Dragons- Worlds Afire

by R. A. Salvatore

  Cayce turned to Vaan. “What color is the dragon we’re hunting?”

  Vaan could only smile helplessly. After a long pause, he shrugged like a gambler who has just seen his horse come up lame.

  “Well?” Cayce said. “You’re our patron and our guide, but you don’t know the answer? We’re trusting you, and you can’t even describe the monster that enslaved you and all your people?” Sensing victory, Cayce pressed on. “Let’s try something easier. What color is the dragon that wrecked the bridge?”

  Vaan and Kula looked at each other uncomfortably.

  “Blue-white, almost silver,” Kula said crossly.

  “So it was.” Cayce nodded. “But I asked him.”

  Vaan merely smiled the same helpless smile and shook his head.

  Cayce turned to Captain Hask, hooking her thumb back at Vaan. “He’s enchanted,” she said. “He can’t tell us about the dragon he wants us to kill. He can’t even describe it to us after we’ve all seen it. Think about it. Has he ever said anything concrete to any of us about our quarry?”

  Some of the soldiers flickered their eyes toward Captain Hask, and one even coughed, but no one disagreed with her, so Cayce went on.

  “That’s why he’s so quiet all the time, and why she says so much about his job. For all we know, he works for the dragon and it’s his job to lure mice like us into his master’s hunting ground.”

  “No,” Vaan said. His face was flushed, and his eyes were wet with rage.

  “I can vouch for Vaan,” Kula said. “He has told the truth: He is enslaved, and he wants the dragon dead. I would know if he were lying to me.”

  “So you say, but aren’t pixies expert liars? Steeped in illusion and glamour? How would we know if he fooled you? Assuming you’re not in on it.” Cayce soon regretted this last part as Kula turned her angry eyes on the poisoner’s apprentice.

  “This is no trick,” the anchorite said. “Was it pretense when the dragon destroyed your garrison, Captain Hask? Did lies or sleight of hand destroy the farmers on that bridge? The beast we saw tonight is the same one that attacked your fortress, Captain, the same one that enslaved Vaan’s tribe. It is the same one that’s been upsetting the natural balance all the way from here to the far edge of my forest. Vaan sought out those of us who have the motivation and the skills necessary to kill this dragon. There will be great danger, but that is no secret. It’s also why you and your leering master are being so well paid.”

  Kula stepped forward, looking past Cayce to Rus. “Is that what this is about? Are you sending in your underling to renegotiate the terms of our agreement?”

  Rus started as if Kula’s call had woken him from a deep sleep. Slowly, he stretched and yawned, displaying his cape’s purple lining in its glorious entirety.

  “Sorry, what?” he said. “I was lost in thought. Has my apprentice been speaking out of turn again?”

  Kula glanced back at the apprentice. “She has.”

  “Oh, dear. Did she say anything of substance?”

  Cayce held her tongue as her face reddened. Rus was a worm, but surely even he wouldn’t just set her up then abandon her like this.

  Kula’s eyes narrowed, and she looked from Rus, to Cayce, to Hask, to Vaan. The pixie lowered his face, and Kula nodded. “She raised an issue that bears addressing. Vaan is, in fact, under a geas. He is magically prohibited from betraying any of the dragon’s secrets. He can say nothing that would cause his master to be harmed.”

  Rus showed exaggerated interest. “Is he, now? How fascinating. How’s that work, then?”

  Kula spared one final glare for Cayce before she answered. “The dragon we hunt can exert powerful influence over the minds of sentient beings. Vaan is free to go where he likes when his master doesn’t need him, but he can not speak freely of the dragon. Not its nature, not its weaknesses.” Kula turned and sneered at Cayce. “Not even its color.”

  Rus rolled his cane back and forth across his hand. “And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning to the hunters you’d assembled? You don’t think someone who cannot tell all he knows might have omitted something crucial to our understanding of the stakes? Crucial to our survival?”

  “I want him dead,” Vaan said. As he spoke, his four transparent wings extended from his back and began to beat. The pixie floated off the ground until he was hovering several feet over the group. “It took me almost a full year to get around the geas and enlist Kula’s aid, and only then because. she is so intuitive. I did not create this threat. I did not lure you here to be his victims. I did not assemble you for any reason but those Kula voiced on my behalf.”

  Captain Hask stepped forward, between Kula and Cayce. “None of this is important,” he said. “The brute we saw tonight is the one that killed most of my men. I mean to destroy it in its lair or die trying.” The officer turned his dead eyes up to Vaan. “Do you know where that dragon nests?”

  Vaan shrugged, and Hask said, “I’ll take that silence as a yes.” He turned to Kula and said, “Can you lead us there?”

  “I can, and I will. There is nothing I want more than to confront and defeat this abomination.”

  “Then I submit”—Hask’s glower went back and forth from Cayce to her master—“that its color is immaterial. As is its name, its place of origin, and who can speak freely about it.

  “We know what it is. We have seen it in battle. We have all come to kill it. Let’s find the damned thing and get on with our work.”

  Rus paused, stroked his chin, then nodded. “I suppose I must agree. This new information doesn’t really change things that much. Stand back and be silent, my apprentice. When Rus agrees to terms, he sticks to them until the job is done.”

  Rus’s eyes locked on Cayce’s from behind his curtain of golden yarn. If Rus’s furtive expression wasn’t enough to alert her, the colossal lie about never changing a contract’s terms would have done the trick. She knew her master was too experienced and too professional to wink, but she recognized his need for her to let this matter drop.

  Kula crouched back down over her map in the dirt and said, “We’ll reach the edge of its lair just after dawn. The tunnel will lead us all the way to the mountain’s interior. We’ll wait for the light here, just outside its sense of smell. When the sun burns off the morning fog, we’ll go forward in stages, as agreed.” She raised her head and locked eyes with Cayce. “And we are still agreed, aren’t we? Poisoners?”

  “Agreed,” Rus called airily.

  Cayce bowed her head and stared at Kula’s map on the ground.

  “Agreed,” she said.

  Cayce shuddered under the prodding hand of her master. Rus shook her shoulder, drawing her from the deep morass of sleep.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

  “Mmm?” Cayce struggled to fully open her eyes. How had she fallen asleep? The last thing she remembered was waiting in the thick brush, just a ridgeline away from a clear view of the dragon’s cave.

  Rus’s thick index finger flicked across Cayce’s nose. “Faster than that,” he said. His voice was soft and low, just above a whisper. “Let’s get what I came for and leave these heroes to their noble work.”

  Her nose stinging, Cayce rubbed her eyes and swallowed a yawn. “What?”

  “What, Master.”

  “What… Master?”

  Rus pulled Cayce to her knees and helped her keep her balance when she swayed and almost toppled.

  “I was right about pixies,” he said. “Never work with ’em. This is a fool’s errand, and we’re leaving.”

  Cayce’s mind began to clear. She noticed a strong sent of camphor mixed with ammonia in the air around them and the clean, sharp scent of mint from her master’s hand.

  “But the job?” she managed.

  “Stuff the job,” Rus said. “If they all get killed, we’ll be famous as the only survivors. If they kill the dragon, we can claim to have been a part of it. There’s no need to actually get involved.”

  Cayce sh
ook her head. “The pixie and the anchorite. Boom and the soldiers…”

  “All asleep. Well, all but the golem, but he can’t make a move without his handlers. They’ll all stay asleep for another hour or so.” Rus grinned wickedly. “I made a small fire downwind of us. Tossed in a few herbs and things you haven’t learned about yet. The breeze carried the smoke right to where our party waited.” He held out a small sprig of rounded green leaves. “A whiff of this clovermint brings one right out of it. Pity I didn’t bring enough for everyone. Now get up. I want to get moving.”

  Cayce felt the numbness draining out of her arms and legs. “What about our fee, Master?”

  “Stuff the fee. We can offset the cost of this little outing and make ourselves a fine profit without so much as a cross word passing between us and the dragon.”

  Now fully awake, Cayce felt a chill as she weighed Rus’s words. “We can?”

  “Of course. You didn’t really think I would come along on this suicide mission for a handful of pixie’s gold and the ephemeral promise of sharing the big serpent’s treasure? Which, by the way, we’d never live to spend?

  “No, Tania, what I have in mind will keep clients and royalty alike begging at our door for years to come. Now, stop asking questions and attend me.”

  Cayce struggled to her feet. “Yes, Master Rus. What do you require?”

  “Grab your pack and follow. I’ll explain on the way.” Rus hummed a breezy tune as he swept out of Kula’s makeshift camp, nimbly stepping over and around sleeping soldiers. Boom the golem stood and smoldered, perhaps unaffected by Rus’s sleeping vapors but unable to take action without direct orders to do so. Both Vaan and Kula dozed among the roots of a scrawny ash tree.

  Cayce wrapped her still-clumsy fingers around her pack and hoisted it onto her shoulder. She was trying to make as little noise as possible, but her master had done his work well. From their placid faces and softly rising chests, she reckoned the dragon could burst from the ground beneath the hunting party’s feet and they would not even stir.

  Master Rus moved quickly when he wasn’t posturing for clients. Recently woozy and burdened as Cayce was, she actually had to struggle to keep up with her rotund mentor. By the time they cleared the final ridge before the dragon’s cave, Cayce was red-faced and out of breath.

  Rus was waiting for her, crouched behind a jagged boulder. The stony spire jutted from the ground among a dozen similar rock formations. The spires were broken and charred as if by lightning, and the ground below them was flat, cracked, and hard. Rus motioned for Cayce to crouch beside him, his eyes fixed on the hollow depression where the blasted ground met the sheer south face of the mountain.

  Cayce crept behind Rus’s boulder and lowered her pack. The ground sloped down toward the depression and into a ragged hole that lay almost hidden in the shadows. According to Kula and Vaan, the hole led to a tunnel they could follow right to the edge of the dragon’s innermost sanctuary. Both the opening and the tunnel were big enough to accommodate a large serpentine dragon, so they could certainly handle a small party of warriors bent on destroying one.

  Cayce looked up to where morning sunbeams glittered through the snowmelt. Ascent up the south face would test the most experienced mountaineer, but a climb was never part of the attack. Kula’s plan had been to creep in and confront the dragon head-on, but that plan was asleep with Kula and the others. Now only Rus knew what Rus planned to do. Or rather, what Rus planned for Cayce to do.

  Still fixed on the mountainside, Master Rus said, “So you really believed I let that pixie goad me into joining this farce? You must think me an awful fool, my apprentice.”

  Here it comes, Cayce thought. She expected Rus would chastise her for correctly citing his own advice about pixies, especially since the only retort he had was to claim he had meant sprites. She had no idea what he would put her through for this, though—for assuming he was every inch the overstuffed, egocentric child he played in front of clients.

  But there was no malice in Rus this time. Instead, there was a lilt in his voice and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Still just above a whisper, he fell into the practiced cadence of a master delivering a lecture. “It is good to be thought a fool by one’s enemies, Tania. It makes them careless and overconfident.”

  “But it is less desirable to be thought so by one’s students.” He grinned. “Especially in the field. So watch and listen as Rus demonstrates why he is Master. I knew the pixie’s story didn’t smell right. I also knew it didn’t matter, not a jot. That little blue weevil and the wild-eyed giantess could have told us we were going to pray the dragon away and I would have cheerfully come along. I am always happy to follow the client’s lead… at least from the time I accept the retainer to when my own ends take precedence.

  “No, all I ever wanted or expected from this engagement was free guide service and an armed escort to the dragon’s nest. This created an opportunity, see? There’s that word again. An opportunity for someone like you to perhaps harvest certain rare and hard-to-acquire ingredients? Ingredients that someone such as me could perhaps put to especially good use?” The poisoner chuckled, his belly shaking in concert with the shimmering yarn on his hat.

  Cayce remained silent too long, and Rus snapped, “Remember your lessons, Apprentice. How many rare and exquisite poisons are derived from dragons?”

  Cayce’s mind whirled, and she blinked. “Dozens,” she said “Dragons blood can be brewed into a tasteless, odorless—”

  “I said remember your lessons, not recite them. We don’t need anything as precious as blood. If we wanted blood I’d have gone along with that forest woman’s attack.” Rus shook his head. “Blood,” he said derisively. “Why don’t we just try for the dragon’s living heart or both its eyes? No. Scales, teeth, and claws will do for us. Dragons slough off and replace them regularly. If we can collect even a small handful of these from the mouth of the cave, we’ll be among the most feared and well-compensated poisoners in the world.”

  One small fragment of Rus’s earlier oration stuck in Cayce’s mind. “Master,” she whispered. “Someone like me will collect the ingredients?”

  “Someone like you, yes. Someone exactly like you. You, in fact.” Rus’s eyes twinkled merrily. “You, precisely you, exactly you, and only you.”

  Rus lifted his cane and pried the crystal skull off the end with a wheezing grunt. “I’ll loan you this, of course,” he said. “If the dragon or one of its minions comes for you, crack the crystal and toss it to the ground between you and the enemy. It releases a miasma that melts living tissue on contact, so if they come any closer they’ll dissolve.”

  Cayce dully stretched out her cupped hands. “Minions,” she muttered.

  Rus tilted his palm so that the skull rolled into Cayce’s outstretched hands. She closed both fists around the grinning purple totem.

  Rus presented his gloved fist to Cayce so that the bright red ring was mere inches from her nose. In a flash of motion he opened his hand and plucked the jeweled ring off. “This”—he held it out for Cayce to accept—“is for you personally. If it comes to close quarters, punch this stone into the dragon’s body. Anywhere will do. It delivers a toxic jolt powerful enough to kill almost anything. That’s the theory, at least. It’s never been properly tested, but I have seen it work on a medium-sized hill giant.

  “If you can’t get in one good punch, put the gem in your mouth and bite down.”

  Cayce took the ring. “What will that do?”

  “It will make your body so toxic that the dragon will keel over after a single bite. A single taste with the tongue, actually, or a single sniff.” Rus dusted his gloved hands against each other. “At the very least it will make him sick long enough for me to escape.”

  Cayce stared at the ring suspiciously. “Thank you, Master.”

  “Not at all. It is a sacrifice I am willing to make for you, my apprentice.” Rus’s eyes grew stern. “Put on the ring.”

  “Yes, Master Rus.” Cayce n
odded grimly. She slid the ring on to her thickest finger, where it spun freely. “Master?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Afterward? If I survive biting the ring, when does the toxic effect wear off?”

  “Afterward?” Rus shrugged. “At that point ‘afterward’ is not really a practical concern, believe you me.”

  “Now. Duty calls, and you do not have time to waste.” Rus pointed at Cayce’s burden. “Empty your pack and leave the gear here with me. Go into yonder cave and scoop up as many scales as you can. I expect at least one full load before I’ll be ready to leave.”

  “Yes, Master Rus.”

  “As for the claws and teeth, I don’t expect you to find any this far out. If you survive long enough to collect and deliver a full pack of scales, we’ll know it’s safe to venture in deeper. I’d say one… no, two hundred yards. Two hundred yards, or two claws, or one tooth. Achieve one of these milestones and you can return.” Rus smiled. “I won’t make you delve any deeper to see if there are eggs. Dragons are notoriously defensive of their progeny. We could live off the proceeds of a dragon egg for ten lifetimes, but I’d rather have a small fortune and a long life than a huge fortune and no life.” Rus pondered a moment. “Though if you see any eggshells, by all means pick them up.”

  Cayce leaned closer to her master, staring over Rus’s shoulder at the long stretch of flattened ground between them and the cave entrance. She felt her heart pounding, not faster but louder with each booming beat.

  How bad things gotten worse? Now, instead of backing up an armed attack on a dragon, Cayce was charged with sneaking into one’s lair—alone—and pilfering its dustbin. She was no warrior and had no experience with thieving. All she had was a pair of lethally toxic baubles that were as likely to kill her as any dragon was.

  “It’s not danger you face,” Rus said quietly. “It is an opportunity.”

  Cayce nodded to herself, her eyes locked on the tunnel entrance. “And I will seize it, Master Rus. But first… could you build another fire, downwind from the cave? And could you put some more of the herbs and things you haven’t taught me about in it? I’d like to fan the smoke into the tunnel before I venture in.”