Pathfinder Tales- Lord of Runes

by Dave Gross

  I turned, irritated to be corrected.

  Whatever the woman saw in my face caused her to flinch.

  For the briefest instant, I regretted my reaction, but the instant was fleeting. She needed to learn how to treat me with respect. Fear was a comparatively crude rod, but it would serve. Tending to the feelings of my subordinates would only distract me from my true purpose, which I was beginning to understand was also my destiny: to comprehend and master the secrets of the Tome. Only then would I destroy it.

  Or perhaps I would not.

  It belonged to me, after all. The Pathfinder had tried to wrest it from me, and he had failed. If the necromancer intended to take it from me by subtler methods, she would be disappointed.

  A premonition tickled my mind. I sensed a nearby presence, strange yet familiar. Beneath these mounds of coins lay something else, something powerful.

  Something that belonged to me.

  “Search the hoard,” I ordered them. “There is something else hidden here, something I require.”

  “What are you talking about, boss?”

  “Do not question me. Just do as I say.”

  “Count Jeggare,” said the necromancer. “Varian, listen to me, you don’t—”

  “Enough!” I shouted, but my voice came out as a rasp. “You are wasting valuable time. My time. I will not tolerate another—”

  The air pressure in the cavern suddenly increased. The river surged backward, its waters spilling over the banks and flooding treasures on the shore. The dog barked a frantic warning, but it came far too late.

  In our panicked motions, our bodies occluded our lights. Fragmented shadows leaped upon the walls: a hand, a partial profile, a staff or handle, a writhing flag, a crooked arm and running leg. The drake cried in terror.

  A dark mass rose out of the river. Water rushed down a wall of scales, each the size of a target shield. Along with the river spray, I felt a wave of terror radiating from the creature—the dragon. The magical compulsion chilled my veins and set my hands to trembling, but soon it washed over me and I stood fast. Among the screams of the weaker beings, I alone stood calm beneath the wyrm’s eye.

  In the shifting light, the dragon appeared black and dark blue, yet I saw a glimmer of bronze upon its scales. Holding the Gluttonous Tome under one arm, I retrieved the Shadowless Sword. Its magic revealed no illusion. A bronze dragon stood before us.

  It turned its incandescent gaze upon me, and I knew only diplomacy would serve. Sheathing my sword, I said, “Forgive our necessary trespass, great wyrm.”

  “And shall I forgive your unnecessary theft?” The force of the dragon’s voice bruised my eyes.

  I raised the recombined Gluttonous Tome above my head. “I have simply retrieved the missing portion of my book.”

  “Your book?” said the dragon. “You fool! You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  “I know exactly what I have done,” I said. “And I am no fool. My name is Count Varian Jeggare. You would do well to remember it.”

  “Boss,” whispered Radovan. “Is that really the way you want—?”

  “Be silent.” Some vague absence distracted my attention. My fingers felt as if I had lost my rings, but the signet and my illuminating gem remained in place. Removing them and rubbing the tingling flesh beneath, I realized I had felt the sensation growing since the reunion of the Tome. I pocketed the rings.

  The dragon spoke again, her voice like thunder. “I am Svannostel, guardian of the Sleeper, defender of the Black Book. If necessary, I will destroy you before you complete the transformation.”

  “What transformation?” said Radovan.

  I found myself at a loss.

  “So,” said the dragon, “you do not know.”

  “I know the Gluttonous Tome contains all the wisdom of Runelord Zutha, his spells and insights into necromancy. It contains the secrets of reanimation and undeath.”

  “Those secrets are nothing but the teeth of a trap laid for necromancers craving false immortality.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You hold doom in your hands. The Gluttonous Tome is not only Zutha’s grimoire. It is his phylactery.”

  “What’s a phylactery?” said Radovan. Fear strained his voice, but he mastered it enough to stand beside me. The dog crept up to lie before me, tail between his legs.

  “So, it is the vessel in which Zutha stored his mind and soul,” I said. “The key to his undead immortality. Very well. I shall refuse to bring it to his corpse.”

  “You cannot refuse,” said the dragon. “You are now in its thrall. Once rejoined, the phylactery requires only an appropriate body to restore the runelord to life. Your body.”

  The revelation chilled me. For a moment, I felt a fear that had nothing to do with the dragon’s presence.

  With an almost idle gesture, the dragon plucked the Varisian thief from the shadows where she had been creeping away. The thief dropped her flag and covered her face with her arms. The dragon set her, still cowering, at my feet.

  Lowering its huge snout to my chest, the dragon sniffed. “There is something oddly familiar about you.”

  I tapped my chest. “My injured heart was healed by a dragon’s.”

  “What dragon? No, do not speak. Open your thoughts to me. I will know the truth.”

  “No.”

  “What?” The dragon reared back, astonished at my defiance.

  “I surrender my thoughts to no one.” Even in my anger, I felt the gnawing presence of a thing—many things—that belonged to me within the dragon’s treasure. With the Tome firmly under one arm, I stretched out my hand in the direction where I sensed they lay.

  A handful of coins leaped from the pile, scattered by a ring that flew directly onto my finger. Another followed it, encircling my thumb.

  “No,” said the dragon. “It is not possible. Only Zutha—”

  A gemstone escaped the treasure and flew toward my head. Rather than strike me, it orbited my brow like a planet around a star. An instant later, three more joined it.

  “Look out!” Radovan ducked another ring that flew onto the hand with which I clutched the Tome. I dropped the book, but it did not fall. It levitated beside me, bound to me by some invisible bond.

  By ones and twos, more Azlanti stones and enchanted rings returned—returned, I knew, for they were mine. They completed me, just as the Black Book had completed the Gluttonous Tome.

  When the singing of displaced coins and treasures subsided, a ring adorned every finger and thumb. A halo of multicolored gemstones encircled my brow.

  “Zutha’s Crest and Crown,” said Svannostel. If only for a moment, the dragon’s voice sounded not fearsome but fearful.

  “What are these things?” cried the necromancer. “What do they mean?”

  “The weapons of Runelord Zutha,” said the Pathfinder.

  “But Zutha wielded a scythe,” the necromancer insisted. “Didn’t he?”

  “As a staff of office, yes, and it too was a terrible weapon. But his true power lay within his rings and Azlanti stones.”

  “You were not only cursed to come here, Count Varian Jeggare,” said the dragon. “You were fated.”

  “Fated? Explain.”

  “Unlike the Gluttonous Tome, which he inscribed with the blood of a thousand slaves, Zutha fueled those rings and stones with his own blood and a portion of his soul. Only he could wield them. He or his direct descendants.”

  The rings and stones whispered in my brain, presenting their powers before me in the manner that knights lay their swords before a king. With such weapons on my person and the secrets of the Gluttonous Tome at my disposal, I marveled to consider the changes I might work on the world—among the Pathfinder Society, in Cheliax, and beyond.

  Radovan touched my arm. “Boss?”

  I had been lost to reverie. The dragon was speaking.

  “… under my supervision. You may use the library in the upper chambers, and I will alert my brother at Vythded Monastery. Thei
r library contains some relevant volumes. You may send someone back to reassure your guards, but I remind you how unwise it would be to invite further intruders into my lair … or to abscond with any of my treasures.”

  With the Crest and Crown of Zutha upon me and the final secrets of the Gluttonous Tome at hand, I had little to fear from a single hoard-greedy dragon. “Show me this library.”

  14

  The Dragon’s Lair

  Radovan

  Before letting us into the rest of her lair, the dragon called Svannostel gave us each a peek and a sniff.

  I’d been close to a dragon once or twice before, but it’s not the sort of thing you get used to. When she put her tarnished bronze snout up to me, I knew all it would take was a nudge to turn me into paste. When she inhaled, my hair rose up in the breeze.

  After she had a good whiff, she said, “There is something wrong with you.”

  “I get that a lot.” I tried not to make a face. Her breath smelled like fish and river water. “I used to have a condition. It’s better now.”

  It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It’d been a couple years since I last heard the devils that crawled through me to escape Hell. If Desna smiled on me, I’d never hear them again.

  Svannostel sniffed the others. They did their best not to cringe, but I saw tears running down Zora’s face.

  The dragon didn’t seem impressed with Eando, Zora, or Illyria. She gave Kazyah a little snort, like she recognized her smell. Kazyah didn’t blink.

  Svannostel bent down to sniff Arni, who whimpered like a big baby. Amaranthine flew to perch on his shoulders, spreading her wings to protect him. Svannostel’s huge lips peeled back. For a second I was afraid she’d eat them both. Then I realized that was how the dragon looked when she smiled.

  “So fierce.” She raised her head. “Never touch the copper portal or the crystal in the scrying room. If you venture below this part of the river or up into the mountain, you are beyond my protection—but not my wrath.”

  She led us to the round gate and opened it with a wave of her claw. She spit lightning into the next room before inviting us to follow.

  That next room was a huge, long cavern. Along the walls glowed copper pipes, howling as warm air poured into the room. Above them hung copper plates with reliefs of dragons in various situations, like a tapestry in a lord’s mansion.

  We sat on marble benches while the heated air dried our clothes. The boss took a seat before an image of a bronze dragon scratching runes into a clay tablet. He turned to Svannostel and said, “You are named for Svannost, the Father of History.”

  “You know the history of my people.” The dragon sounded surprised. When he said something else in dragontongue, she arched her neck like she was impressed.

  They talked a while in her language. The longer they went on, the more it seemed to irritate Lady Illyria, so I figured she couldn’t understand any more than I could. I looked to Eando and Kazyah to see if they understood. He shrugged, but it was awkward and I could tell he was still scared. Kazyah closed her eyes like she was trying to commune with her ancestors. Either that, or that was what she did when she was scared.

  When we were dry, Svannostel led us through a big gallery. “Here is some of what I have recovered of Xin-Gastash,” she said. “There is so much more beneath us, but it would take all the dwarves of Janderhoff centuries to unearth the city.”

  Damned dwarves, I thought, but I kept it to myself.

  Here and there, a bit of pillar or the corner of a roof stuck out of the cavern wall. Hunks of stone with frescoes or mosaics hung from chains in the ceiling. Statues stood around like party guests too shy to talk. One was a marble of a fat fellow gripping a reaper’s scythe. One arm and half his head had crumbled away missing, but he had rings on all his fingers and half a crown of stones circling his head.

  “Zutha,” said the boss. “Last runelord of necromancy.”

  “Gluttony,” said Eando. “That’s what they called it.”

  The boss ignored him.

  The other statues included knights, wizards, monks, dragons, some squid-cow thing, and gods.

  One of them had its own shrine in a deep alcove. Standing on a stone over magic flames was the six-winged, star-headed goddess the oracle had called Lissala. From the ragged tab on her base I could see she’d been ripped from the smoking altar up in the Sleeper’s head. The boss stared at her for a long time. Everybody else stared at the boss staring at her, but nobody said nothing. Nobody dared.

  Past the huge gallery we walked up a wide curving ramp. I saw bones stuck in the floor or wall here and there, mostly people but sometimes a dog or a sheep. I guessed they were the ones who lived here when Earthfall shoved the mountain over their underground city.

  We went through a few more caverns. Claw marks showed where the dragon had torn open larger passages for herself, but she’d also laid down steps and ramps, so I figured she’d had human-sized guests in the past. Or maybe, like one of the other dragons I knew, she could transform herself into an elf. I hoped she’d do that. The last one had been a real looker.

  Despite the boss’s grumbling about “subterranean conditions,” the library turned out to be clean and dry. The ceiling was high as a cathedral’s, with a spiral path winding up the wall for three levels above us. In five places, the path widened to form an open room with stone benches and tables, and then I was sure the dragon could make herself human-sized. How would she open books with those big claws of hers?

  Svannostel lifted a claw, and a hundred floating lanterns lit up like stars. In the middle of the cavern glowed a yellow sun. Eleven worlds circled it on clockwork gears, some with moons. Their shadows prowled along the bookshelves.

  “Nice orrery,” I said.

  The dragon didn’t have eyebrows, but she looked like she wanted to raise one at my comment

  “I’m smarter than I look.”

  Maps and charts hung on the walls above shelves packed with books and scrolls. The boss right away started browsing the library with Illyria and Eando while the dragon kept a storm-colored eye on them.

  The rest of us poked around the big room. Svannostel had decorated the place with ivory dressing screens, metal grates, urns, sculptures, and other fancy bits and pieces scavenged from the buried city. It looked like a museum.

  I kept an eye on Zora, in case her fingers got itchy. She saw me watching her and stuck out her tongue. That made me think of better uses for that tongue, but I could hear the boss saying, “Neither the time nor the place.” Even when he’s not sick from an evil book, he can be a spoilsport.

  After the wizards had their tour of the library, the boss sat at a human-sized stone table to read his Tome. Eando and Illyria opened a few scrolls they’d found on the shelves. Svannostel ushered the rest of us to a hearth surrounding another tangle of copper tubes. She set it glowing with another breath of lightning and curled up around us like a giant dog. It made Arni nervous. He turned around eight or nine times before settling at my feet.

  Which was weird, because he usually stuck to the boss.

  “Count Jeggare says he will destroy the Tome,” said the dragon from above our heads. She looked down at Zora, Janneke, and Kazyah, but her gaze settled on me. “But will he? The curse already lies heavy upon him. See how he ignores the rest of my library to read the Black Book?”

  I patted Arni’s head to reassure him. Well, maybe to reassure me. Then I leaned back and struck a confident pose. “The boss reads pretty much every book he finds. You can’t hardly stop him. He wants to know everything. He needs to understand how it all fits. With this big library, I figure you know something about that.”

  The dragon stayed still for a moment, but then she gave a slow nod.

  “Anyway, he’s seen plenty of dangerous books before. Here’s the thing: in the end, he closes them. He’s the guy you want to read the book before the wrong guy gets hold of it.”

  The dragon nodded again. Zora and Kazyah did the same, like they felt better now th
at they’d heard me say it.

  I wished I felt better, too.

  Svannostel asked us about the crew we left outside, so we told her they were mercenaries we’d hired to escort us through the badlands in our search for the Tome. I got the feeling the dragon wasn’t as worried about her hoard as she was about how we’d deal with the Gluttonous Tome. She told us it would take more than setting it on fire or tearing it to pieces to break the curse, which we already knew, and that she wanted us to be ready to act as soon as the wizards figured out the trick.

  In a few hours it got obvious they weren’t going to find the secret overnight. Kazyah and Janneke went back to camp for supplies, which meant Zora had to go with them.

  That left me alone with the dragon. Svannostel went to her scrying room to talk with her brother, so I roamed. Following the sound of the river, I found two other caverns it passed through. On the way back through the gallery, I heard Illyria’s voice. For a second, I thought maybe she was invisible, but when I took another step I couldn’t hear her anymore. I stepped back and heard her again.

  This one time the boss and I went to the Grand Temple of Asmodeus on a murder investigation. While waited for the Grand High Priestess, the boss showed me a “whisper corner.” He had me stand there while he crossed the room. When he whispered, I could hear him like he was standing next to me.

  I wondered whether the dragon even knew she had a whisper corner in her lair. If she did, I figured I’d better warn the others to watch what they said.

  Back in the library, Lady Illyria and Amaranthine were sitting far away from the boss and Eando, who kept reading at their table. Illyria was trying to coax the drake into speaking, but Amaranthine only chirped and trilled.

  “Is he in a nasty mood?”

  “The nastiest,” said Illyria. “Tell me that’s just the book talking.”

  “It’s the book,” I said.

  That was more or less true. I’d seen the boss in bad temper plenty of times, but less often since we left Egorian. When he was fighting a war, unraveling a mystery, or tracking down some lost artifact, he was at his best. Sometimes the drink got to him, but not too often these past few years. The worst I’d seen him was a couple times before when he’d been rubbing up against something wicked, and I was starting to think we’d never found anything wickeder than this Gluttonous Tome.