The Ruin

by Richard Lee Byers

  “I imagine Taegan and Jivex used magic to escape,” Raryn said. “That may have convinced them to proceed with caution. To wait a while and make a night attack.”

  Pavel sliced into Jivex’s shining scales. The faerie dragon hissed and stiffened, but true to his promise, kept himself from flinching. Fresh blood welled forth, filling the human’s nose with its coppery tang. Kara took a step back, lest the scent enflame the frenzy caged in her mind.

  “Well,” said Will, “in any case, it’s really not a problem, is it? Like Kara said, one look at her in dragon form, and they’ll run. You should probably reveal yourself now, singer, before they shoot any more arrows our way.”

  “I could,” Kara said, “but then we’d lose our chance to talk to them.”

  Will snorted. “I believe that bird has already flown.”

  “I hope not,” Kara said, “because we’ve already conferred with the Adorabe, the Var, the Dag Nost—all the friendly tribes—and learned nothing. We must now find a way to question those without ties to Gareth Dragonsbane. Otherwise, our mission will fail.”

  “It might come to nothing in any case,” Taegan said. “The savage Nars may know no more than the others.”

  “At the very least,” said Pavel, without looking up from his work, “I’m reasonably certain Sammaster spent some time in Narfell. One of the inks he used to write his cipher—”

  “There you have it!” said Will. “If the imbecile thinks we have something to learn here, we can be sure it isn’t so.” He chuckled. “Still, it would be nice to have some tidbit to chuck onto the table at the Feast of the Moon.”

  The seekers and their allies had agreed to assemble in Thentia on that date three months hence, to share their discoveries and formulate a final plan of action. If they had no new information, or too little to point them to their goal, then, soon after, the metallic dragons’ psychic defenses would fall before the ever-burgeoning power of the Rage, they’d all go mad and remain that way forever after, and their ruin would mean death, suffering, and oppression for countless other folk across the length and breadth of Faerûn.

  “It would indeed,” said Taegan. He smiled at Kara. “What do you have in mind, radiant Lady?”

  “Music,” she said. “My magic will ensure the Nars hear the song a long way off, before they come close enough to begin shooting, and likewise enhance the charm of the music. Once they do venture near, sorcery will make me seem the most beautiful, virtuous, regal woman they’ve ever seen. The right sort of conjured light, playing around my person, will heighten the glamour. With luck, the total effect will cozen them into approaching us peacefully.”

  Dorn scowled. “I don’t like it. You’re talking about fixing all their attention on yourself, and such charms don’t always work. It could be you’ll wind up making yourself a nice, shining target in the dark.”

  Yes, Pavel thought, and while in human form, Kara is as susceptible to harm as any ordinary woman.

  He drew the arrow from Jivex’s wound, wiped the blood from the point, examined it, and found no sign of poison or death magic.

  “I’m not inordinately enamored of the idea, either,” Taegan said, “particularly since the Nars have a wizard of their own. It’s possible he’ll resist your enchantments, then do his utmost to free his comrades from your influence. On the positive side, however, if the barbarians do attack, their first effort will likely take the form of a volley of arrows. We have a spell to protect you from that.”

  “Too bad the elf who knows it lacked the brains to cast on me,” Jivex muttered, just loudly enough to make sure everyone heard.

  “What if the magician hurls fire or ice?” Dorn asked. “Do we have a charm to shield her from that?”

  “Not with absolute certainty,” Kara said. “But I know wards that will improve my chances.”

  “In addition,” said Taegan, “Raryn and Jivex can see in the dark, and Kara has a spell to confer that ability on the rest of us. Some of us can spread out, hide, and monitor the Nars. With better chances,” he added, “than they have of seeing us. If one of them tries to initiate hostilities, we’ll spot it, and take him down at once.”

  Dorn shook his head, grotesque with the iron half-mask sheathing the left profile and the traces of puckered scar tissue peeking out from underneath. “No. It’s too—”

  Kara silenced the half-golem simply by giving him a smile. “A few nomads aren’t that much of a danger, are they, compared to what we already faced, in Northkeep and the Monastery of the Yellow Rose?”

  He hesitated, then growled, “No. I suppose not.”

  Pavel’s imagination filled in the words his friend couldn’t bring himself to say, at least, not in front of everyone: It’s just that I love you so much, I’m terrified of losing you, and sometimes it slips out.

  “But,” Dorn continued, “we’re going to be do this as safely as we can, and at the first sign of trouble, you transform.”

  Kara inclined her head and curtsied. “As my captain commands.”

  Pavel murmured a healing prayer, and his hand tingled with warmth and crimson light. He pressed it against the gory cavity at the base of Jivex’s wing. New tissue grew to fill the gap, and unblemished scales sprouted to seal the rawness over.

  A skiprock ready in his sling, Will lay on his belly behind a clump of grass. Thanks to Kara’s magic, he could see clearly for a few dozen yards, though colors mostly washed out to gray.

  Wreathed in soft, shifting, multicolored light, the bard sang a ways behind him, near the seekers’ horses, ponies, and wagon. The song’s lyrics celebrated the joys of wandering far on horseback, and the bond between rider and steed. Infused with glamour as it was, it kept threatening to captivate Will as thoroughly as it was supposed to enchant the Nars. He had to keep wrenching his attention back to the task at hand.

  Off to Will’s right, Pavel lay in a depression in the earth. It wasn’t much cover—the flat grasslands were miserly when it came to providing places to hide—but in the dark, perhaps it would serve. The lanky, yellow-haired priest cradled a crossbow in his hands.

  Walking their horses with nary a whicker, a creak of tack, or a jingle of harness, the Nars began to appear at the limits of Will’s vision. Like Kara’s defenders, the barbarians had spread out, perhaps even encircling the outlanders completely.

  But as they rode closer, the halfling saw reason for hope that they wouldn’t follow through on their hostile designs. Bows and lances dangled, seemingly forgotten, in their hands. Some smiled childlike smiles.

  Not all of them, though, at least not all the time. Certain Nars, those with the strongest wills and sharpest wits, most likely, periodically balked, frowned, blinked, or shook their heads, as if trying to cast off some manner of confusion.

  The fellow who hesitated most often and seemed to be struggling the hardest was a sharp-nosed runt with a black wand in his hand. He must be the magician Taegan and Jivex had mentioned. Will considered slinging a stone and knocking him unconscious, but decided against it. If the other Nars noticed their comrade had suffered an attack, that might break Kara’s hold on them all by itself.

  The mage muttered something to an ugly, hulking barbarian who was likely the chief. Will suspected it was a warning. Enthralled by Kara’s vibrant melody, though, the leader didn’t seem to hear. He just rode closer to the singer in her veils of shimmering light, and after a moment, the warlock’s mouth stretched into a grin. He stuck his wand inside his boot and followed his companion.

  This is going to work, thought Will. Dip me in pitch if it isn’t.

  Somewhere in the darkness, something squawked—or seemed to. With Kara’s song amplified to carry over a distance, and infused with a power that made a listener want to attend to it and it alone, it was hard to catch other sounds. Will wasn’t sure what he’d actually heard.

  But he knew he’d heard something, because the warlock and some of the other Nars reacted. They reined in their horses, sat up straighter, looked around, and readied their
weapons.

  Kara responded by singing a soaring arpeggio so compelling that, despite himself, Will twisted around to look at her. He wouldn’t have been surprised if every owl, reindeer, fox, and mouse on the steppe, or even the blades of grass, had done the same. Awash in golden phosphorescence, the bard appeared as beautiful as Sune Firehair herself. It seemed impossible that any of the Nars could escape her spell.

  Until another outcry sounded, this one loud enough there was no mistaking the mingled screams of a horse and its rider.

  Nar steeds were prized partly for their mettle, but the noise spooked them even so. They shied, reared, whinnied, rolled their eyes and tossed their heads, and their riders struggled to control them. The delight in the nomads’ faces gave way to perplexity and fear. The magician hammered his temples with the heels of his palms, then shouted words of power, staccato and harsh as an axe chopping wood.

  Will jumped up and spun his warsling. The skiprock flew as true as he’d expected, hit the warlock in the head, then bounced away without even rocking him in the saddle. Apparently the tribesman, prior to making his approach, had cast his own ward to armor himself against missiles.

  The Nar bellowed the final word of his incantation. A ring of shimmering distortion expanded outward from his position. For an instant, as it swept over Will, his joints ached as if he were some withered ancient crippled with arthritis.

  But the real problem was that the magic freed the other Nars from Kara’s enchantments, as they demonstrated by clamoring in fury. The chief shouted orders, directing some of his men to attack the bard and the rest to help him find and kill the foe who was stalking them in the dark.

  A dozen arrows hurtled at Kara, only to shatter uselessly against her willowy form. Will doubted the magic could withstand many more, however. Though no spellcaster himself, he’d spent enough time around such folk to know that every such impact chipped away at the invisible shield.

  He didn’t understand exactly how things had gone so wrong, but it seemed plain that he and his friends had no choice left but to fight. He slung a skiprock, and a rider toppled from his mount. Dorn or Raryn—Will didn’t see where the attack came from—drove an arrow into another barbarian’s chest.

  Pavel, however, shouted, “No! Defend yourselves, but don’t kill them!”

  “He’s right!” Kara cried. As a woman or dragon, she was beautiful, but midway through the shift from one to the other, she was a heaving, swelling thing vaguely sickening to behold. “Don’t hurt—”

  The Nar wizard interrupted her with a fan-shaped flare of fire that blistered her half-formed blue-crystal scales. She hissed and recoiled.

  Pivoting back toward Pavel—who at some point during the last few heartbeats had conjured a halo of red-gold light around himself—Will said, “What’s your idiotic idea this time?” Before the priest could answer, though, riders came thundering at them.

  Arrows flew. Will dived onto the ground, and they streaked over him. But Pavel was no acrobat, and the halfling worried that his friend had been hit. When he looked around again, though, the priest was unscathed. His magical aura, buckler, and shirt of mail had evidently protected him.

  Will could only pray to the Master of Stealth that such luck would continue, because the god knew, the prohibition against killing placed them at a considerable disadvantage. Nars charged, and he slung a skiprock. It cracked against one horse’s head, rebounded to strike another’s, and both animals toppled. The halfling hoped the riders had survived the spills.

  Pavel shouted rhymes and swept his gold-and-garnet sun amulet through mystic passes. A black horse, the target of one spell, wheeled and galloped away, bearing its rider helplessly along no matter how he yelled and dragged on the reins. A second conjuration froze a nomad as if he were a statue, and his mount, sensing its master’s incapacity, veered off.

  But two attackers remained, and had nearly raced into sword range. Will tucked his sling back in his belt and poised himself for what he must do next.

  A Nar charged him. The halfling somersaulted, dodging pounding hooves and a sweeping scimitar. That brought him alongside the horse’s flank. He sprang, and just managed to grab hold of the rider’s dyed leather garments.

  It was a feeble hold, and while he fumbled for a stronger one, the Nar attacked him. The nomad couldn’t use the scimitar to slash in such close quarters, but he could bash with the heavy brass pommel.

  The blows hammered down on top of Will’s head, splashing sparks across his vision. Refusing to let the jolts of pain paralyze him, he finally achieved a secure grip on the Nar’s belt. He snatched out his dagger and drove it into the horseman’s thigh.

  The shock of the wound made the nomad stop beating at Will’s head for a moment anyway. The halfling then struck with the pommel too, smashing blows into the nomad’s kidney and solar plexus. The Nar jerked and flailed. Will clambered higher up the horseman’s body and landed a strike to the jaw, snapping the larger combatant’s head back. The nomad’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he toppled sideways, out of the saddle, carrying Will along with him. Will sprang clear, performed a shoulder roll, and swarmed to his feet without injury.

  Well, without further injury, anyway. His head throbbed, and blood streamed down into his eyes. He wiped it away and looked around, just in time to see Pavel catch a scimitar cut on his buckler.

  The force of the slash made the priest stagger a step, but failed to disrupt the rhythm of his incantation or the precision with which he flourished his medallion. When he reached the end of the spell, the Nar’s eyes opened wide. He dropped his sword, hauled brutally on the reins, jerking his mount around, and rode away as fast as he could.

  “Right,” said Will. “Maybe I’d cheat and scare them away with magic, too, if I was too cowardly to risk a fair fight.”

  “Perhaps I’d fight as you do,” Pavel said, “if, like you, I had no particular use for my head. Will you survive?”

  Will explored his gashed scalp with his fingers. “I think so.”

  “A pity.”

  Pavel peered about, spotted a dark Nar mare with a white blaze and socks, and crooning to the animal in a reassuring tone, slowly advanced on it. The horse retreated. Pavel whispered a prayer and gripped his amulet. Though Will wasn’t the target of the spell, mere proximity to the magic made him feel irrationally relaxed and happy, even as it seemed to dull the shouts, clash of metal on metal, and other sounds of combat stabbing through the darkness. Pavel eased toward the mare again, and she allowed him to swing himself up into the saddle. He rode to Will and hauled the halfling up behind him. Then he turned the horse to survey the battlefield. Will took the opportunity to do the same.

  The Nars were brave, he had to give them that. Even Kara’s shift to song dragon form hadn’t scared them into breaking off the attack. Or perhaps, knowing they had another foe skulking somewhere in the darkness, they simply didn’t know which way to run. In any case, they were fighting savagely, and still trying to avoid unnecessary slaughter, the seekers defended themselves as best they could.

  Singing a fierce battle anthem with incantations threaded in, Kara fought a duel of spells with the Nar warlock. He battered her with a flare of jagged shadow that ripped one of her wings, and she responded with a wave of silvery light that seemed to have no effect on him.

  Exploiting the prodigious strength of his iron arm, Dorn caught hold of a stallion’s neck and dumped the animal and its rider onto the ground. Jivex dazed several attackers with a jet of his sparkling breath, Taegan, likewise on the wing, dodged a lance thrust and bashed his opponent with the flat of his elven sword, while Raryn parried a scimitar stroke with the shaft of his harpoon.

  That was much as Will had time to take in before Pavel rode in the opposite direction from the battle.

  “Aren’t we going to help the others?” the halfling asked.

  “They’ll be fine,” Pavel said. “If the Nars push her to it, Kara can slaughter the lot of them, all by herself. But perhaps we can spare
her the necessity.”

  “How?”

  “By stopping Brimstone.”

  “He’s the one who attacked the Nars? How do you know?”

  “Because I can feel him lurking somewhere nearby, as you’d feel the pangs of a broken tooth. Now stop blathering and look for him.”

  Brimstone, Will reflected. It made a certain amount of sense. Since he and his comrades traveled by day, the vampiric smoke drake couldn’t journey with them. Accordingly, he was exploring Narfell on his own, but made contact with his partners periodically. They’d actually been expecting him to turn up for a while, and certainly the wyrm would have no qualms about massacring a company of Nars for any number of reasons.

  Blood dripped down Will’s face. He swiped at it, then caught an acrid smell of smoke and combustion, and spotted a long, sinuous shadow.

  “There he is!” he said. “Swing left!”

  Pavel tugged on the reins, and in another moment, Brimstone came into clear view.

  Red eyes glowing like hot coals, ruby-and diamond-studded platinum collar gleaming, a couple arrows jutting from his dark scales, Brimstone crouched among the shattered bodies of horses and men, with one living Nar squirming helplessly beneath each forefoot and another flopping in his jaws, impaled on the elongated fangs. The vampire’s throat worked, and he made a gulping sound, as he sucked his current victim dry of blood.

  The mare balked at approaching the wyrm any closer. His features taut, Pavel simply dismounted and let go of the reins. Will had to jump off quickly to keep the horse from running away with him.

  Pavel raised his amulet above his head. “You know,” said Will, “Brimstone is our ally. We could try just talking to—”

  Warm golden light shined from the sun symbol. To Will, it felt pleasant. But Brimstone squinched his eyes shut and twisted his head away until the glow faded.