Downfall ds-1

by Jean Rabe

  Maldred grinned and lowered his voice. "Yours was the riskier venture in town. The rest of us robbed closed businesses. Besides, it added a little excitement in our lives. No harm done to us. And we've fine horses to show for it." He took a long look at Dhamon and sniffed. "You need some new clothes, my friend. Rikali pretty well shredded those, and they… stink. All of us could do with some new outfits. I doubt the smoke will leave these."

  The miles fell away as the sun clawed its way into a slate blue sky, pushing the temperature higher. To the north Rikali spotted a small copse of trees and tall green grass, a virtual oasis for Khur. At first she truly thought it a mirage, blinking furiously, believing it would disappear, but then she spied a raven suspended above a tall tree. It climbed upward into the sun, where she lost track of it for a moment, then it dropped, banked, and dove into the canopy and vanished. She urged her exhausted horse in that direction, releasing the reins of the other, which continued to follow her. As the first shadows touched her, she slipped from her horse's back, complaining about her sore back and stiff legs and her smoky clothes and Dhamon's medicinal stench. She led the animal through the dozen trees that grew here and along the small stream that lazily wended its way along the base of the Kalkhist foothills. "Blessed shade," she said as she stretched, lifted Fetch to set him on the ground, and watched the horses drink.

  "I could use a little rest," Dhamon confessed to Maldred.

  "No argument." The large man looked over his shoulder. "At least not for the moment." He slid from the saddle and led his horse to the bank. "Probably feeds a tributary of the Thon-Thalas River," he said, gesturing with his head at the water. The famed river wound its way through part of Khur and into the Silvanesti Forest, where it eventually joined up with the Thon-Rishas, which meandered deep into the swamp on the other side of the Kalkhists.

  "The stream's half of what it would normally be," Dhamon noted, pointing at the dry bank where part of the ground was cracked and patterned like shingles. "But at least the summer hasn't dried it up completely."

  Maldred shook his head, the sweat flying from his face and hair. He took off his boots and lowered his thick toes in the water. Then he bent and filled two skins and clipped them on his belt. He passed a third skin to Dhamon. "For when you really need it," he said. "It's all I have, so take care."

  "Thanks."

  "Was your friend," Rikali said, interrupting their conversation. She had her hands on her hips and her head was cocked to one side, as if she was lecturing a naughty child. "Was. Was. Was your friend."

  Dhamon pursed his lips and tethered his mount to a low branch that overhung the bank. He wondered what she was talking about, but knew he didn't have to ask- she'd explain sooner or later.

  "The Solamnic. I was thinking about her as we were ridin', hair as red as them flames. I'd say she was your friend. Them rigid types don't forgive thefts and murder. She'll be your enemy now."

  "I didn't kill anyone in that town." Dhamon patted the horse, running his fingers through its tangled mane. "I might have, but I didn't," he added.

  She shrugged and made sure he was watching her, choreographed a graceful display of slipping off her cloak and then squirming out of her tunic, dropping them and her small satchel on the bank to reveal her petite, pale form. She slowly waded into the stream and began bathing, making it a point to tend to her face first and remove the kohl that had run from her eyes. "Dwarves died in that town, Dhamon Grimwulf," she said, cupping her hands to catch the water and throwing it over her hair. "And maybe some Knights who aren't Solamnics. Doesn't really matter how many or by whose hand. Dead is dead. And you were there in the middle of it." She tucked her hair behind gently pointed ears that attested to her half-elf heritage, then she splashed water at him and wriggled her nose. "I tell you, you stink!"

  "Aye," Dhamon said softly, as he arranged his boots and new sword on the bank, peeled off what was left of his trousers and joined her in the river. "I certainly do." The water swirled around his calves and then thighs. He waded in as deep as the stream bed allowed, until the water came up to his waist. There were scars on his body amid the scratches that Rikali had administered. They were older and thick, and most had faded so they were difficult to discern.

  The half-elf traced some of the scratches. Her nails were long, clawlike, and they were covered with a thick black lacquer that stood out starkly against her parchment-hued skin.

  "These will heal, lover," she said huskily, fingers fluttering over her handiwork. "And they were your idea." She kissed one of the longer scratches on his chest, her pale face and white hair contrasting markedly with his sun-bronzed skin.

  "Everything heals, Riki," he said softly.

  Maldred was inspecting the four horses, announcing that two of them were especially fine and would bring a good price if they decided to sell them. Fetch followed him, pretending to study the big man's ways with animals and apologizing profusely for accidentally setting the fire in the stable.

  "You stink, too," Maldred said, looking down and wrinkling his hawkish nose.

  Fetch furiously shook his hooded head, backing away from the stream. But Maldred scooped him up with one hand and plucked away his smoky robe with the other. The hoopak and a small belt pouch fell free. Beneath the scorched fabric was a creature.

  It was less than three feet tall and had the form of a man, but more resembled a cross between a rat and a lizard, with a rusty brown hide that was a mix of scales and skin. His stunted, dog-shaped snout had a smattering of reddish whiskers growing haphazardly from the bottom jaw that nearly matched the color of his long, pointed, batlike ears that hinted at his goblin ancestry. A kobold, Fetch was a poor cousin to the ancient and more powerful goblin race that often employed his kind as footsoldiers and lackeys throughout Khur and other desolate parts of Krynn. He had beady eyes set beneath a pair of short, curved white horns, and they glowed red like hot embers. "Please, Maldred," Fetch implored in his thin, scratchy voice. His ratlike tail whipped about nervously. "You know I don't like water. I can't swim and I…"

  Maldred laughed loud and deep and pitched the kobold into the stream. "See that he washes behind his ears, will you Rikali?" With that, the big man settled himself beneath a tree, his hands resting on the sack and backpack Dhamon had stuffed. Within moments he was asleep.

  "That Knight," Rikali persisted after she had finished washing Dhamon's back. Her voice was soft so she wouldn't wake Maldred and Fetch who, like a dog, now was curled in a ball between the big man's feet. "Do you think she'll follow us? She looked so… angry."

  "Jealous?"

  The half-elf shook her head, water flying in an arc from her waist-length hair. "Me, jealous? Hardly, lover."

  "You're always jealous, Riki. Besides, Fiona is with Rig-has been for about as long as I've known her. Last I heard, they were to be married this fall, on her birthday."

  "You know her first name…"

  "I said we were friends. Rig was the dark man with her." Dhamon had turned his back to the elf, was studying something in the water. He spread his legs and bent over slightly, letting his hands sink quietly beneath the surface.

  "Is he a Solamnic Knight, too?"

  "Hardly! Shhh."

  "Hardly," she tittered. She watched him carefully with an appraising eye, then she grinned as he tried futilely to catch a fish that dove between his legs. Droplets arced away from him as he smacked the water and quietly cursed.

  Quick as lightning, she drove her slender arm into the stream, then pulled it up to reveal a trout speared on her fingernails. She flicked the fish high onto the bank. "You used to be a Knight, Dhamon Grimwulf. Or so you claim."

  "Not a Solamnic," he said, as he watched the fish flop about.

  "And I'm not jealous," Rikali cooed as she moved closer to him, spinning him around to face her. The half-elf's finger snaked out to rub a spot of dirt off his nose. "Have I a reason to be?"

  Dhamon said nothing, but he pulled her close.

  * * * * * * *
r />   It was early afternoon when Dhamon woke. He gently lifted Rikali's arm off his chest. He rolled away and reached for his trousers. Before he could finish dressing, a wave of pain struck him and he grabbed for the scale on his leg, digging his heels into the earth. It felt like nails were being driven into his flesh. He bit his lip to keep from crying out and weathered the pain for several minutes. His skin grew feverishly hot and his muscles cramped tight.

  He convinced himself it wasn't so bad. Roughly two years ago a dying Knight of Takhisis had removed the scale from his own chest and bestowed it on Dhamon.

  Dhamon fought to stay conscious as his mind propelled him back to the forested glade in Solamnia. He was kneeling over the mortally wounded Dark Knight, holding the man's hand and trying to offer what comfort he could in the last moments of life. The man beckoned him closer, loosed the armor from his chest and showed Dhamon a large scale embedded in the flesh beneath. With fumbling fingers, the Knight managed to pry the scale free, and before Dhamon realized what was happening, the Knight had placed it against Dhamon's thigh.

  The scale adhered, molding itself around his thigh and feeling like a brand thrust against his unprotected skin. It was the most painful sensation Dhamon had experienced in his life. The scale was the color of freshly drawn blood then, and Malys, the red dragon overlord from whom it came, used it to possess and control people. Months later a mysterious shadow dragon, along with a silver dragon who called herself Silvara, worked ancient magic to break the overlord's control. The scale turned black in the process. And shortly thereafter it had begun to ache periodically. At first, the pain was infrequent and fleeting.

  Dhamon figured pain was preferable to being controlled by a dragon. But lately the spasms had been getting worse and lasting longer. He noticed Maldred watching him, the big man's expression asking if Dhamon was all right.

  Dhamon returned the stare, but his unblinking eyes were indifferent and implacable, hiding his attitudes, feelings, keeping everything a mystery. Then he blinked, the pain finally passing. He reached for the skin Maldred had given him, took a deep pull, his throat working hard, and replaced the cork.

  "Bad?" the big man asked.

  "Sometimes. Lately," Dhamon answered, gingerly rising to his feet. The scratches on his chest and arms were healing. He was clean-shaven, his hair had been combed and tied at the nape of his neck with a black leather thong-compliments of the half-elf. His face looked youthful with all his hair pulled away from it.

  Maldred, however, refused to abandon his troubled expression. "Maybe we can find a healer who…"

  "A healer can't do anything. You know that." Dhamon changed the subject, pointing to the backpack and leather sack and the small pile of coin purses he'd brought out of his trousers, and the sacks filled with coins from his companions' heists. "An excellent haul," he pronounced. "A small fortune."

  Maldred nodded.

  "Gold jewelry studded with gems, plenty of coins, pearls. Enough, hopefully, to purchase that…"

  "Not enough," Maldred interrupted flatly. "Not close, Dhamon. I know him."

  "Then the hospital… the risk… was wasted time."

  The big man shook his head. "We didn't know how little or how much would be locked away. You did very well."

  "Not enough," Dhamon parroted.

  "Ah, but it might be just enough to purchase an audience with him."

  Dhamon frowned.

  Maldred gestured at the haul, then opened his backpack and stuffed the smaller pouches into it, keeping one of the larger coin purses out and tossing it to Dhamon. After a moment, he reached back inside and selected a second pouch. "Better give these to Rikali and Fetch for their trouble." He nodded toward the pair, both sleeping soundly a few yards away, close to each other. "Otherwise we'll never hear the end of it."

  Dhamon gazed at Rikali for a moment, saw her eyelids fluttering in a dream, then he stretched and turned back to Maldred. "How long should we let them sleep? I know Riki's not worried about any dwarves coming after us, but I'm not so unconcerned. Especially regarding those Legion of Steel Knights. They won't let this go unavenged."

  Maldred glanced back the way they had come. Away from the stream the land looked as dry and inhospitable as any desert. "Ah, my friend, this is a most pleasing spot. I could stay beneath that great tree for a few days. It is cooler here, a more restful a place than I've known for a while." His face looked serene, almost gentle, as he glanced at the stream and followed the progress of a floating leaf. It quickly clouded over as he said with a frown, "But don't worry, my friend, such idling is not to be. We can't afford to stay in any one spot too long. Not people like us. Not here. Because of those Knights and others we've crossed. And-most importantly-because we've quite a bit of work ahead of us."

  Dhamon cocked his head. "You've a plan?"

  The big man nodded. "Oh, yes."

  Dhamon's dark eyes glimmered. "Whatever it is, we'll need to move quickly."

  "Aye."

  The half-elf made a sound, rolling onto her back as her thin arms moved like the wings of a butterfly.

  "So this plan…" Dhamon prompted, when he was certain Rikali was still asleep.

  "Will bring us great wealth. Gems, my friend. Some as big as my fist." Maldred grinned, showing a wide mouth filled with pearly, even teeth. "We're not terribly far from a valley in Thoradin, to the north and west, cradled by the high spires."

  "A mine?"

  "So to speak. It will take us a week to reach it. Less, perhaps, as these horses are fine ones. We'll take that trail." His finger indicated a line that ribboned through the hills. He arranged the skins on his belt and adjusted the two-handed sword on his back. "We'll get enough to purchase what you want, and we'll likely have a good bit left over."

  "That's a merchant road up there," Dhamon observed.

  "Where hopefully we'll find a merchant wagon," the big man added, a gleam in his hazel eyes. "We're going to need something to haul all of our riches in."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Windfalls

  "I'd prefer not to kill you." Maldred stood in the center of a well-beaten trail that cut through the heart of the Kalkhist Mountains. He was bare-chested, with his deerskin shirt tied about his waist. The midday sun was baking his already-tanned skin and had brought out beads of sweat that slowly ran down his chest and gathered at the waistband of his trousers. The steady breeze that teased his short ginger hair spun the dirt around his boots into dust devils. He gripped his two-handed sword in damp hands, wielding it as if it were no heavier than a twig and pointing it in the direction of a stoop-shouldered grizzled man who sat on the driver's platform of a bulging covered wagon. "Your death would not profit me, old one."

  The man sputtered but said nothing, gripped the reins even tighter and stared in disbelief at Maldred. He blinked rapidly, as if doing so might make the big man go away.

  "Now," Maldred warned.

  "By all the vanished gods, no," the man said-not in response to Maldred's command, but to the unthinkable and very real situation he found himself in. "This cannot be real."

  "It's as real as this damnable, rainless summer. Get down off the wagon. Now. Before I lose my patience."

  "Gran'papa, don't listen to him!" A gangly youth poked his head through a slit in the canvas and climbed up front. "He's only one man."

  "He should listen to him, son." Dhamon stepped from behind a boulder, broadsword in hand, blade catching the sun and reflecting it so brightly that the old man squinted. The skin was red and peeling on his shoulders, cheeks, and nose, the rest of his sweaty skin so darkened from the sun that it looked like he was carved from oiled cedar. He looked unkempt and primitive, with his feet bare, remnants of thin scab lines across his naked chest, dressed only in the shredded remains of his trousers- which did little to hide the strange-looking scale on his leg. He'd not shaved since Rikali tended to him, so his jaw looked shadowed, clouded by his new beard. When he curled his lip upward in a snarl and narrowed his black eyes, the youth qui
vered.

  Rikali slid from behind an outcropping on the other side of the pass, long knife outstretched and pointed at the dark-skinned man sitting atop the second wagon. Fetch was at her side, growling and clawing at the air in a reasonable effort to appear menacing.

  "Get down, old man, and raise your hands," Maldred's voice was steady and commanding. "And tell the others to do the same. Your lives are worth more than whatever it is you're hauling. We need your cooperation. I don't want to have to say it again."

  There were three wagons stopped in the pass, each heavy and each pulled by several large draft horses. A "sumptuous find," Rikali eagerly pronounced it when she spotted the small procession on her scouting trip.

  The old man swallowed hard, dropping the reins. He whispered something to the boy and shakily climbed down from the wagon, trembling from fear and casting his eyes back and forth between Maldred and the weird kobold creature. The youth followed him down, glaring at Maldred and casting worried looks Dhamon's way.

  "Brigands," the old man wheezed when he'd found his voice again. "Never been robbed in all my life. Never." Louder, he said. "Better do what they say, son. Everybody out!" To Maldred he added, "Don't you hurt none of my people. Not a one! You hear me?"

  "Hands away from your sides," Maldred continued, nodding to Dhamon. In response, Dhamon crept forward, taking a thin knife from the old man's belt, tossing it to the far side of the trail, cautiously eyeing the youth for weapons.

  "Now stand over there. And be quiet," Dhamon ordered. He gestured with his sword to the opposite side of the trail, where a gray rocky wall stretched toward the cloudless, bright blue sky. "All I want to hear is the sun baking your sorry faces."

  Fetch scampered around to the back of the small caravan, hoopak in hand, using it to prod the rest of the merchants forward. The man who climbed off the last wagon moved too slowly for the kobold's liking, so he thwacked him across the back of the knees. The man fell, and Fetch whacked him with the hoopak a few times. He was quick to rise.