

"No," Saskia said, her voice a fierce whisper. Her eyes narrowed to shards of ice and her words slipped into Uthgardt. "I sacrificed fortunes to your troves, swore my spirit to your totem and placed my body upon your altar." She spat on the ground. "Your kin denied me."

Before Saskia could stand, the dragon's long tail shot between the bars of the cage. It struck once, as delicate as a lover's caress, slashing a crimson arc across her cheek.

Saskia fell backward, her blood flaring as the dragon's poison charged through her veins. The weight of her own body bore down upon her like a coat of wet furs. Her head lolled weakly and her fingers went numb. As the sky darkened, her ears were filled with the thunder of a roaring drum.

Once more the voice leaped unbidden into her mind.

We did not deny you. You denied us.

Saskia slept and as she slept, she remembered.

She was standing on a steep slope, knee deep in drifting snow. Before her rose a towering chain of granite peaks that stretched to the sky.

The Spine of the World.

Behind her the mountains fell away through rolling clouds of snow and blowing ice. A relentless wind hammered her body, threatening to pluck her from the mountain and hurl her into the whirling white abyss. Her cheeks were black with frost, her fingers and toes were numb with cold, and her eyes burned from days of seeing nothing but endless expanses of white.

Kicking and punching holds into the slope, Saskia continued her climb.

A tenday ago the elders of her village had given her a choice: leave the tribe forever or submit to the Trial of the Dragon. Saskia had chosen the trial: to travel alone through the wilderness, without weapons or provisions, to the summit of the Uthgarheis, the lonely peak that ruled the Spine of the World. There, atop all of creation, she would be met and judged by the spirit totem of her tribe.

Uthgar had favored her early in the trial, sending a goblin war band tripping and snorting across her path. It had been easy enough to ambush their scouts. Armed with a goblin waraxe Saskia was able to kill a snowbound caribou, taking its hide for warmth and smoking its fatty meat for rations. Arriving at the base of the Uthgarheis, she rested for a day then started her climb along the rocky southern ridge.

That was two days ago.

She hadn't slept since beginning the climb. The caribou hide was frozen stiff around her, and her bundle of smoked meat had begun to dwindle. Still she pressed on, climbing ridge after icebound ridge. To give up was to accept that she was a witch, a corrupt soul given over to wickedness and evil. Saskia knew that couldn't be true, and meeting with the elder spirit would prove it.

On the third day she summited the slender pinnacle of rock that crowned the Uthgarheis. Delirious with exhaustion and triumph, she crawled before the shelter of a fallen cairn and collapsed, too tired to see if the Elder Spirit was waiting for her.

The howl of a thousand starving wolves woke her from her sleep. Sitting up, Saskia looked to the north. A dark storm rolled toward her, sliding across the sky like a black avalanche. Shards of blowing ice cut her cheeks and day turned to night.

The first gusts tore away her meager shelter. Shouting a war cry, Saskia raised her axe high and buried it into the rocky ground. She held on with the last of her strength and cried to the Great Worm for mercy.

Saskia had thought she had survived the Great Worm's Trial.

It hadn't begun.

Eight days later Saskia stumbled back into camp, frozen in body and numb in soul. The Great Worm never came. She slept for days, slipping in and out of a delirious fever that made her skin hot to the touch. When the fever finally broke, the tribe's shaman came to her tent and told of her the Great Worm's death. The Elder Spirit had been killed by a company of villains only two days after she began her quest. They had gutted his lair, taken his hide like savages, and carried away the dragon's wealth on the backs of slaves and mules.

Her trial had been in vain. Like a foolish child wishing on falling stars, her passionate prayers had gone unheard.

The next morning Saskia left for the south, swearing never to return.

Saskia stretched out on the ground, her long limbs sore from inaction. Dawn would be coming soon, but sleep eluded the barbarian. Left in its place was the anxious exhaustion so common to the cities of man. Of all the curses visited on civilized folk, that was the worst: to go through their waking hours half asleep and their sleeping hours half awake.

Saskia's dreams had returned. Nightmares of massive golden drakes that blotted out the sun with their blinding wings, silk-scaled terrors the color of soot, white dragons that drove winter's hoarfrost before them. The dragons swooped out of the northlands like a winged plague, storming the walled cities of man and laying waste to all in their path.

At one point in every dream, the largest and oldest dragon, his scales mottled with age, would beckon to her with a single claw, his clouded eyes smoldering like the embers of a dying fire. Then two words would thunder inside her mind: Join us.

Even the memory was enough to make her start. Yes, Saskia thought, sleep could wait.

Saskia exhaled hard and she gazed longingly into the clear sky. Hunting with her father she had learned to track the stars as they made their course across the heavens, but entire tendays passed without her noting the changes of Selune. She had come south hoping to outrun her curse, but all she had lost were the things she valued most. Saskia knew she couldn't stay with the Chimeras any longer, but where was a barbarian to go after being cast out of her tribe?

The crash of metal broke the night's fragile peace. Saskia pulled herself up and followed the muffled ringing back to its source.

Tombli was in the stables, waging a one-sided battle against the caged pseudodragon. He rained blows down upon the cage with a war club, his drunken laughter filling the night.

"Dance, mighty wyrm!" Tombli commanded. "Earn your keep!"

The pseudodragon's barbed tail had been amputated the day after it attacked Saskia. It was defenseless before the dwarfs cruelty.

Saskia slipped silently into the dark shadows of a stall.

The dwarf took the key from his belt, jangling it just out of the dragon's reach.

"Come on, pretty thing. Show me a little wrath."

"No?" Tombli asked with disappointment. Unable to fit the ring back onto his belt, the drunk dwarf cast it aside and traded the club for his jeweled dagger. "Worthless lizard. Better to sell your vitals to the mages and tan your hide for my boots."

The barbarian stepped from the shadows, bringing both fists down on Tombli in a blow that would have felled an ox. The dwarf staggered two steps backward then lashed out blindly with his blade, the dagger cutting a glowing green line in the darkness. Grummond had warned Saskia of Tombli's wicked blade, a serpentine dirk that wept poison, but the barbarian hadn't believed such a thing was possible.

The dwarf regained his balance and charged her with a roar. Saskia plucked the club from the ground and broke it against the dwarf's head as he rushed passed. Tombli fell to one knee, then pulled himself back up, his hard black eyes aflame with rage.

Saskia settled into a crouch and readied herself for another charge.

Growling a prayer, Tombli drew a short rod of iron from a pouch and stabbed his dagger toward the sky. He was answered with a resounding crack that shook the air. Saskia fell to the ground, every muscle in her body contracted into painful knots.

"Think to fight me, barbarian?" Tombli spat out a mouthful of blood. "You and the wyrm are one and the same: feeble pets, without tooth or guile."

Finally the pseudodragon came alive, hurling itself at the bars of its cage with all the fury of a true drake. The cage crashed to the ground, but the stout bars held.

"Gnash all you like, lizard," Tombli snorted. "Those bars are enchanted cold iron, and the finest turn-picks in Sembia would think twice before trying that lock."

Saskia strained in vain against the dwarf's spell. Tombli saw the frustration rising in her blue eyes and began to chuckle.

"Grim spell, isn't it? No one ever forgets their first time. I like to follow it with something I call 'Abbathor's Flowering.' " The dwarf whispered a soft prayer and laid the tip of his dagger against the bare skin of her neck. A shock shot through her body, tracing blue lines of lightning along the veins under her skin. Her veins pulsed once, twice, then burst through the surface of her skin.

Saskia tried to scream but her jaw was clenched shut. Frustrated by her helplessness she could only moan incoherently, tears mixing with the blood running down her face.

"You fear the pain."

She could feel the dwarf's excited breath on her lips. "You don't have to say it," Tombli whispered. "I can see it in your eyes."

Defiant rage erupted from Saskia's proud heart. What did that vile dwarf know of pain? Pain taught her people what it meant to be alive. From birth to death, pain was the single constant in the life of an Uthgardt warrior. It wasn't the pain she feared, but so pathetic an end, slaughtered like a pig by a southern priest.

"Watch closely, dragon. It's been years since I've had the pleasure of skinning a woman alive."

Tombli's threats fell upon deaf ears. Filled with self-loathing, she was beyond the reach of his grubby, blistered fingers. Saskia had come south seeking escape, but like the dragon, she found herself in a cage. Worse, hers was one of her own choosing, and she would die in it.

Free me!

Saskia's soul flared. Years of frustration and denial were erased in a single moment, eclipsed by her rage. She commanded the universe and it leaped to obey.

The key lifted from the ground, held by an invisible hand.

Delicately, but without hesitation, it drifted into the lock and gave the softest of turns. Tombli looked up, his blistered face wrinkled with confusion, just in time to see the cage door swing open.

The drake exploded into motion, distilling days and nights of torment into a whirlwind of fangs and claws. Tombli swung his dagger this way and that, but to no avail. The dragon spun around the dwarf like a dizzying cloud of razors, laying open Tombli like a butcher slicing ham.

Crying in terror, Tombli buried his ragged face in his hands and charged for the door of the stables. The pseudodragon lashed out once with its stump of a tail and caught Tombli's heavy boot, spilling the dwarf into the moldy hay. Tombli fought to his knees with a choking wail and scrambled from the stables and into the darkness.

The pseudodragon settled on Saskia's hip, fastidiously licking the blood from its claws. Inch by painful inch, Saskia's muscles began to unknot, and soon she found she was able to stand.

Greetings, mistress. Iam the Wyrm Aeristhax, heir apparent to the mighty Akilskyls, Wyrm of Renown.

"A witch," Saskia said, her voice a mix of despair and disgust. "I'm a witch."

Witch, sorceress, wizling, bruja, hag… a thousand words for a thousand tribes of man. Deny the Blessing as it suits you; we will have more pressing issues soon enough.

The dragon examined its claws.

Really.you southern women think too much. It's a wonder you have time for life at all.

Saskia started to correct the dragon then stopped. Perhaps she was a witch; what of it? Unless she found some weapons, and quickly, she would be a dead witch. The Company of the Chimera was a hundred strong and had allies throughout the heart of Sembia and all the Dales. Saskia smiled openly at the thought of a running battle with an entire mercenary company. It was the sort of feat that only a barbarian could hope to pull off.

At the back of the stables were two crates of weapons, cast-offs and rejects from the company's cache. Saskia rummaged through the crates, discarding the weak and delicate, finally settling on a stout shortspear and a brace of heavy throwing daggers.

Aeristhax flew to her shoulder, growling softly.

The mountain-born has raised the alarm.

Saskia nodded and together the pair slipped outside.

Dawn was coming quickly, the village awakening with the crack of drover whips. Saskia cut two horses from the corral, not troubling with a saddle or reins, simply tying on halters. She was almost finished when a voice called for her to stop.

Saskia turned to see Grummond standing on the edge of the corral. The healer wore a coat of burnished chain mail and carried an ore's recurve bow. A handful of black-shafted war arrows were thrust into the ground at his feet.

"You nearly killed the captain," said Grummond as he knocked an arrow and took aim. A dozen other Chimeras fell in line behind him. "We can't let you go."

Saskia swung easily onto the back of the first horse. She was answered with the sharp snap of a bowstring. Aeristhax hissed in anger as the arrow cut its way toward them.

Saskia waved her hand the way another woman might have batted at a fly. Intuitive sorcery, pent up for years, coursed through her, directing the weft and warp of the Weave. The arrow ricocheted off an invisible wall and shot into the sky, tracing a long black arc through the dawn.

Saskia howled in triumph and raised her spear high, her body crackling with power. The Chimeras broke into a charge then skidded to a stop. The barbarian was glowing with an unearthly blue radiance. Grummond waved them back, his bow forgotten.

Aeristhax gave a coughing hiss and took to wing. Saskia kicked hard at her mount and the horses leaped into a gallop, following the dragon north to freedom.

Night came peacefully to Tassledale. Aeristhax hunted in long, lazy circles on the last winds of the fading day, while Saskia made camp on the rocky crest of a hill overlooking the village of Archtassel. She had ridden until the horses could go no farther. The mounts rested, grazing on the meager autumn grasses. The lights of Archtassel slowly winked to life as mothers called their children home and farmers made their way back from the fields.

Surveying their peaceful tranquility, Saskia understood why dragons rampaged through such lands. Like every living thing, civilizations were meant to rise and fall. Ripe fruit was meant to be plucked.

But thoughts of conquest could wait for the morrow.

Saskia knelt on the ground before a pile of twigs and dead wood. At a word the fire sprang to life, the wood cracking and popping as mundane flames settled in, a trail of sweet smelling smoke curling into the chill night air. Saskia warmed herself at the fire's side and whittled a stick into a skewer while she waited for Aeris to return with dinner.

Above her the Five Wanderers shone brightly, twinkling as they made their chaotic way across the heavens. Saskia looked up from her fire and measured their progress.