The Realms of the Dragons 2 a-10

by Коллектив Авторов

  He shuddered at the thought.

  QUEEN OF THE MOUNTAIN

  Jaleigh Johnson

  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 kn
ow… 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 lo
ng 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-"