The Doom Brigade

by Don Perrin

  No one seemed willing to do that.

  “Well, now,” Selquist said, trying to drum up enthusiasm. “We go in, like Vellmer here says, circle around the lava pit, and go out. That’s all there is to it.”

  “I don’t know, Selquist. Something in there doesn’t want us in there,” Pestle said in a shaky voice, wiping the sweat from his face with the end of his beard.

  The dwarves stood, glancing at each other and back into the chamber uncertainly.

  “I’ll go in,” said Selquist finally, and started for the chamber entrance.

  Vellmer caught hold of the harness on Selquist’s leather armor, jerked him back.

  “And stuff your pockets full of treasure while we’re not looking?” The brew master snorted. “We all go or none of us go.”

  “We all go then,” said Selquist, relieved. He was not sorry to have the company. He had only taken a single step toward the chamber, and though the room was excessively hot, he experienced a strange and unaccountable chill in the vicinity of his backbone.

  Bunched together, weapons drawn, their faces grim and shining wet in the red light, the dwarves shuffled inside the chamber.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The draconians crept silently down the main tunnel, moving each clawed foot with extreme care, wings quivering with the effort of maintaining absolute quiet. Their new commander was in a foul mood, and no one wanted to draw his attention. Two draconians were already nursing bruises, and their only offense had been the involuntarily clicking of their scales, which were spreading apart due to the intensity of the heat.

  Fortunately, the heat began to diminish the farther they moved away from the strange, red-lit chamber.

  The draconians marched down the tunnel until they reached the siding. Slith halted and glared at the branching shaft, cursed it for being there. If it hadn’t been, his commander would have never sent them off. His commander wouldn’t now be facing whatever it was he was facing alone.

  Slith kicked at a rock wall in passing. Sullenly, morosely he led his troop off into the siding. He came to a halt so suddenly that those behind him had to skip and dance out of the way to keep from running into him. No one wanted to bump him.

  “Do you smell that? Dwarf!” Slith whispered, glancing back at his troops. “Douse that light!”

  The draconians nodded. The one carrying the dark lantern quickly shut the metal shield.

  “They’re up ahead of us in the siding. I can hear them breathing. By the Dark Queen,” he added vehemently, “I’ll get rid of these buggers, at least.” He looked back at the others. “Knife work,” he ordered. “Quick and quiet.”

  He drew his knife from his belt. At his motion, the other draconians did the same. Their eyes gleamed red in the sweltering darkness. All felt extremely relieved. Slaughtering a few dwarves was bound to cheer up the commander.

  Bending low, to fit into the tunnel, the draconians sidled down the corridor, making sure of every footfall, careful not to let their swords strike against the narrow rock walls or their wings scrape against the ceiling. They opened their mouths, tongues lolling, panting for air. The heat was beginning to build again.

  Slith rounded the bend in the tunnel.

  The red glow from the chamber washed over him, the stifling heat and the sulfurous smell roiled around him. Slith grinned with the sheer pleasure of it all.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty!” he said softly. “And forgive me for doubting you back there. And all those bad things I said about you—I’m sorry about them, too.”

  He drew out the map, held it to the light radiating from the chamber. “So that’s it,” he muttered. “The fire pit blocks all the routes to the treasure, which is on the other side. We’re up here.” He put his finger on the top of the map. “The commander’s down here.” He moved his finger to the bottom. “We’ve caught the cursed dwarves right in between both of us.”

  He turned back to his troops. “Come on, men! We’re—”

  His words, his very thoughts, were lost in a boom that shook the cavern. The draconians braced themselves against walls that shivered beneath their hands. The boom subsided, only to be followed by an ominous roar which started low and grew in volume until it seemed to suck the air from the chamber, the courage from the draconians.

  Ahead of them, they heard—beneath the roar—the sound of hoarse voices crying out in terror. The red light grew brighter, so bright that it hurt the eyes. With the light came a wave of heat and a foul and stifling odor. Worse than the heat, more painful than the flaring light, awful fear seized the draconians and shook them as a wolf shakes a torn carcass.

  They recognized such fear. They’d felt it before, only never this powerful, this strong. Slith’s knees went weak, his wings fell limp at his sides, his clawed hands clenched. His mouth was so dry he couldn’t move his tongue.

  “Dragon!” a draconian behind him croaked.

  “It must be the mother of all gold dragons, then,” Slith muttered. Up ahead, he could hear curses and shouts coming from the dwarves. Slith turned, motioned his troop to retreat. “We’ll just sneak off while the dragon’s munching on dwarf meat. Then we’ll—”

  Slith fell silent. He’d heard another voice, this one shouting loudly and defiantly—in draconian.

  “The commander!” Gloth cried. “It’s got the commander!”

  Kang was battling the dragon alone. Slith took hold of the dragonfear, formed it into a ball and swallowed it, choked it down. The fear rolled around in the pit of his stomach, but he could deal with that.

  Drawing his sword, he ran down the corridor, heading straight into the inferno. The other draconians were right behind him.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Kang could not move. Terror paralyzed him, wrung him, turned him inside out. He stared at the pit, realized, now that he was close, that due to the angle from which he had entered, he hadn’t seen it all. What he’d seen was only a small portion of an enormous pit filled with fire and molten rock, magma that bubbled and churned.

  A head emerged. The head of a dragon, but not like any dragon Kang had ever before seen on Krynn.

  It was a dragon of fire. Its scales were black, the red of its fiery body glowing hideously beneath. Its mane was fire that crackled in the air. Opening its mouth, it belched forth noxious gases.

  He recalled Huzzad’s words: “All I see is fire, the heroes withering and dying in the flames. Krynn withering and dying in the flames.”

  This was the creature of Chaos. This was what would kill the heroes and bring about Krynn’s doom.

  The dragon’s front clawed feet dug into the rock at the rim of the pit. It was pulling itself up out of the lava pit. Its eyes were dark, empty as a universe drained of all life. The eyes focused on Kang. He saw not only his own death but the death of all living beings. He saw the death of the gods. Fear crushed hope, stomping it out and scattering the ashes.

  He couldn’t breathe. The dragon’s foul breath poisoned the air. The heat radiating from its body was intense, seemed to fuse Kang’s feet to the floor. His hands went limp, he nearly dropped the wand and clutched at it in growing panic. As he did so, he felt its power throb in his hand. The wand glowed with a vibrant blue intensity, shone with the same unhallowed light as that given off by the dark moon.

  Yet against the living inferno of the fire dragon, the wand was slight and fragile. A whisper from the dragon would incinerate the wand, incinerate Kang. He could not fight this thing! Nothing, no one could fight this thing! Not the dark knights, not the Dark Queen herself. Certainly not one lone draconian.

  With a great effort, Kang wrenched his feet from the floor and turned his back, turned to flee. The heat seared his wings; he bit his tongue to keep from crying out with the pain. He broke into a staggering trot. The exit seemed a lifetime away.

  Discipline, said a stern voice. Discipline is all that will win over chaos.

  Kang recognized that voice, knew it for his own. He looked at the wand, saw its light diminish, fe
lt its pulse wane. The heat was enough to boil his very blood, red-orange flame licked his scales.

  “Discipline,” Kang said, hissing the word through clenched teeth.

  He expected his men to obey his commands. What would they think if they saw him fleeing in terror? What if he did survive? He could never again give another order. He could never again ask his men to believe in him. He could never again ask them to set their lives on the line.

  He might as well die as live that kind of life. And he might as well die fighting.

  Turning, standing his ground, Kang faced the fire dragon. The wand quickened. Energy, fey and powerful, surged through Kang.

  The fiery head loomed over him and, even as he faced this single, dreadful, deadly dragon, without a hope of destroying it, without a hope of surviving, Kang saw a group of dwarves emerge from an opening in the upper part of the chamber.

  On the faces of the dwarves was a terror that must mimic his own.

  Kang saw them, and then he forgot them. One enemy at a time.

  His hand groped instinctively for his sword. He envisioned trying to get close enough to the beast to stab it, and he abandoned the idea. He would be charred before he came within striking range. His Queen had given him the wand. He would use it, even though he wasn’t at all sure how it worked. If nothing more, perhaps it would enhance the few spells he already knew.

  The dragon’s head lowered, drew nearer. Its eyes were focused on Kang. The eyes were empty. They held nothing, not hate, not hunger, not fear. The dragon would kill him, it would watch Kang die without feeling anything. Kang would far rather have fought an enraged elf lord, who would at least feel something at the death of an enemy, even if that feeling were exultation. This dragon’s only goal was to destroy any living thing that it found in its path. Fire flickered from its closed jaws; the teeth were black against the glow of the flame. The head drew nearer still, the jaws gaped open.

  Fumes filled the air, poisoned it, made it unbreathable. Kang could do nothing but retreat for the moment. Holding his breath, he backed away until he was near the chamber’s entrance. He gulped lungfuls of relatively fresh air, then dashed back inside.

  The heat was taking its toll. Kang fumbled at the magical spells in his heat-dazed mind. Unlike other races, the draconians could not cope well with extremes in temperature. He was growing limp as a lizard basking in the sun. He had to do something to fight the heat, before he could even begin to battle the dragon. The first spell he cast, therefore, was for himself.

  “Water …” Kang mumbled the word, through a throat that was burned and parched. His clawed hands traced the requisite symbol on the wall behind him.

  He searched around hastily, looked at the stone wall, at the floor.

  Nothing, and Kang despaired. He had hoped for a trickle of water, anything to bathe his face, cool his scales that were spreading wide with the heat, forcing his lips to draw back in a rictus grin. His tongue lolled.

  The dragon had been watching him. It wasn’t toying with him, as one of the petty-minded, vengeful silver dragons would have done. This dragon did not immediately attack because, Kang had the feeling, it didn’t see any need to. He couldn’t blame it. Why waste the energy? He was going to be dead of the heat before long.

  The dragon continued dragging its huge body up from the pit. The stone floor and walls radiated heat. Kang felt as if he were being roasted alive in a slow oven.

  “Water! Your Majesty! I beg you—”

  The wand flared blue in his hand. Power irradiated the wand, startling Kang so much that he almost dropped it.

  Water, ice cold and wonderful, splashed down on Kang. Water flowed from the walls, washed over the floor. Water eased the pain of the burns on his feet, cooled his body, revived his mental processes.

  The water gushed in a torrent from the ceiling. It ran down the floor, cascaded into the pit. Steam rose in clouds.

  Shaking off the lethargy that had almost been lethal, Kang sloshed about in the water, tried desperately to think of his next spell, a spell that would kill the dragon. The water continued to pour down, the chamber was filling with steam. Kang momentarily lost sight of the fiery creature.

  But he could hear it roar, and it sounded as if it was in pain. Lurching forward, trying to see, Kang came within sight of the dragon and discovered that his spell was having an unexpected effect.

  A torrent of water, flooding down from above, was washing over the dragon. Its scales, constricting from the heat, were cracking. The dragon’s red glow was dimming. It roared again in fury.

  Water continued to pour down upon the dragon. The fiery light it had brought into the cavern started to diminish. The dragon’s roar became an enraged howl. It had managed to pull the upper portion of its body from the flaming pit, but the lower portion remained in the lava below, and the upper part was cooling rapidly.

  The dragon snapped at Kang, but its movements were sluggish and slow, and the draconian easily dodged out of the way. The dragon’s claws scraped against the rock. The top portion of the body was growing heavy, the bottom could no longer support it. The dragon was retreating, sinking back into the pit.

  Kang panted in relief, relief that was short-lived. As far as he knew, the one way out was through this chamber. If he allowed the dragon to escape now, it would probably revive. He would only have to fight it later. He had to prevent it from escaping back into its lair.

  The water that had been a blessing now proved a curse. It was over Kang’s knees, made movement difficult. Kang floundered through the flood, but it was obvious that by the time he reached the fire dragon, close enough to stick a sword into it, the dragon wouldn’t be there anymore.

  He would have now traded all this water for a few boulders to come crashing down …

  “Mud!” Kang said, looking up at the ceiling.

  Nothing happened, but this time he was prepared. “I beg Your Majesty …”

  The wand flared blue. The stone ceiling of the cavern above the dragon transformed, oozed, and liquefied. An avalanche of mud descended upon the dragon, mud rained down into the pit. Soon the mud completely covered the dragon’s upper body and head. Kang could no longer see it or hear it. The dragon’s tail thrashed up from the pit, flicking molten lava about the walls, but soon the tail went flaccid. Kang could only assume the dragon was dead.

  Kang sucked in a shuddering breath. He was about to leave, to go see if he could catch up with Slith and the rest of the command, when the floor and the walls started to shiver.

  Looking up, Kang knew immediately what was happening. The shifting mud could no longer hold the weight of the ceiling above it. This part of the chamber was going to come crashing down on top of him.

  Kang started running toward the exit, the way he’d entered, only to see it vanish in a sliding wall of mud and rock that would soon overtake him. He was about to suffer the same fate as the dragon.

  Turning, Kang ran the only way he could run, the only way left open to him. He ran farther, deeper into the chamber.

  He could not see for the steam, but he recalled that he had seen an exit at the chamber’s far end. It was a long distance away, and to reach it he had to pass near the fiery pit.

  Kang ran, ran faster than he’d ever run in his life, his feet sloshing through the water. The floor sloped uphill, the water was shallower here. And then he was on dry stone, hot stone. He gritted his teeth against the pain of his burned and blistered feet and kept running.

  He was circling around the pit, giving it a wide berth, when he caught a glimpse of movement, of the rock within heaving and rolling toward the surface.

  Eyes, black and empty, stared from the pit.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The dwarves took a few tentative steps inside the chamber. The heat was oppressive, the fumes stifling. The pit of molten rock glowed hotter than a smithy’s hottest fire. Those daring enough to look at it saw lava bubble and churn. The exit was off to their left, at about a ninety-degree angle. The pit was str
aight ahead.

  The dwarves fell back against the cavern’s smooth walls and crept along the edges. Heat boiled out of the pit, a sense of dread wrung the courage from every dwarf as he wrung the sweat from his beard. The dwarves gripped their battle-axes and continued on.

  “I saw eyes!” Auger cried, pointing. “Eyes in the pit!”

  The other dwarves came to halt. Their faces glistened with sweat, the red of the molten lava gleamed in the axe blades.

  Selquist swallowed, tried to find some moisture in his dry mouth. He had never in his life been so scared. He would have never believed he could be this scared. He gave a light and carefree laugh, that was rather spoiled by a gulp in the middle.

  “What an imagination you have, Auger!” Selquist said, swallowing again and trying to control a nervous tremor in his hands. He, too, had seen the eyes, but he was trying to ignore them. “You should go to Palanthas and study to be a bard. Those weren’t eyes. It was only … only shadows. Keep moving.”

  That order was eagerly obeyed. The dwarves wanted nothing more than to escape this place. They had taken twenty steps and were still some distance from their destination, when a terrible bellow sounded from the opposite side of the chamber.

  The dwarves halted again, stared at each other.

  “That was a draconian’s voice!” cried Pestle.

  “First a grell, then eyes with fire for eyebrows, now howling draconians,” Selquist muttered. “Those blasted Daewar! There was no need to hide the treasure in such an inconvenient location.”

  “Look! Off to the right!” Mortar was shouting.

  Selquist looked, but an enormous stalactite blocked his view. The draconian bellowed again, shouting words in a tongue that none of them understood. This was followed by a flash of bright, unnatural blue light and the sound of rushing water, coming from off to their right, on the other side of the lava pit.

  The dwarves weren’t about to hang around and see what came next. They broke into a run. They were almost halfway to their goal, when their goal suddenly vanished in a cloud of hot steam.