The Day Of The Tempest

by Jean Rabe

  There were about sixty Knights of Takhisis, with half to two-thirds of them scheduled to leave soon – the sun was already edging toward the horizon. Palin suspected more knights would eventually take their place. The troops were probably being rotated. Fortunately, they hadn’t noticed any Knights of the Thorn or Knights of the Skull, which meant the fortress was probably devoid of spellcasters.

  “I agree we have to try something,” Palin finally said. “Even though we’re drastically outnumbered.” The knights had gathered, and their commander was barking final orders, readying them to march. “But we can’t just walk right in there. Even after most of the knights leave, there’ll still be too many for us to handle in a fight. We’ll be throwing our lives away.”

  “Maybe we can walk right in.” The kender was looking over her shoulder, away from Relgoth and toward the south. “Or ride.” At the edge of her vision was a small caravan, and it looked like it was headed in their direction.

  *

  The caravan consisted often large wagons pulled by horses and loaded with barrels of water and other supplies. Each wagon had a driver, and the caravan was accompanied by about two dozen barbarians dressed in flowing hooded robes.

  It took one of Rig’s thumb-sized rubies to bribe the last driver, who was lagging slightly behind. The mariner and the driver settled on a plan. Palin and Feril were to be the driver’s cousins, and Blister their child. Rig was to be a friend of the family. And for a few pearls, the driver provided hooded robes for each of them to wear – even, after some cutting and fashioning, a child-size garment for Blister.

  The driver called the stronghold the “Bastion of Darkness.” He explained that supplies came to the castle nearly twice a week – food, clothes, paint for the brutes, whips and tethers to replace the ones that were used on prisoners, and, of primary importance, water from an oasis to the south. The prisoners, knights, and elephants consumed a lot of water.

  Shortly after sunset, the caravan reached the city gates. Palin felt like he had a fever, his skin burned so, and he imagined the others felt the same. But with the onset of evening, it was cooling a little. A soft breeze washed over the dunes and stirred the air around the town. The Knights of Takhisis wing was just leaving, wending its way down the path and toward Palanthas. The men all wore black mail with death lilies on the breastplates. Foolish military protocol wouldn’t allow them to wear lighter clothing.

  “Put the barrels in the courtyard!” A knight waved to a tall, hulking barbarian, the caravan master. The wagons rolled through part of the town and into the castle’s courtyard. A moment later, barrels were being carefully rolled down planks positioned at the ends of the wagons. They were rolled across the sand, over the drawbridge, and toward the center tower, which had an attached shelter to shade the barrels and help keep the water from becoming intolerably hot. Each wagon carried roughly a dozen large barrels, and it would take several trips to unload them all. On the return trips the men rolled empty barrels that were to be taken back to the oasis and refilled.

  Blister darted around the wagon and tried to take everything in, while Feril, Palin, and Rig helped the nomads with the barrels. “The dragon should’ve built his sand castle closer to the well,” the kender softly said. “Would’ve made things easier on the nomads.”

  On his second pass over the drawbridge, Palin glanced down into the deep ditch. Scorpions the size of his hand skittered at the bottom, thousands of them. The walls of the ditch were steeply slanted to provide shade. He whispered to Rig and Feril to watch their step. The ditch was more lethal than any moat filled with crocodiles.

  The mariner hovered around the barrels in the courtyard, helping to stack the full ones against the wall, while Palin and Feril made another trip to the wagons. He rested his hand against the black sand structure, marveling at its solidity. Looking closely, he could see the individual grains of sand that made up the wall. They magically clung together without any mortar or moisture of any sort. These were not compressed bricks of black sand. The wall, the entire castle, was made of millions of sand particles that were held together magically.

  Meanwhile, Blister grew more anxious. “How are we going to sneak into the Bastion?” she whispered to Palin as he hefted another barrel. Her voice was muffled beneath the too-large hood of her robe. It hung far over her head. “I overheard the caravan master say we’d be leaving as soon as we’re done. I thought they’d spend the night here.”

  “It’s getting dark, and no doubt they prefer to travel at night,” Palin observed, setting the barrel down on the ground.

  “Or they can’t stomach staying around here,” Feril muttered

  “We’ll find somewhere to hide. There.” The sorcerer pointed toward a crude stable with four large stalls for the elephants. “That should do.” The brutes were putting the elephants away for the night, and Feril brightened at the prospect of being near the exotic animals.

  “You two,” the caravan master barked as he pointed at Palin and the Kagonesti. “Leave your child be and stop loafing! Move more barrels!”

  The pair was quick to comply. Palin relayed their plan to the mariner, and when there were only a dozen barrels left to be moved, the quartet slipped away, sticking to the growing shadows, and stealing into an elephant’s stall. The straw that covered the floor was musty and insect-laden, and the animal’s considerable dung was pungent and made their eyes water. The elephant took sharing its home in stride, and busied itself eating fresh grasses that one of the brutes had left for it.

  “It stinks in here.” Blister wrinkled her nose and tried to find a dean spot of hay to sit on. The kender instantly quit complaining when the elephant turned its head and seemed to study her. “Never seen anything like you before,” she said. “Wonder if you’d fit on the AmriR I’d feed you and —”

  “No,” Rig said, then turned his attention to Palin and Feril. “The central tower inside the walls is for the knights. The smaller towers at the corners are filled with weapons and food. Knights are constantly stationed here.”

  “How’d you learn all this?” the Kagonesti asked.

  “I listen well,” the mariner continued, his dark eyes flashing mischievously at her. “And I asked a few questions when a couple of knights strolled by for a drink of water.”

  Palin drew his lips into a thin line and shook his head. “I hope you didn’t ask too many questions. We don’t need anyone on alert.” Then he heard the wagons moving, the cracks of whips against the camels, and he fervently hoped the knights hadn’t counted the number of barbarians entering the stronghold and discovered the three missing adults and one “child.”

  “The medium-sized tower near us has only a couple of draconians in it.” Rig seemed pleased with himself for collecting that piece of news. “The administrator of the stronghold, a Sivak draconian called Lord Sivaan, has his office there. Humans are held in the area of the castle near it.”

  Palin crept to the front of the stall and looked up at the black sand tower. “The draconians are needed for the transformation spell. A portion of their spirit is used to create spawn. We’ll have to kill them to keep Khellendros from using them again.”

  “Fine, you do that. I want to go after the prisoners,” Rig said.

  “That’s the plan,” Palin replied. “We’ll wait until close to midnight. Most of the knights and brutes should be sleeping then.”

  “I want to go after the prisoners now – before somebody decides to bring the elephants some water and discovers about half of their new barrels are broken and empty.”

  “What?” Palin asked, almost too loudly. He dropped his voice to a whisper again and edged farther back into the darkness of the stall “What did you do?”

  Rig grinned. “When I was helping stack the barrels, I used a dagger to make a few strategic holes. “The sand’ll absorb a lot of the water, but I suspect there’ll be a spreading wet spot that gets noticed sooner or later. I thought drastically cutting their water supply was a great idea. Strike them where
it’ll hurt the most.”

  Palin inhaled sharply. That would certainly Hurt the knights – and alert them that something was terribly wrong. They’d be scouring the place for saboteurs soon. “All right, let’s move,” he said. He turned to address the mariner. “You’ll have to be careful – and quiet – going after the prisoners. It won’t be easy.”

  “Sure it will.” The kender stopped staring at the elephant long enough to reach into the folds of her robe and pull out a bulging leather bag. It had a cork stopper and made a sloshing sound as she passed it to Rig. “Paint,” she said. “Got it off one of the wagons. Figured the... brutes, I think you called them, wouldn’t miss this little bit. And if it does have magical protection properties, more’s the better.”

  Several minutes later Rig walked toward the area of the castle that housed the prisoners. He had left most of his clothes in the stall with the elephant – along with all but three of his weapons. His cutlass remained strapped to his side, and he carried a dagger in his right hand. Feril had fashioned a loincloth for him out of part of his robe, and a second dagger was carefully thrust into the waistband. Blister had painted the loincloth to match the mariner’s skin and short hair. He wasn’t as tall as most of the brutes, but he was nearly as muscular, and the growing shadows helped his disguise.

  The blue mariner confidently strode past a trio of patrolling knights, who gave him only a casual glance. Then he quietly slipped into the shadows of an archway. A moment after the knights walked by, Palin glided from the stall, clinging to the shadows and heading toward the medium-sized tower. He had two of the mariner’s daggers with him, and retained the hooded cloak. If he was caught, he’d claim he was left behind when the caravan pulled away and was just looking for a place to sleep.

  Feril and Blister watched the sorcerer disappear into the doorway. Then the Kagonesti crept forward and stood next to the elephant. She ran her fingers over the animal’s coarse, wrinkled skin, reached up and scratched behind its massive ear. She was awed by the seemingly gentle creature. Next, she fashioned her lump of clay into an approximation of the elephant, and within minutes she and the elephant were involved in a meaningful conversation filled with “wuffles” and snorts, which Blister complained about not understanding.

  *

  There were two brutes with pointed ears in a small chamber just inside one of the outside archways of the castle. They were sharpening their swords on pieces of stone and initially paid the mariner no heed. A shadowy corridor stretched beyond them, and Rig started to walk toward it. But the brutes sniffed the air, eyed the mariner a little more closely, and then decided that he wasn’t one of them.

  The largest, nearly seven feet tall, was the first on his feet, barking words at Rig in an unknown language. The mariner answered by throwing one of his daggers. It lodged in the brute’s throat. The large man backed up against the wall, sliding down into a seated position. He pulled the dagger from his throat, and pressed his hands over the wound. His breathing was labored, but he did not die.

  The wounded brute’s companion rushed forward, swinging his blade and yelling.

  Rig darted below the brute’s swing and at the same time, thrust upward with his cutlass, intending to skewer the fellow. But the blue man was agile and deftly stepped aside. “Intruder,” he sneered at

  Rig through clenched teeth. The brute was no longer speaking the mysterious tongue.

  The brute lunged again, and the mariner barely missed being run through, pressing himself up against the sand wall just in time. As the brute stepped past him, Rig pushed off and drove his elbow into the man’s side. But the force of the blow didn’t faze the warrior, whose blue-painted skin seemed to function like armor. The mariner ducked to avoid another slash.

  To buy himself several feet of maneuvering room, Rig started down the corridor, then turned to face his charging opponent. His left hand dropped to his loincloth and the dagger there. In one motion, he grabbed the weapon and flung it. The mariner’s aim was good, and the blade sank into the brute’s stomach up to the pommel.

  He didn’t topple. The healing properties of the paint sustained him and the muscular blue man looked down at the dagger, gripped the pommel, and tugged it free. Bright red blood poured from the mortal wound, but the brute was determined to keep on his feet until he could take the intruder down with him.

  With a guttural growl, the brute darted forward, raising his sword high above his head. Rig crouched and raised his cutlass, ready to meet the blow. Then suddenly the brute was flying through the air, his sword clattering at Rig’s feet. The brute had slipped on his own blood. The mariner jumped to the side to avoid the falling warrior, and drove his cutlass between the man’s shoulder blades. The brute didn’t get up.

  Rig took a few deep breaths and glanced around. The other brute sat against the wall, his eyes open and unblinking. The effect of the paint had not been enough to overcome the mortal wound. The clamor had been brief, and likely muted by the thick sand walls. No one had come to investigate – yet. He retrieved his two daggers, wiped them on the fallen brute’s loin-doth, and tugged his cutlass free. Then he hurried down the corridor in search of the prisoners.

  *

  Palin made his way up a curving staircase. With Rig’s daggers he had dispatched the pair of unprepared guards at the bottom of the stairs. The sorcerer had briefly considered using a spell that would put them to sleep, but realized he needed to save his energy for future spells.

  He thought the way was clear until he suddenly encountered another knight at the top of the stairs. “You’re not supposed to be here, nomad,” the knight sneered. He stared into the recesses of Palin’s hood. “You’d best leave and catch your caravan.”

  “It left a while ago,” Palin said.

  The knight reached over to remove Palin’s hood and the sorcerer ducked below the man’s grip. “Intruder!” barked the knight, bringing his blade above his head and driving it down.

  Palin lunged away, but not fast enough. The sword cut into his arm and he couldn’t help but cry out. “I haven’t time for this!” Palin hissed between clenched teeth.

  The man charged him. The sorcerer cast a summoning spell on himself and disappeared. The knight rushed through the empty space where Palin had once been and clattered down the stairs, ending up in a motionless heap near the bottom.

  Palin took several deep breaths and glanced down at his arm. The left sleeve of his light brown robe was dark with blood. Ripping off the other sleeve, the sorcerer quickly wrapped it around his wound, then moved toward a door – the only one on this level There was a small window set into it, through which he could see two Sivaks.

  They were the largest of the draconians created by Takhisis, made from stolen silver dragon eggs and bred to follow the Dark Queen’s evil directions. One of the Sivaks had an almost emaciated silvery-scaly body. His beady black eyes were downcast and his lizardlike snout pointed at the floor. His head hung in shame as the other Sivak, a larger, more robust creature seated behind a hulking wooden desk, berated him. Palin guessed that the larger Sivak was Lord Sivaan, the administrator of this entire gruesome facility. The skinny one was undoubtedly a minion of the officer.

  Palm took a deep breath, and threw open the door. Lord Sivaan stood up from behind his desk, knocking his chair to the ground. Palin raised his unwounded arm and sent a jagged stream of flame into the Sivak’s broad chest and out the other side. He turned to find the emaciated Sivak slinking toward the door. Palin paused for a second, pitying the creature, and the Sivak turned to hurl a dagger at the sorcerer. Palin released another burst. The hot light passed through the Sivak’s chest in an instant. The dagger clattered to the floor, and the Sivak crumpled after it. Palin, weak from the exertion and the wound on his arm, stumbled out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  The corridor was empty. Palin stopped for a moment, steadying himself by leaning against the wall. He knew that a Sivak killed by a human assumed the appearance of his slayer – announcing th
e identity of the murderer to all those who found the body. The corpses inside the office would hold Palin’s appearance for several days. There was no way around it, the effect being part of the enchantment Takhisis had breathed into them at their birth. The Dark Queen had wanted to know who killed her children.

  Palin headed down the stairs quickly. His chest felt tight, his throat dry, and his wounded arm throbbed. The knight he had pushed down the steps was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

  *

  Rig moved down the corridor quiet and quick like a cat. A lone, guttering torch provided just enough light for him to see where he was going. The mariner’s skin itched terribly from the blue paint, but he resisted the urge to scratch it off.

  The air was hot and fetid and it carried the stench of sweat and urine. He turned a corner and saw a row of cell doors and another brute guard. This brute was massive, with tree trunk legs and thick, bulging arms. He was easily more than seven feet tall, and the sword at his side looked impossibly big and long.

  The brute tilted his head and looked at Rig as the mariner’s grip tightened on his dagger’s pommel. He spoke a few words the mariner couldn’t understand. The big brute’s brow furrowed. The mariner shrugged and grinned, giving up on the charade and drawing out his dagger.

  The brute charged forward in that instant, finally realizing Rig wasn’t one of his kinsmen. The dagger flew from the mariner’s fingers, and the blade sank into the big man’s chest. Still the brute kept coming, and Rig pulled himself up against the corridor wall as the blue-skinned giant rushed past him.

  Not even bothering to remove the dagger lodged in his chest, the brute turned and came back at Rig. The two fought intensely, large blue blurs against the background of black sand walls. Rig eventually backed off a bit, deciding he was simply going to have to wear out the wounded brute. He dodged and ducked, thrust and withdrew, until the brute finally grew dizzy from the loss of blood and fell dead, face forward on the floor. Rig knelt and quickly found a ring of keys on the dead man.