The Ruin

by Richard Lee Byers

  Zethrindor tossed his immense shredded wings in the draconic equivalent of a shrug. “Have it your way, but only so long as my folk have enough to eat. Thus far, my minions have killed enough to fill their bellies in the course of subjugating the tribes and villages, but who now remains to terrorize? The Great Glacier is yours.”

  “Yes, it is. So I’m giving you a new task. To the east lies Sossal. I’ve tried for years to bring it under my sway and cover the land in Auril’s sacred ice. But the druids there are powerful, they resisted me, and my rebellious subjects closer to home prevented me from bringing my full strength to bear. Now it’s finally time, and you wyrms will fight in the vanguard.”

  “In the vanguard of what, precisely?” Zethrindor replied. “I’ve seen your troops. They’re adequate to control the settlements now that we dragons have hammered the fight out of them, but too few to overrun a more populous land.”

  Iyraclea sneered, and the air grew colder. “Are you afraid to attack Sossal?”

  “Of course not. Drakes are a match for any foe. But only a fool would rush to bear the brunt of an actual war for someone else’s benefit. Besides which, I wonder how you can possibly hold the place once our term of service is complete.”

  “You needn’t fret over any of that. You’ll have a substantial force at your back, and they’ll occupy the newly conquered territories after you depart. You see, all these hunters and warriors you’ve been rounding up are more than prisoners. They’re conscripts.”

  Zethrindor cocked his crested, tapered head. “Do you really think they’ll serve a queen they hate?”

  She smiled. “What choice do they have? You dragons and the Icy Claws will command them, and they’re too afraid of you—and me—not to obey. Even if they weren’t, their kin here on the glacier stand hostage for their good behavior, just as the folk left in the villages grovel for fear of what we might otherwise do to those we marched away to an unknown fate. It’s a clever arrangement, don’t you think?”

  The dracolich regarded her for a moment, then conceded, “It isn’t bad. We’d better determine how soon we can march, as well as which wyrms will go, and which will stay.”

  “You’re all going. Your work on the glacier is done, and I mean to make the most of you during the time remaining.”

  Zethrindor hesitated. “One or two of us might stay, to make sure the villages stay cowed.”

  “I’ve told you what I want, and Sammaster instructed you to do my bidding. Besides, I can’t believe any of you would consent to stay behind. In Sossal, you’ll find plenty of human flesh to eat, and an abundance of treasure to plunder.”

  As well as an outlet, she thought, for the urge to slaughter engendered by the Rage.

  Sammaster had somehow dampened it, but he hadn’t cured them of it. At odd moments, she felt it simmering inside the living whites, waiting to break free, and perhaps it was what made them hiss and roar in approval of the prospect she offered.

  Zethrindor grimaced at his minions’ bestial display. “So be it, priestess. Let’s plan our campaign.”

  “I notice,” said Pavel, when the story was through, “that you didn’t keep your promise to kill outlanders. In fact, I suspect you sent every last dragon to Sossal partly so you could capture and interrogate wayfarers without the wyrms interfering.”

  “Of course,” the Ice Queen said. During the course of her tale, she’d slipped her gown back on. “Because Sammaster’s pledge is meaningless. If by some bizarre chance he does succeed in creating a horde of dracoliches, they’ll seek to conquer all Faerûn, the Great Glacier included. His mad prophecies require it. Thus, I need to find out exactly what he’s up to, so I can defend against it, and I think you and your companions know. It’s part of the reason he wants you dead. Now stop stalling and tell me all about it, or I swear by the Icedawn that I’ll fling you from the tower and seek my answers from one of your friends.”

  Pavel had little doubt that once Iyraclea understood Sammaster’s designs, she’d want to thwart them. The problem was that in her own way, she was equally crazy and wicked, with her own poisonous dream of the future. He couldn’t believe she’d be content simply to dismantle the mystical structure generating the Rage. She’d probably prove just as eager as the lich to twist the power to her own purposes.

  Yet he truly had no option but to talk, and she was sufficiently shrewd that only something approximating the truth was likely to satisfy her. Accordingly, he spun his own essentially factual tale.

  He withheld some key bits of information, though, including the fact that Kara was a song dragon. Thus far, her captors had presumably only seen her in human form, and he didn’t want them to know what a formidable entity they’d brought into their midst.

  When he finished, Iyraclea said, “I’ve always been curious about the ruined cities in the Novularonds, but I’ve never had the leisure to investigate them.”

  “Well, one of them is the heart of the Rage. We were sure of it before, and Sammaster’s pact with you proves it. He knows—or at least fears—he has enemies looking for the place, so he found a pawn—”

  Iyraclea stiffened. “A what?”

  Pavel shrugged. “I apologize, Your Majesty, but the word fits. He found a pawn to guard his secrets for him. He attempted pretty much the same ploy in Damara. He’s too busy calming frenzied dragons, and assisting with their transformations, to do all the guarding himself.”

  “Well, this time he tried to manipulate the wrong person, and I’ll make certain he regrets it.”

  “You’ll need our help.”

  “Don’t be presumptuous. I need no one. I’m first among Auril’s priestesses!”

  “Congratulations. But my comrades and I have been investigating this matter for months. We explored the ancient sites, overcame the dangers, unearthed the lore, and conferred with the sages who interpreted it. Glories of the dawn, you wouldn’t even understand what’s happening if it wasn’t for us. You’d be stupid to reject our aid if you can get it. And you can, so long as you treat us decently, because we share a common goal.”

  Iyraclea gave a grudging nod. “Perhaps so. I assume you want to see your companions and make certain they’re all right.”

  “Yes, but before even that, I’d like my breeches back.”

  21-27 Marpenoth, the Year of Rogue Dragons

  Like the tumbling snowflakes, Zethrindor floated on the wailing wind out of the west. Strangely, despite her avowed determination to conquer Sossal, Iyraclea had yet to take the field, but she had cursed the land with a fierce and premature winter. The assumption was that frigid temperatures and relentless blizzards would hinder and demoralize the defenders far more than it would the invaders from the Great Glacier, who faced such conditions every day of their lives.

  Zethrindor was watching a huge white wolf lurking behind a stand of brush on a ridge. The beast scrutinized the string of poorly guarded ox-drawn supply carts slogging along the snow-choked trail below.

  Sossal had turned out to be a country possessed of more than its fair share of skinchangers. The druids mastered the art in the course of their training, but apparently certain other folk were simply born with the knack. Zethrindor was reasonably certain the shaggy creature below was one such, a warrior wearing animal form to scout the convoy and evaluate whether his war band ought to attack.

  The shapeshifter naturally wouldn’t decide in the affirmative if he detected a dracolich gliding overhead, waiting to pounce when he and his comrades took the bait, but Zethrindor doubted that would be a problem. The night was dark, and just in case it wasn’t black enough, he’d veiled himself in a spell of invisibility.

  The wolf howled, and another answered. Then dozens of other lupines, some ghostly white like the scout, others gray, came slinking to join their comrade on the high ground.

  In Zethrindor’s estimation, humans in general were weak, stupid, contemptible creatures. Still he had to concede the cleverness of an elite company formed entirely of werewolves. No wonder these par
ticular pests had proved so difficult to hunt down.

  The wolves’ bodies heaved and flowed, muzzles retracting, hind legs lengthening, paws melting into hands and feet, fur becoming woolen garments and scale and leather armor. A couple warriors grunted or gasped at the strain of transformation, but so softly even a wyrm’s ears could barely catch it. The humans driving and guarding the carts certainly wouldn’t.

  As the warriors strung their bows and laid arrows on the strings, Zethrindor studied them, trying to pick their druid, his chief target, out from the others. Unfortunately, on first inspection, he failed to spot a telltale sickle, sprig of mistletoe, or the like.

  Well, the conscripts with the carts were expendable. That was why Zethrindor had chosen them. So, for a moment or two, he’d permit the men of Sossal to attack without interference, in the hope that the druid would cast a spell and so reveal himself.

  Arrows arced whistling through the air. Caught utterly by surprise, tribesmen dropped. The survivors clamored, cast wildly about, tried to ready their own weapons, but by then the attackers’ next volley was already in flight. Half the conscripts fell before the rest could even begin to mount any semblance of a defense.

  Zethrindor snarled in exasperation. The druid had yet to attempt a spell, and why should he? The assault was going so well, it only made sense to conserve his power.

  But if Zethrindor attacked, that would surely elicit a magical response, and if not, he supposed he’d just have to slaughter the entire enemy force. That had always been his ultimate intent anyway.

  He furled his wings and dived at the archers. Some, sensing a disturbance in the air, looked up just in time to take a blast of his pearl-white breath in their faces. Coated in rime, they dropped.

  By attacking, he forfeited his invisibility, but that was all right. His appearance was a weapon in itself, one that made some of the bowmen drop their weapons and run screaming down the hill, where the men of the Great Glacier, organized at last and furious to take revenge for the devastating surprise attack, met them with flying javelins, stabbing spears, and hacking axes.

  But a number of the skinchangers stood their ground and loosed arrows at Zethrindor. Most missed or glanced off. A couple lodged in his scales, but caused him no distress.

  He flung himself to the ground, crushing a warrior beneath his bulk. He raked with his talons and ripped the heart, lungs, and splinters of rib from another man’s chest. A snap of his jaws left a third in pieces, and a flick of a wing hurled a fourth off the hilltop.

  Skinchangers scrambled to engage him. Some remained in human form to slash with swords or jab with lances. Others flowed back into lupine shape to bite with their fangs. It didn’t much matter. Zethrindor found he could kill them just about as easily in either guise.

  The combat was both exhilarating and useful, but where was the cursed druid? He wondered if he’d already killed the wretch and just didn’t realize it. Then, in a burst of yellow glare and fierce heat, a salamander exploded into existence in front him. Shrouded in crackling flame, somewhat manlike from the waist up but scaly and serpentine below, the elemental spirit slithered forward, stabbing with its trident.

  Zethrindor met it with a puff of his breath. The intense cold blew out its corona of flame like a candle, and it collapsed thrashing in agony. He ground it beneath his foot and looked around, trying to locate the human who’d conjured it.

  There! Some ten yards away, a stocky human held a scimitar in a seemingly useless overhand grip, as if he could wield it like a dagger. The swordsmith had cast the silver pommel in the form of a unicorn’s head, emblem of the goddess Mielikki. It was evidently a talisman the druid had flourished to cast the summoning spell.

  Zethrindor snarled an incantation of his own, and a barrage of ice balls hurtled through the air, to hammer the priest and throw him to the ground. He struggled to rise again, but slowly.

  Intent on finishing him off before he could recover, the dracolich charged, and the warriors of Sossal, those who were left, scrambled to bar his path. Blades and lupine fangs flashed at him, and he tore his assailants into fragments of gory meat and bone.

  It only took a moment. But that was evidently time enough for the druid to collect himself, because, as Zethrindor killed the last of the soldiers, much of his dorsal surface, from his beaked snout to the tips of his ragged, decaying wings, burst into flame. The hot pain balked him for an instant, until his innate resistance to hostile magic extinguished the blaze.

  By then, the druid had reached a gnarled, leafless, stunted tree and stretched out his hand to touch it. His body began to fade.

  With a surge of frustration, Zethrindor realized what was happening. A spell was about to whisk the priest beyond his reach, and since his breath weapon hadn’t yet renewed itself, he was probably too far away to do anything about it. He stared, trying to paralyze the human with his gaze, but the druid kept moving. His fingers clasped a branch, and his shape blurred into little more than shadow—

  Crimson eyes glowing, a dark reptilian form, smaller than Zethrindor but dragon-sized nonetheless, pounced out of the darkness and caught the druid in his fangs. The newcomer wrenched the human away from the tree and shook him like a dog shaking a rat, likely breaking his neck. He then sucked and slurped at his victim, guzzling his blood before spitting the corpse out onto the ground.

  Zethrindor had sensed the undead nature of the stranger as soon as he appeared, and wondered if he too might be a dracolich—but then recognized him for a vampire.

  The blood-drinker glided forward. Before his transformation, he’d evidently been a smoke drake, albeit a remarkably large one, and still gave off a harsh smell of combustion. A choker of platinum, ruby, and diamond encircled his neck. Zethrindor wondered just how easy it would be to take the treasure, either through intimidation or combat, then set the notion aside for the moment, anyway. With the conquest of Sossal to complete, he had more important matters to concern him. Such as finding out about powerful new entities popping up unexpectedly in the middle of the disputed territory.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “I’m called Brimstone,” the smoke drake whispered. He glanced about, evidently making sure no potential dangers remained on the ridge. They didn’t. Most of the skinchangers were dead. The others had either run away or lay shrieking and moaning in agony. “I hope I was of some assistance.”

  “I didn’t need any,” Zethrindor said. “In fact, I was looking forward to killing the druid myself. Still, I suppose your intentions were good.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say so,” Brimstone said. “I’ve spent the past couple nights flying around Sossal, trying to locate you. It appears the war’s progressing well. What a shame you and the other wyrms will reap such meager benefits from your victories.”

  We’ll see about that, Zethrindor thought, when the time comes. “Why were you seeking me, vampire? What do you want?”

  “To offer some genuine assistance, or, at the very least, information. First, I suppose I ought to provide some context. In my humble way, I’m like you: Sammaster turned me undead long ago, during the course of his early experiments. Unfortunately, after he moved on to making dracoliches, he ceased to pay me the deference which was my due. Our association ended badly.”

  Zethrindor snorted. “No true wyrm tolerates disrespect from any human, magicians included.”

  “Is that why you take orders from him, and how he could loan you to Iyraclea as if you were some sort of indentured servant?”

  Anger brought Zethrindor’s breath weapon welling up to chill his throat and the back of mouth, for all that it would be of minimal efficacy against another undead. “Have a care how you speak to me!”

  Brimstone lowered his head. “Pardon me, High Lord. I meant no offense. I’m simply trying to explain why it is that for centuries, I’ve nursed a grudge against Sammaster, trying to wreck his schemes, and those of the cult he founded, whenever I could. Earlier this year, I learned he’s become obsessed with an a
ncient shrine or mystic’s stronghold—some sort of place of power at any rate—located somewhere in the northlands.”

  “Why?”

  “That, I can’t tell you. But haven’t you suspected there’s more to his schemes than he’s letting on? Does it really make sense that he’d toil to change the face of the world, only to play a subordinate role in the Faerûn to come? Isn’t it more likely he intends to set himself above you dracoliches and reign supreme, to continue controlling you as—if you’ll forgive my bluntness—he’s sought to manipulate you all along?”

  “Sammaster is secretive, and naturally, I don’t entirely trust him. But he has his uses.”

  “Obviously. Yet if his covert designs proceed unchecked, if they go too far for anyone to stop them … Let me continue my tale. I resolved to find and investigate the wizard’s hidden lair. To that end, I reluctantly allied myself with the sort of folk you and I would normally destroy. A priest of Lathander. A song dragon. Wyrm hunters. Because they too had resolved to fight Sammaster, and guided by my hatred, I believed that was all that mattered.”

  A warrior with a shredded belly and legs gave a piercing scream. Irritated by the noise, Zethrindor pulped him with a ground-shaking lash of his tail. “You speak as if your attitude has changed.”

  “I loathe Sammaster,” Brimstone said, “but events have reminded me he’s not the only detestable thing in the world, nor is vengeance the only good. No matter how many times I helped them, my miserable allies, vermin unworthy even to speak my name, showed me only scorn. Now their own stupidity has ended their potential usefulness. Indeed, it has turned them into yet another difficulty.

  “Meanwhile,” the smoke drake continued, “dracoliches proliferate, even as the Rage spreads chaos and devastation, preparing the way for your eventual conquest. I realize now, I can’t stop it. Nothing can. The best I can hope for is to be granted an important position in the Faerûn that will be.”