Dragons- Worlds Afire

by R. A. Salvatore

  Zaehr turned to explain this to Tolar, but he stepped across the threshold and into the room.

  The wind howled.

  It was a mighty gale… or so it seemed. The sound was that of a hurricane wailing through a canyon, a storm that could flay flesh from bone.

  But there was no wind. Just sound.

  Zaehr and the guards had drawn their weapons, but Tolar was as calm as ever. He opened his mouth and produced an astonishing noise—a loud hissing and spitting not unlike the sound of the storm itself. The wailing dropped in volume. Tolar continued his choking diatribe, and soon the storm faded completely.

  Zaehr and the guards stared.

  “Auran,” the old man said. “Difficult on the throat and agony to learn but rewarding in its way.”

  Zaehr glanced around the room, sliding her daggers back into their sheaths. “That was a conversation?”

  “Of course.” Tolar gestured at the sphere of crystal and steel. “Normally the spirit is dormant, barely aware of its surroundings. But between the recent disaster and being separated from its ship, it’s frustrated and awake.”

  “What’s it got against you?”

  “Nothing. I suspect it was just the number of people in the room at once that disturbed it. It doesn’t perceive the world in the same way that we do, and it doesn’t understand our reality. As far as it’s concerned, we are small masses of water. It’s uncomfortable around any element except air.” He turned to look at Haladan. “I need those lists your lord promised me, as quickly as possible.”

  Haladan frowned but gave a short bow. “I’ll see to it. Captain…” He glanced at the commander of the guards, a half-elf woman who might have been beautiful if not for a ghastly scar gouged down the left side of her face. “You heard Lord Dantian. If our guests do anything to threaten you or the heart… act decisively.”

  The woman smiled. Half of her smile was a wall of gold. She’d lost a few teeth when she bought her scar. Zaehr smiled back, drawing her own lips away from her long canine fangs.

  As Haladan turned to go, Zaehr caught the faintest trace of a familiar scent. “Were you onboard the Pride today?” she asked.

  Haladan shook his head. “Not at all,” he said, mopping his brow with perfumed silk. “I’m embarrassed to say I am quite afraid of heights. I stay indoors whenever possible. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s not important,“ Zaehr said. Surely it was the scent of rain, confusing her senses.

  Tolar had already turned his attention back to the crystal orb, and now he spoke again in the strange language of the winds. The sphere howled in response, and Zaehr saw faint arcs of lightning crackling around the steel cage.

  The conversation continued for a few minutes before Zaehr’s patience wore thin. “What is it saying?” she asked.

  Tolar was annoyed, as she’d expected, but he indulged her curiosity. “It’s frustrated. It doesn’t understand the nature of the binding, but it hates not being in the air. When it was part of the ship, it was still in motion and that kept it content. I’m trying to learn about the people on the ship, but as I expected it simply thinks the ship was full of water.”

  He proceeded with a new series of rasps and wheezes, and the caged wind responded with moans. “Ah!” he said with a note of triumph. But instead of explaining, he launched into another throat-rending exchange, brushing aside Zaehr’s inquiries. Finally, both Tolar and the sphere fell silent. The old man blinked and rubbed his throat. “Could I get a goblet of water, fair lady?” he said to the guard. “And you can inform Master Haladan that our business here is done.”

  “So?”

  They were back on the streets of Oak Towers. It had taken a little longer for Haladan to provide Tolar with the information the old man had required, but they had eventually made their way out of Stormwind Keep and back into the sunlit streets of upper Sharn. Tolar had refused to discuss his conversation with the elemental while they were in the building, but Zaehr wasn’t about to give up now.

  “So…?” Tolar echoed.

  “What did it say? I know that ‘ah.’ That was a ‘just as I expected’ ah.”

  Tolar smiled. “I suppose it was. I told you it thought the ship was full of water. But there were a few exceptions. It could sense the presence of the other elemental—the ring of fire. It told me that there was an ‘older fire’ that frequently came and went and that it was this older fire that destroyed the ring of flame… that ordered it to explode, apparently. The skycoach that crashed into the Pride held ‘sparks’—most likely some sort of lesser fire elemental.”

  “But the dragon?”

  Tolar stroked his beard. “Dragons have strong elemental ties themselves. They were among the first creatures born on this world, and they are creatures of primal energy—magic and nature, fire and water. The elemental said that it felt a powerful wind close by… before the skycoach struck.”

  “So the dragon didn’t destroy the ship?”

  “Quite the opposite,” Tolar said. “I suspect the ship was destroyed because of the dragon. Elementals have little sense of time, but the ‘powerful wind’ was new on the ship, unlike the water and the ‘old fire.’ So I suspect it was a guest. Someone who had recently arrived.”

  “That’s still not much to work with,” Zaehr said. She’d been studying the scroll Haladan had given them, the list of those on Pride at the time of the fall. “There were over a dozen guests onboard.”

  “Which is why I went to the trouble to obtain this.” Tolar produced a second roll of parchment from one deep pocket. Zaehr could see the Lyrandar seal, but there was no trace of the rain-smell of Stormwind Keep. “When I spoke with Lady Solia, I asked her for a list of passengers. Compare the two, if you will. I suspect you’ll find Lord Lyrandar’s list comes up short.”

  Zaehr unrolled both scrolls and set them down on the pavement, quickly checking names. “You think Dantian lied? Why?”

  “Dantian’s motives—if they are indeed his—are not yet clear. But if this ship was destroyed because of the dragon, identifying her is the first step in finding the answer.”

  “Adaila Lantain,” Zaehr said. “Both lists are identical except for that one name. A Visitor from Morgrave University.”

  “Good. If she lived in Sharn, we should be able to find more at her abode.”

  “And now I suppose you expect me to track her down.”

  Tolar spread his hands. “If it’s too much bother, Zaehr, we can always hire an inquisitive.”

  Zaehr slipped through the crowded streets of the University district. Dusk was falling, and the streets were full of laughing students and somber scholars discussing the lessons of the day, drowning academic concerns in wine and song. Zaehr barely noticed the antics of the revelers. She was on the hunt, and every sense was focused on her prey.

  The search had begun in Morgrave University, where a handful of coins had established the path and a picture of her prey. Adaila was a respected historian and attended all gatherings of the sages, but she rarely taught and did not maintain an office at the university. Aside from lectures concerning history and expeditions others intended to make into Xen’drik, Adaila was almost a hermit. But a favored student recalled seeing her at the Kavallah Concert Hall the previous night, and it was there that Zaehr caught the faintest trace of her in the air—rain and sweet mist, the same odor Zaehr had wiped off the scale. It was marred and masked by the smells of brocade and human flesh, but Zaehr was confident nonetheless.

  Is this the smell of the dragon’s sweat? Zaehr wondered as she pressed down the streets.

  For Zaehr, there was no greater thrill than the urban hunt, tracing a path through the past. Her only regret was that her prey was already dead, denying any chance of a battle at the end of the trail.

  The path led back to a book bindery, where Adaila had left three manuscripts for binding—copies of a treatise about the various myths of the legendary conflict between dragons and demons at the dawn of creation. The lady had left her address with th
e proprietor, and he was willing to exchange the address for three pieces of silver.

  Silver coins, silver blood, Zaehr thought. The man clearly had no concept of his client’s true nature. Why should he? Who would have thought a mythical creature would try to have a book published by the university?

  She was writing a book of myths. Was she writing what she knew to be true or spreading lies to cover the trail? All Zaehr knew of dragons came from legend. If those stories were shaped by the dragons themselves, what could be trusted?

  It was a thorny path to walk, but at the end of the day Zaehr was a hunter, not a philosopher. She had found the home of her prey. If there were answers to be found, Tolar would surely dredge them from the dragon’s lair. Spotting a stonebeak thrush, Zaehr rubbed the medallion she wore around her neck, whistling an undulating tune. The amulet was a gift from Tolar, and it allowed Zaehr to compel the assistance of small creatures. A moment later the thrush fluttered down and landed on her wrist. Zaehr bound a scrap of parchment to the bird’s leg. She whispered to it, impressing the image of the home she shared with Tolar in its mind. A moment later the thrush took to the air, carrying the message down the towers toward her partner.

  Even without the bookbinder’s help, it would have been a simple matter for Zaehr to find the dragon’s lair. By now she had latched onto the human scent that accompanied that faint smell of spring, the odor that had to belong to Adaila’s human disguise. As Zaehr followed the scent into the nearby residential district, it began to join up with other trails—faint and ghostly images of Adaila’s movements over the past day. All of them came to an end at the door of a small, unpretentious apartment. The door was locked, and Zaehr could smell no other scents leading up to it. Adaila was apparently just as reclusive as reports claimed. There was no garden, and the shades were drawn across the windows. Zaehr ran one sharp fingernail across the lock. Part of her yearned to open the door. The hunt wasn’t finished, and there were still mysteries to solve. But her impatience had caused enough problems in the past, and Tolar’s instructions were clear: She should wait for him to arrive. Running a hand across the studs on her armor to activate the concealing charm, she slipped into the shadows of a nearby alley and dropped into a comfortable crouch, keeping her eyes on the dragon’s door.

  It was instinct that had caused her to hide, and instinct served her well. Only minutes passed before three people approached Adaila’s home. They were squat, muscular folk shrouded in dark hooded cloaks. They wore black scarves under the hoods, concealing their features. One carried a short spear that seemed to be made from a single piece of brass. The others kept their hands hidden beneath their cloaks, but the bulges spoke of weapons hidden below. At first Zaehr took them for dwarves, but then the wind carried their scent to her hiding place, causing her to wrinkle her nose in surprise.

  Fire.

  The scent was hot and acrid, the sharp smells of ash and molten metal. These were no dwarves.

  The leader reached out and touched the lock. Night had fallen, and there was a flash of light that dispelled the gathering gloom—a spell, or was it simply the creature’s skin? Whatever the answer, the lock gave way and the door opened. The three strangers disappeared inside.

  Zaehr only waited a moment before following. The ashen stench was familiar—she’d smelled it in the dining hall of Pride of the Storm, though at the time it didn’t occur to her that it could be tied to a living creature. Tolar be damned, she thought. If these things are involved in this, they can tell me what’s going on.

  Reaching the doorway, Zaehr saw that the lock had been burned away. A small round hole surrounded by charred wood was all that was left. She drew her two favorite blades—heavy knives of orc design, each sharpened on the inner edge of the curved blade. Folding the knives back against her forearms, she slipped silently through the doorway.

  The first thing she smelled was smoke, and her ears quickly confirmed it—a fire was growing in the depths of the house. Whatever the creatures were, they had wasted no time. Zaehr moved cautiously down the hall, and in the next room she saw it.

  One of the creatures had thrown aside its black cloak. Though it had the muscular build of a dwarf, it was like no dwarf she had ever seen. Its skin was the brilliant orange of a hot coal, and flames licked around its chin in a bizarre parody of a beard. Its eyes were points of blazing light, but they looked right past her. Between her skill and the enchantment woven into her armor, she was still shielded by the shadows. The carpet beneath the creature’s feet was burning, and when he turned and laid a hand on a richly upholstered couch, it burst into flames.

  Zaehr wanted to know what these creatures were and what their connection was to the Pride—but she needed to even the odds before she could start a conversation. She slid up behind the stocky figure, her stealthy motion further masked by the sound of the fire. As the creature reached for a desk covered with papers, she struck, slamming the steel pommels of her blades into the back of her enemy’s head. The man staggered, howling in a strange inhuman tongue, filled with pops and hisses. Zaehr had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out herself. The creature’s skin was hot, searing her skin where she’d brushed against him. Hardly unexpected—but this was not a foe she’d plan to bite.

  The sound was sure to summon the creature’s companions, and time was of the essence. He turned toward her, a long brass knife in his hands, and made a wild thrust in her direction. Zaehr easily avoided the blow, but the intent was clear—Zaehr might have struck with the pommel, but he was using the blade.

  So be it, she thought.

  She swept the burning man’s blade to the side with one sharp blow, following up with a gash on his wrist. Dark blood pooled along the wound, steaming in the warm air. Before her enemy could recover, she lashed out with twin arcs of deadly steel, digging deeply into both sides of his neck. If he’d been human, the blow would have decapitated him. As it was, he fell to the burning carpet without a sound. Steaming blood poured out of the wounds. An instant later, his body simply dissolved into ash.

  With her opponent down, Zaehr studied the room. It was too late to stop the fire—the flames were already spreading to bookshelves and the timbers of the floor, and the smoke was stinging her eyes and burning her throat. She glanced around, trying to see something that stood out, something that might be worth this destruction.

  The fire was almost her undoing. Her keen senses were dulled by the smoke and the crackling flames, and she almost didn’t hear the creature approaching from behind. The flash of motion in her peripheral vision, the heat from the burning spear—she recognized the danger just in time to fling herself forward, rolling and spinning to face her foes. The two remaining fire-folk were there: the squat man with his brass spear and a heavyset woman, the one who had melted the lock with her touch.

  Zaehr let fury and instinct take over. Adrenaline surged through her as she flung both knives at the spearman. The first caught him directly in the forehead, cracking the skull and lodging in whatever lay beneath. The second sunk deep in his throat. He let go of his spear, dropped to his knees, and clutched at the handle of the lower knife. Even as he pried it out, his body disintegrated into ash and embers.

  Zaehr already had another pair of knives in her hands. “Out on the street!” she snarled at the burning woman, squinting against the smoke. There was no saving the house, but Tolar knew the art of truthtelling, and he could force the stranger to tell them everything.

  The glowing creature said nothing. She smiled.

  “Don’t you understand?” Zaehr said. She raised her knives. “Out now or you join your friends!”

  “You join us all,” the woman said, in a voice like a roaring bonfire. “We serve the first fire, and we will return.”

  Zaehr leaped, both knives raised, but she wasn’t fast enough.

  The woman exploded in a brilliant burst of fire. The shockwave slammed into Zaehr and flung her into a burning bookshelf. Fire swallowed the world.

  “You’re lucky
to be alive.”

  Recognition of Tolar’s voice—the realization that she was alive—was drowned out by the agony that had been dulled by unconsciousness. Each breath brought a wave of pain, the air tearing at her burned lungs.

  “Drink.”

  She didn’t want to open her mouth, but the first drop of thick fluid brought a wonderful cooling sensation. She could feel it healing her blackened tongue. She let the potion flow down her throat. The pain slowly receded, and she felt her strength returning.

  Zaehr opened her eyes.

  She was lying on hard stone. She could see the burns fading from her snow-white skin as the healing potion worked its magic, but she was covered with ash. The smell of smoke clung to her clothes and made it difficult to tell what other scents were in the air, but she saw a black column of smoke rising to the east.

  “Is that—?” Her throat was still parched, and her voice cracked.

  “Yes,” Tolar said. He was sitting on the ground next to her, sifting through a leather satchel. He produced a skin of water and held it to Zaehr’s lips. “The building was beyond salvation.”

  “So she’s talking now, is she?” The voice was cold and hard, for all its high timbre. The speaker was barely three feet tall, and Zaehr had the immediate sense that he enjoyed being able to look down at someone. Despite his size, he was no child. He was a gnome, with sharp features and a carefully waxed black heard. “I do so look forward to hearing her explanation.”

  “If your guards had responded more swiftly, you might have caught the arsonists and saved the building, lieutenant.” Tolar said.

  Zaehr squinted at the gnome, taking in his green-and-black uniform and the presence of a few larger members of the Sharn Watch standing nearby.

  “Yes, well. At least we’ve done one of those things, yes?”

  “You caught them?” Zaehr said. Her thoughts were still thick and muddled, her head filled with wet sand.