“You could slay us easily,” she continued.
The great dragon blinked, and the air shimmered above its cave-like nostrils.
“You could swallow us whole,” Yevele said. “We could do nothing to stop you. We ask your mercy.”
“Yes,” Berthold said. “We ask that you let us leave this place. We’ll tell no one about you and your children. “We’ll leave your desert and — ”
“Here, Bert.”
The great dragon let out a sigh that added to the burning smell. “I have no desire to swallow men. I do not eat the flesh of animals. My children do not eat the flesh of animals."
“Then you’ll let us go?" This from Ingrge. The elf was on his feet, too, hands spread at his side, eyes fixed on the ridge above the dragon’s glowing eyes.
“My children, it seems, desire you as pets,” the dragon said. A smile played at the corner of her massive sand-colored lip. “They have not had a plaything in some time.”
Yevele shook her head. “We can’t. You can’t let them. Please. We have too much to do. Important work. We're going to Quag Keep to — ”
The ridge rose above the dragon’s eyes and she growled, the sound causing the stone floor to tremble more fiercely than before. Again Yevele fell. Agile Ingrge threw all his effort into keeping his balance. Stone dust spilled down and into the elf’s face. He shielded his eyes from it and spat the dust and sand out of his mouth.
“You know of Quag Keep?” Ingrge asked. “It is beyond the desert.”
The dragon snarled and flicked her barbed tongue. “I know of the Keep.”
“Then you’ll let us go?” Yevele was determined. She stood once more and brushed at the sand stuck to her face.
“What do you know of that place?” the elf pressed.
“It was not always beyond the desert,” the dragon said. She lowered her voice, and the tremors subsided.
Berthold was finally able to stand. The thief kept an eye on the young dragons, particularly the one that kept beckoning him close.
“It was in the heart of the desert a lifetime past. Standing above the dunes, it cast shadows to mark the time of day. The very bricks of its walls are made of the desert, hardened by wizards, shaped and strengthened. Ever taller, ever deeper. A place of great goodness when it marked the time of day.”
“A lifetime ago?” Yevele was no longer trembling. She’d mastered her fear of the dragon. “In our years?”
“In mine. Centuries for you.” The dragon raised her head and slowly shook it. Barbels that hung from below her jaw brushed ruts in the sand on the floor.
“What happened?" Yevele risked a step closer to the great dragon. The battlemaid was reflected now in the beast’s glowing eyes.
“A darkness grew in the labyrinth beneath the tower. Deeper the levels went than higher the walls reached. Taller and deeper, and in the depths of the earth, where the sun cannot shine, came a power. Something evil stirred and found its way inside Quag Keep.”
“A man?” Berthold asked. “Like us? A wizard?”
Again the dragon shook her head. She captured also the interest of the young dragons now, and they were no longer paying attention to Berthold and his companions. Her eyes searched Yevele’s face, as if the great dragon were trying to gauge her intelligence and find simple words to explain the darkness.
“Not a man,” she said after a moment of staring at them. She flicked her tongue and licked at her teeth. “Not a wizard. Not a dragon, nor any other creature that had walked on the earth. A collection of evil, a pool of corruptness, the badness in men and dead wizards slain by the eating of their own powers. Given life by the magic that pulsed through Quag Keep. Given strength by the wizards who lived in the tower and who were oblivious to its presence. Nurtured by their hidden thoughts, by things they dreamed about but would not do, by the dark parts of their minds.”
Yevele’s face had gone white, her eyes wide at the image the dragon conjured. “And what happened to this . . . darkness?”
“Years and years and years it festered and grew in the bowels of the wizard’s tower,” the dragon continued. “And when they had no more to give it, the Darkness rose and slew them . . . most of them . . . those who foolishly thought they could kill what they had unwittingly given strength and life. And then it took the tower for its own. And it drove back the desert.”
“So the tower never moved.” Yevele was an arm’s length from the dragon’s snout. The heat from the dragon’s breath had drawn the life from her curls and the moisture from her skin.
“No, it never moved. The tower drove back the desert.’’
“Andyou were here? When it happened?”
“Smaller than my smallest child. A hatchling. Almost too young to understand.”
It was Ingrge’s turn: “And no one fought this Darkness?”
The dragon cocked her head. "The wizards who fled did not understand what they had unleashed. But they told others to stay away from the tower.”
“We’ve been to the tower,” Yevele said. “We saw no . . . Darkness.” “Then the Darkness was not there when you visited,” the dragon returned. “It slithers from the tower from time to time. It was not there, else you would not be here.”
“Why haven’t you done something?” The thief’s tone was politely demanding. “As powerful as you are, why haven’t you gone after the darkness?
“Because I am also wise. The Darkness leaves me alone, and I give it no cause to further push away my precious desert.”
“But it’s evil. You said it’s evil,” the thief persisted.
“But it does not trouble me,”
The thief shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Because you have not the capacity to understand."
“You can’t expect a dragon to have human morals and values,” Yevele commented.
The dragon’s eyes widened, shedding more light into the cavern. “So then a woman such as you might have the capacity?”
Yevele faced the dragon again. “You’ll let us leave ... so we can go to Quag Keep?”
The dragon nodded, her barbels creating a pattern in the sand. “Seek death if you will,” she said. “If you go to Quag Keep and meet the Darkness, it will kill you. ”
Yevele, Ingrge, and Berthold climbed out of the hole, boosted by one of the young dragons. “Here, Bert,” it said as they started across the desert. “Here. Here. Here.”
The thief made an exaggerated sigh. "I thought we were dragon food for certain. I’m going to need to wash my clothes.” He walked several yards before looking back at the depression. “She said they don't eat animal flesh.”
“Yes, she considered us animals,” Yevele said. “And I suppose, to her, we are.”
"Well, if she doesn't eat animals, what does she eat? What could possibly sustain a body that large?”
Ingrge passed the thief and battlemaid by deciding to scout ahead again. "I believe," he said over his shoulder, “that sand dragons exist on the faint drops of dew that collect on cactus needles in the evening and the heat that rises from the sand. ’’ He stopped. “But I don’t know how I know that.”
He was moving ahead again, with deft, long strides. Berthold grabbed Yevele’s shoulder and pointed to the ground. The elf was leaving practically no tracks.
It was well into the afternoon. The trio had spent more time in the dragon cavern than they’d realized. Tired, they nevertheless pressed on, Berthold complaining only occasionally, then sighing loudly and pointing when the edge of the desert loomed into view at sunset. There was no gradual change in the landscape, from the desert to the wooded lands beyond. It was as if an artist had painted a desert, then abruptly started painting trees.
“I don’t remember it being like this when we were here before.” Yevele knelt with one leg in the desert, the other in the woods. Her fingers danced from the sand to the grass, marveling at the abrupt change in texture and drop in temperature.
“We didn’t come this way before.” Ingrge had si
lently moved up, spooking Yevele and Berthold. He held his bow in his right hand, an arrow notched loosely. “I’ve scouted ahead, and it’s pretty quiet, but not unnaturally so. I think we should keep going, along a game trail I spotted. I’d prefer to be well under the cover of trees by nightfall.”
The thief rolled his shoulders, sat down and pulled off his well-worn slippers. He rubbed his right foot, then his left. “Don’tyou ever quit?”
“Elves require little rest.”
“Don’tyou care about us humans?” Berthold put his slippers back on, stood, and brushed the last of the sand off his tunic. “Weren’t you human back in — ”
“Florida.” Forty-two steps from the beach, he mouthed. How many to the ocean ? His telephone number. . . what wad it?
Yevele had taken off her chainmail shirt and was shaking it, sand pouring out of the armor. She put it back on and tugged her sword free and inspected it, kept it out and got to her feet.
“I’m ready,” she announced.
“Isn’t it dangerous to go through the woods at night?”
“Berthold, it was dangerous to go through the desert in the daylight,” Yevele said, her tone condescending. “This world is dangerous. Ingrge, not too far ahead this time. All right?”
Nodding in answer, the elf directed them to the game trail. Above, the sky was still light but the land about them turned darker the deeper they went into the woods. The canopy of branches overhead was dense, birds nested on the highest limbs. A pair of owls waiting for hunting dark watched them with some interest.
Scents here were more agreeable. There were predominantly oaks, maples, and evergreen trees, some of these reaching more than eighty feet high. The evergreens filled the air with a heady pine fragrance and chased away the last of the dragon’s sulfur smell. As they advanced, the odor of wood rotting from downed trees arose, and from somewhere nearby a fresher scent brought them to a brook.
They drank until they feared their stomachs would burst, then they filled their skins, and while Ingrge retrieved handfuls of late-berries, Berthold bathed.
“We should spend the night here,” the thief suggested. He'd washed his clothes, too, and then had put them on wet. Though he shivered in the chill fall air, he didn’t complain. “Fresh water, a nice clearing.”
Ingrge pointed to a patch of earth between low-spreading ferns. “Wolf tracks. I would think they come here at night.”
“Well, I’m ready to go,” Berthold announced.
The elf guessed it was midnight when they reached end of the woods.
In a scrubby, circular clearing, highlighted by a three-quarter moon, Quag Keep loomed like a mountain.
Return to Quag Keep
“Wow.” Berthold had not been to Quag Keep before, and so he was awestruck by the tower. It rose from the scrubland like a crooked arm, its stone blocks brushed by the moonlight.
Remembering the dragon’s story, the three stared at it from just inside the forest, hunkered down behind a small pine. They could tell, now, that the tower’s stones were indeed made of sand, as they were the same color as the desert and grains sparkled here and there. The tower was nearly round, being a little distorted, though perhaps that was by design. It looked to be many levels tall, but just how many the night concealed. There were few windows on this side, all of them dark because of heavy tapestries or shutters, all of them barred.
"I don’t think they had bars on them when we were last here,” Yevele said. “And I don’t think that was there either.” She pointed to three gargoyles three-quarters the way up, carved from some dark gray stone that seemed to absorb the moonlight. They protruded from the tower from their waists, wings extended and misshapen arms stretched out, as if they’d been caught trying to flee the place.
Their features were so exaggerated, the three still sheltered by the forest could make out the details. One had its mouth open, revealing fangs made of black shards. Another’s mouth was set in grim determination. The last was the most unsettling, with overlarge eyes and a snout that looked like a crocodile’s. Something appeared to be dripping from its mouth, frozen in stone.
“Cheery place, that.’’
“You urged us here, thief.” Yevele started toward the tower, but Berthold pulled her back. “And now you don’t want to go?”
“Wait,” he cautioned. “1 just want a longer look.” He continued to study the tower.
The three windows on this side were ovals rimmed by raised, curved bricks. Also they varied in size, and a faintest flicker of light appeared in the one toward the top. Though at first sight the stones of the tower, pale in the moonlight, initially appeared to be visibly cracked with age, the longer Berthold stared, the more he was certain there was a pattern to the cracks. He pointed this out to the elf.
“I’d not noticed that before,” Ingrge admitted. “But it looks like writing. A language I’m not familiar with.”
“Runes, no doubt,” Yevele decided. “The dragon spoke of magic protecting the tower. Perhaps those are some sort of spell. ’’
Berthold nodded. “It would make sense. If the tower is as old as the dragon claims, it would certainly need some sort of magic to keep it so well preserved.
He studied the very top now. It was crenelated, but the scalloped stones looked like inverted teeth, the edges glistening in the moonlight like they were knife-sharp. He shuddered. There were more of the cracks in their surfaces, and these definitely looked like letters or runes. Too, there was a large shape that moved between the gaps in the teeth.
“There is a patrol,” he said. “And I don’t think the sentry is human.” Ingrge stared at the shape. “A troll. That’s not good news.”
“At least there's only one of them,’’ the thief returned.
“That we can see." This came from Yevele. She had her sword out, and she was staring at the lowest gargoyle. Its head had moved since she’d looked at it last. Not much, but enough for her to notice. And its eyes were wider. "I think the gargoyles . . .”
"Are alive,” Berthold said. "Or, if not technically alive, they’re He searched for a word. "Operational. ” The thief concentrated on the gargoyles now. "They don't breathe.”
"Neither did the undead that attacked us,” Ingrge said.
"But they do move. All of them. I don’t think they’ve seen us. I think they’re watching the ground just outside the tower. But the one on top is looking to the sky.”
"Maybe looking for dragons.” Yevele moved deeper into the forest and motioned the men to join her. "I want to look at the tower from all the angles.”
"Wise woman,” the thief said. He edged past her, moving silently and blending with the shadows of the woods. He paused to make sure she and Ingrge were following. He went a quarter-turn around the tower, and they stopped.
There was another gargoyle here, about twenty feet above the ground, larger than the others, possessing three arms and bat-shaped wings seeming far too small to support aloft something of its size. The eyes were round like an owl’s, and for a moment the thing seemed to stare straight at them. Then its gaze moved elsewhere, and they hurried another quarter-turn around.
"The front. That’s the way we went in.” Yevele pointed to the tower’s door. "That’s the only door.”
"That we can see,” Berthold corrected. It was difficult to make out the features of the door from where they hunkered. Being set back into the tower a few feet, it was thickly shadowed despite the moonlight. It looked, he decided, like an unpleasantly open mouth of a beast. There were no cracks in the stones that ringed the entrance, they looked as if they’d just been poured or chiseled, the edges flat, as if no time had passed to weather them. The stones just beyond them, though, had more of the runic cracks, as did the stones around the lone window set high on this side.
"How could you live in a place, in rooms that have no windows? Dark. No fresh air,” Berthold muttered.
Ingrge was viewing the lone window, too. "I cannot understand wizards, as I could not understand the sand d
ragon. But I suspect windows are only a distraction, like a child distracted in grade school. No distractions, more time to concentrate on their magic. Besides, fewer windows makes the place more defensible, don’t you think?”
“There is a pattern,” Berthold said, “to the way the gargoyles move their heads and eyes. And there is a routine the troll on the roof follows. You say these things were not here when you visited?”
Ingrge and Yevele shook their heads.
“Then perhaps they are here as a result of your visit. Perhaps the place is not so impregnable, and perhaps the occupants have grown lax.”
“I see the pattern you mean,” the elf said alter a moment. “I believe we can reach the door unseen.” Without further word, he dashed forward, low to the ground and heading like an arrow straight for the tower.
Berthold shook his head and held an arm across Yevele’s stomach, urging her to stay put. “I would have liked to go all the way around the tower first,” he said, disappointment heavy in his voice. “I’m a police officer . . . and a thief... I know what to look for, and he didn’t give me a chance to — ”
Then Yevele slapped his arm away to follow the elf’s path.
“It’s just like in the game,” Berthold grumbled to himself. “The fighters always impetuous, never waiting for the thief to thoroughly check things out. Springing traps, getting themselves maimed or killed. Good thing Milo and the berserker are with the caravan. They would’ve had all the stone gargoyles’ attention. The troll’s, too." When he was done fuming, he waited for the gargoyle’s head to again look away, then he raced to the tower.
Ingrge had his ear pressed against a door made of blackened wood, that was bound with iron. Yevele leaned against the stone entranceway, waiting for the elf’s report. Berthold nudged the elf aside and put his own ear to the spot where the door met the frame.
“I’m the thief, remember?” he whispered. “This is my job.”
“You may have some elven blood in your veins, Berthold, but my ears are more sensitive.”
“He’s an elf?” Yevele looked surprised.
Greyhawk - [Quag Keep 02] - Return to Quag Keep Page 15
