The Thieves’ Guild

by Jeff Crook

  “What is that noise?” Sir Arach asked sharply.

  What indeed? Cael wondered. The buzzing grew steadily louder while he crept back to the columns as rapidly and stealthily as his elven feet could hustle.

  “I know that noise,” a voice thundered from beneath his feet. “All my kind know that sound. We hear it in our darkest nightmares. It is the sound of a sword of power!”

  Numbing fear swept over the elf. Looking round in horror, he saw Oros stagger back, throwing up his arms as though to ward off a blow. Sir Kinsaid and Sir Arach backed away from something emerging from the archway below Cael. The Thorn Knight scoured the room for the source of the buzzing noise even as the dragon emerged from its stable.

  “The elf!” Sir Arach shouted as he caught sight of his quarry, frozen with dragonfear atop the balcony.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The staff leaped in Cael’s hands as the dragon’s head came into view. Great curving ivory horns guarded a noble, evil brow. Azure scales glittering in the magical light of the globes overhead, the creature crept into the arena, its claws scrabbling at the sawdust covered stone floor.

  At the movement of the staff, Cael felt the dragonfear drop from him like a cloak. Clutching the head of the. staff in one hand, he ran the other down the length of the staff. Where his hand passed, a gleaming steel blade replaced black wood. The blade was straight and double-edged and gleamed with a green light, as though lit by an inner source.

  A deep rumbling shook the castle to its foundations. Every window in the palace above shattered. Throughout its hundreds of rooms and hallways vases tumbled from their pedestals, framed paintings fell from walls, and crockery tumbled from shelves. Those in the chamber were thrown to the floor, but Cael managed to keep his feet. The Knights cried out in fright, and the voice of the blue dragon boiled over the noise.

  “Are we under attack?” The terrible voice of the blue dragon rose above the din.

  Two guards stumbled through an archway. “My lords, fire in the cellars, a great explosion!”

  “My laboratory!” Sir Arach shrieked as he forgot everything else and leaped up and raced from the chamber.

  Cael dashed across the balcony and dragged Alynthia to her feet. She stared at him as though she didn’t know him but allowed him to pull her along. They dived between the columns just as a lightning bolt smashed the balcony behind them to rubble. Sir Kinsaid’s powerful voice shouted orders for the roof to be opened, orders for the dragon to hunt them down and kill them.

  Cael led them blindly. The explosion had cut off their escape route, so he took the first set of stairs he could find and raced up them, Alynthia in his wake. They entered the main levels of the lord’s palace as chaos swept the corridors. Servants dashed here and there, screaming conflicting directions to either save the palace treasures or fight the fire. Most chose instead to save themselves and ran heedless of the pleading of their fellows through any door or window they could find. It was a simple enough matter for the elf and his companion to blend into this confusion, except for the sword gleaming in his fist. Wherever they ran, whomever they encountered screamed and fled in the opposite direction.

  Cael spotted a door leading out into a garden. He turned in that direction, where many servants were pressed into the doorway, trying to escape the palace. With a shout, he charged into them, brandishing his weirdly glowing blade high above his head. In less than a heartbeat, the way was cleared as the servants dispersed, screaming. Cael pulled Alynthia through the door, then shoved her aside as a sword whistled between them and crashed in sparks against the stone floor. Cael parried a second slash with his blade, then reversed the attack with a thrust that sent a guard staggering back, his breath gurgling through the hole in his chest. At a cry from Alynthia, Cael spun, barely knocking aside the attack of a second guard. The guard continued his onslaught with an overhand swing, which Cael caught but seemed unlikely to hold. The guard laughed cruelly as he pressed down. The two blades scraped against each other as the guard tried to overpower the elf, forcing him to his knees.

  Cael disengaged his blade and lunged aside. With a deft twist, he sent the guard’s sword spinning away to land with a rustle among a clump of bushes, thirty yards away.

  A third guard charged from the shadows. Cael turned, letting a poorly aimed thrust slip past his chest. He brought his own blade up, cutting through ‘mail and flesh to grate against the man’s spine. The guard fell with a groan against the wall.

  The elf spun, finding the second guard with a dagger in his raised fist. The man collapsed toward him, dropping his dagger, clawing at the one sprouting from his back. Alynthia had finally come to her senses. Now she rushed to Cael’s side and dragged her blade from the man’s body.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she snarled to the elf.

  They flew off through the night-darkened gardens of the lord’s palace.

  At this late hour, there ought to have been few people about. Though at first they saw no attackers, Cael and Alynthia did hear arrows and crossbow bolts whistling and smashing through the trees above and around them. Pandemonium reigned. In the palace behind them, many of the windows glowed with light. Bells rang out stridently from various quarters of the city. Shouts could be heard and torches seen within the garden itself.

  The two thieves halted under the shadow of a leaning oak near the edge of the gardens, at the corner of Horizon Road and Lord’s Way. Through the trees ahead, they could see the gleaming lights of the Temple of Paladine, the grounds of which occupied the opposite corner of this usually busy intersection. However, at this time of night, the streets were deserted and dark.

  “What happened back there?” Alynthia asked as she stripped off her cloak and dark trousers, revealing the street clothes beneath.

  “Which do you mean? With me or the sword?” Cael asked. He passed his hand down the length of the blade, returning it to its ordinary staff form, then leaned it against the trunk of the tree.

  “Both!” she snapped. “Are you really that stupid, or were you just trying to get us killed? That was a dragon!”

  “Yes I know.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “I never really believed it. My shalifi told me that when the sea elves gave him this staff, they said that it was made at the same time as the sword once owned by Tanis Half-Elven, that it was made in Silvanost during the second Dragon War, and that of the three great swords of that time, this one was the most powerful.”

  “What do legends have to do with anything?” Alynthia asked.

  “Have you never listened to the songs of the bards?” Cael said in dismay. “The tale of the Sla-Mori and the rescue of Pax Tharkas?”

  “What about it?”

  Cael sighed. “In the Sla-Mori, it is said, "Tanis either found or was given by the dead hand of the great elf king, Kith-Kanan, the sword known as Wyrmslayer. It was the buzzing of this sword when it was brought too close that awoke the dragon Flamestrike.”

  “So?” Alynthia queried.

  “My sword buzzed!” Cael almost shouted. “In the presence of a dragon.” He tossed aside his mask and ran his fingers through his beard, brushing it out.

  Alynthia shook her head. “There is only one way out of the Old City now—the docks. We cannot pass the gates at this hour, especially not with the alarm raised.”

  “We could use Claret’s tunnel,” Cael suggested.

  “They blocked it up after your capture.”

  “To the docks then.”

  A deep rumble shook the ground, setting the trees to swaying. “Another explosion,” Cael said. They looked back through the trees, half-expecting to see the towers of the palace crumbling, flames leaping into the night sky. Instead, they saw a gargantuan shadow rise above the palace. Great leathern wings spread wide to gather the air as it soared upward from some hidden place beyond the trees.

  “Gods, what a dragon!” Cael sighed in awe.

  Alynthia tugged madly at his sleeve, but the elf seemed rooted
to the spot, spellbound.

  “So terrible. So beautiful,” he muttered.

  With a grace that belied its massive size, the dragon’s massive wings beat once, twice, lifting it slowly higher. The wind from those wings struck them seconds later with a force like a gale. Trees around them cracked and crashed. Cael sidestepped a falling branch that would have crushed him like a fly. He turned and found Alynthia lying on the ground, blood pouring from a cut above her eye. She stared around in a daze. He helped her to rise.

  “What happened?” she asked thickly.

  “Can you run?” he asked.

  “I think so,” she responded.

  He grabbed his staff, and together they lurched from the trees and into the street. Above and behind them, thunder growled in the cloudless sky as a shadow rose above Palanthas.

  They hurried across the street and into the dark safety of an alley, Cael running, Alynthia stumbling behind him, pulled along by his hand on her elbow. Because he did not know the way, he followed no planned course. Instead, he tried to steer them north according to his best guess. Alynthia said nothing. Whenever they paused, she shook her head as though trying to clear the fog in her mind.

  Far overhead the shadow followed them ominously. The city, raised in alarm by the explosions at the palace, now cowered in fear. Screams of terror pierced the night. As Cael and Alynthia scurried through alley, court, and garden, people looked out in terror from their windows, their eyes searching the dark starry skies. Lightning arced across the heavens, thunder boomed, and the ground shook. Fierce winds ripped down street and alley, carrying with it a tide of trash and leaves, dust and sand, stinging the eye and cutting the flesh with its ferocity. Ever and again, a shadow passed between them and the stars above, blot- ting out the waning moon, a shadow that bellowed and roared like a whirlwind.

  Still, somehow, Cael got them to the waterfront. With the northern way now blocked by the sea, Cael turned west. They raced along the docksides where captains bellowed orders to their frightened crews and dockmasters were racing about, battening down cargoes or staring in terror at the sky.

  Alynthia jerked Cael to a stop. “This way,” she shouted. To their right, a long pier jutted out into the bay. Along it, ships hailing from the farthest corners of Krynn were docked. “Blue Crab Pier. My husband’s ship. We’ll hide there,” she said.

  “We can’t go there,” Cael argued. “He’s already betrayed us once.”

  “We’ve nowhere else to turn,” she said, pointing to the sky above. “If he is a traitor, the dragon will not hasten to burn his ship down. Think of it as a temporary measure,” she countered.

  With a shrug, the elf leaped up the steps and raced along the pier.

  “Which one?” he asked as they ran. To their right and left, the hulls of ships rose up, their masts and beams towering like the trees of a forest. At regular intervals along the pier stood lamp poles, and as the two thieves raced along the pier, the lamps began to toss madly in a rising wind, sending shadows chasing each other crazily up and down the hulls of the ships.

  Alynthia stumbled to a halt and stared around. Then, pointing over at another pier, she shouted, “There, where those crates are piled! Dark Horizon! They must have shifted anchor. It looks as if they’re loading her for a voyage! We’ll circle back.”

  “Too late!” Cael cried.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Alynthia saw the dragon starting to glide down. Though it was still far away, they had only moments left. The dragon’s malevolent gaze turned their bones to water as the great beast banked round and leveled off. Now it tucked up its wings and dropped.

  “Run!” Cael shouted as he pulled her after him.

  Slowly at first, and then faster, her feet began to fly. She ran faster than she’d ever run before, but still it was difficult to keep pace with the elf. It was speed born of terror.

  Terror became horror. She saw the end of the pier ahead. “Trapped” she shrieked.

  “Into the sea!” Cael shouted in answer. “Grab my staff. Don’t let go.”

  Without slowing they reached the pier’s end and leaped. Cael sailed out ahead of her and struck the water. Alynthia crashed after him, feet first. She struggled to the surface and gasped for air. The water was black and cold as the grave.

  Hands grasped her ankles and dragged her under. She struggled, fighting to kick free. She drew her dagger and lashed out, but still the hands pulled. Down, down she sank, the golden light from the pier’s lamps fading. Replacing it was a greenish glow. Something cold and hard touched her face. She clutched at it, and then she saw in the weird glow the face of the elf, his long hair floating about his head like the fronds of a sea plant. His jaws gaped and closed, as though he were breathing the water. He held her, and held the staff in her hands.

  The need for air grew too great. Blood pounded in her ears, her chest began to heave for want of breath. He shook his head and gripped her tighter to hold her under, but she struggled free of him, her fear of drowning lending her the strength of an ogre. She thrust for the surface, seeing the golden light growing stronger.

  A light like a thousand suns burst before her eyes. The water around her exploded, the air was driven from her lungs in an agonized scream. She was propelled backward, downward.

  The sea closed round her with its dark, cold, deadly embrace.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Cael dragged Alynthia’s limp body ashore beneath Blue Crab Pier, down amongst the piles and the scurrying blue crabs. He laid her gently on the pebbly shore, kneeling beside her as he lowered her head to the ground. He bent over, opened his mouth, and exhaled enough seawater to fill a bucket, retching it out in one long groan. The first thing that his master taught him about the ironstaff was that it gave him the ability to breath water as readily as air, but the transition was always a painful one, something he avoided when he could.

  At last, he threw his head back, his lank, wet red hair whipping across his back, and filled his lungs with air. Again. Again, drinking in the salty air, until finally he began to cough, clearing his lungs of the last remnants of the sea.

  He turned his attention to his companion. She lay before him, her flesh chill, her lips blue, eyelids parted to reveal her dark eyes, now dull, staring blankly at nothing. He felt no lifebeat when his fingers touched her neck. His coughs turned to sobs. His hair fell across his face, hiding his features from her unblinking stare.

  When the blue dragon breathed its lightning breath into the water, the blast had stunned Alynthia. Cael had felt the staff absorb much of the energy just as it had done with Mistress Jenna’s spell. Now, he berated himself, blamed himself for letting go of Alynthia, for not holding her beneath the water while the dragon attacked. By the time he had reached her, she had already filled her lungs with water.

  Now, as he looked at her, he saw in his mind the faces of all the others who had been killed on his account. He saw Pitch’s charred remains heaped against the wall of the Chamber of Doors. He saw Hoag turned to stone and Ijus blasted by Mistress Jenna’s magic, Kharzog with a sword through his old dwarven bellows, Gimzig gripped in the jaws of a sewer monster, and Claret’s entire family pulled apart and destroyed. Now, one more life was added to this score, one more innocent victim of his games, and this one, he realized, grieved him more than all the others, even more than Kharzog. If only he had stayed by Alynthia’s side while in the dragon stables of the Lord’s Palace, if only he had not let her struggle free of the staff, if only the dragon hadn’t blasted the depths of the sea with its lightning breath.

  With a scream of rage, he unleashed his sword. He stormed about beneath the pier, sending blue crabs scurrying in every direction, slashing heedlessly at everything around him. His magical blade passed through braces, supports, ropes, and even through a wooden pile supporting the pier. Only when the pier began to creak ominously, after many of its supports lay in chunks along the shore or bobbed in the surf, did his anger begin to subside. Still the pain remained.

  He r
eturned to Alynthia’s side, tossing his sword on the ground beside her. “She will not die,” her growled. He knelt at her side again, placing one hand beneath her neck and lifting it slightly, tilted back her head, which caused her lips to part He’d seen his mother do this a dozen times. A dozen times she’d saved the lives of shipwrecked sailors in this manner. He wasn’t even sure if he knew how to do it properly. But he had to try.

  “You will not die, Alynthia Krath-Mal,” he whispered as his placed his lips over her cold blue ones. He covered her eyes with his hand, at the same time pinching together her nostrils, then breathed forcibly into her mouth, puffing out her cheeks.

  He lifted, inhaling, and listened to the air escape her lips in a sad parody of breathing. “Come back to me,” he whispered again, returning his lips to hers. Again her cheeks puffed. “Come back to me.” Again. Again.

  He continued, continued on past the moment when hope failed, grimly past the moment when it began to seem a sacrilege, when his conscience told him to leave her body in peace. He continued, with each breath whispering, “Come back to me, my love.”

  As he bent to her lips yet one more time, she blinked. He paused, waiting, hope renewing, searching her dull eyes for a flicker of life. It came, dimly, but it came. He blew into her mouth again, felt her twitch, and when his breath escaped her lips this time, with it came a bubble of seawater. She coughed. He rolled her on her side, letting her retch the fluid from her lungs, gently patting her back, and holding her in his arms until she had finished.

  The place was called The Bone and Four, which was short for the Bone and Four Skulls. Above the door hung a battered wooden sign painted with these symbols. Cael kicked open the door and lurched into the room, carrying over his shoulders what appeared to be a large wet bundle, and leaning heavily on his staff.

  “We’re closed, mate,” said a man behind the bar. “After curfew.” Another man rose from the end of the bar, his head bumping among the low rafters. He was fully seven feet tall, and his sallow yellowish skin identified him as having ogrish parentage. He clenched a pair of warty, ham-sized fists and growled.