by Jean Rabe
“Usha! Quit daydreaming!” Blister tugged her closer to the bowl.
She peered over the crystal lip and saw a hazy image, that at first seemed merely like ripples on the surface. But as she stared, she saw that the ripples were curls. Dhamon’s hair. His face came into focus, pained and determined.
“They needed my help, because I knew him the longest,” the kender babbled. “Well, the longest of anybody they knew about. I even met him before Goldmoon did and, well... The Shadow Sorcerer asked me all sorts of questions about Dhamon. Down to the scars on his arms I’d seen. His eyes, the way he talked, walked, everything. They really did need my help to find him.”
The water shimmered green, and leaves came into view, framing Dhamon’s sweat-slicked face. Water dripped from the leaves, fell to ground covered with moss. His feet moved swiftly over rotting twigs and puddles.
“He’s in the swamp,” Palin explained. “Ahead of Rig and the others, and moving quickly. They’re practically following his trail, though they don’t know it.”
“Where is he going?” Usha asked as she pulled back from the table.
The Shadow Sorcerer passed a pale hand across the surface and the water turned clear. “Toward an old ogre ruin. Farther and farther away from us.”
“Toward Malystryx,” Blister suggested.
“She owns him,” the Shadow Sorcerer said.
How would the Shadow Sorcerer know that? Usha wondered.
Chapter 5
BLACK THOUGHTS
“No!” The scream cut across the darkening fen. “I’ll go no farther, damn you!” Dhamon Grimwulf dropped the glaive and fell to his knees, cupped his throbbing palms and hugged them to his chest. He rocked back and forth, tucking his chin down and gritting his teeth. His hands, though visibly unmarred, stung horribly from contact with the mysterious weapon, sending jolts of fire up his arms and into his body. His chest burned, and his head pounded. “No farther!”
Tears rolled down his cheeks, from the pain, the memory of killing Goldmoon, of killing Jasper, from the memory of striking Blister, Rig, and Feril. Beloved Feril, now forever lost to him. “You’ve cost me my friends, my life!”
His hands dropped to his thigh, where his leggings were cut. The red scale, shining through, glimmered in the light of the setting sun. Goldmoon had examined the scale, trying to free him from it and from the dragon who controlled him. Dhamon’s fingers trembled as they ran around the edges of the scale, flush with his skin. His nails dug in near a scalloped corner and pulled hard. He was rewarded with another stab of pain. He bit his lip to keep from crying out and continued his efforts. Blood ran down his leg, over his scrabbling fingers, yet the agonizing scale would not budge.
“Damn you, Malys!” He gasped and rolled onto his side, into a stagnant puddle. “You’ve made me into a murderer, dragon! Made me a thing of evil! That’s why the glaive burns me so! It burns those who are evil!” He sobbed and stared at the glaive lying several inches away.
Dhamon had dropped it the instant he felt the red dragon’s presence withdraw, only a few heartbeats ago, here in the fading light of the sun. An early evening was fast overtaking the swamp.
Had he finally – successfully – pushed the dragon from his mind? Or had she merely backed away to tend to other matters? In the end, the reason for her absence was unimportant. What was important was that he was finally free. Free after running days upon days through this seemingly endless swamp and existing on pieces of fruit and foul water. Free after killing Goldmoon, Krynn’s famed healer, the woman who had met him outside the Last Heroes’ Tomb and coaxed him to take up the cause against the dragons – the woman who once told him she’d looked into his heart and found it pure and honorable.
He was free after sinking the Anvil. Free after losing Feril.
Free? I can’t go back to Schallsea, Dhamon thought. I can’t go back to face Rig and Feril. I’m a murderer, worse than a murderer. A betrayer, a turncoat, a slayer of an old woman and a dwarf whom I called a friend. He closed his eyes and listened for a moment to the insects all around him, listened to his still-pounding heart. He felt the pain in his hands lessen. Perhaps I should go back, he mused. Rig would certainly kill me, and that would not be so bad a thing, would it? Certainly it’s preferable to being a dragon’s puppet.
“I deserve no better than death,” he whispered. “Death for killing Goldmoon.” A branch snapped, and he opened his eyes but made no move to rise. He saw nothing except his glaive, inches away, and the growing shadows of twilight.
The glaive, given to him by a bronze dragon who had saved his life, was a most remarkable weapon. Meant to be carried by someone of sterling character, the weapon had begun to burn him the moment the dragon entered his mind, the moment he damned himself. Dried blood marred the blade’s silver finish – Goldmoon’s and Jasper’s. He wouldn’t wash it off, though the wetness of this place might tend to that task for him. The blood was a reminder of his heinous deeds.
So weak, he thought. I was so weak in spirit that I let the dragon take me over and force me to slay her enemies. Dhamon had managed to stave off the dragon – at least he thought he had – until he was in the Citadel of Light with Goldmoon. Perhaps I was too weak all along, he thought, and she merely waited for the right time to claim me.
And perhaps the dragon was able to claim me because my heart is tainted, still mired in the ways of the Knights of Takhisis. Maybe I have been only fooling myself, letting the darkness within me rest while I kept company with Feril and Palin and pretended to be on the side of good. And perhaps that darkness welcomed the opportunity to surrender to the red dragon and draw righteous blood. Who is more righteous than Goldmoon?
“Damn me!”
Branches rustled nearby. And from somewhere in the depths of the swamp a bird cried shrilly.
What to do now? Dhamon wondered. Lie here until some swamp creature decides to make a meal of me? Find my way back to the Knights of Takhisis? They’d slay me: a rogue knight carries a death sentence. But do I deserve better than death?
What did he have left but death? Could he possibly have a prayer of redemption?
“Feril...”
The insects quieted, and the air became unnervingly still. Dhamon pushed himself to his knees and peered through the shadows. Something was out there. Closest to the ground, the swamp floor blended with the muted greens of the low-hanging branches. The black trunks fused to create a near impenetrable wall. Scant light filtered down from the stars and the moon that peeked through a gap in the overhead canopy.
Little light, but just enough to see some of the shadows separate and come closer. There were three figures.
“Spawn,” Dhamon whispered.
They were black, roughly shaped like men. Wings scalloped like a bat’s sprouted from their shoulders. They flapped their wings, almost silently, just enough to lift themselves above the soddened ground. Closer. Their snouts were lizardlike and crammed with teeth, and the teeth and their eyes were the only parts of them that were not black. Both gleamed dull yellow.
As they neared, he could smell them. They carried the scents of the swamp, though stronger, the fetid odors of decaying vegetation and stagnant water.
“Maaan,” the largest creature said. He drew out the word and ended it with a hiss. “We have found a man for our noble mistress.”
“The man will be a spawn. Like us,” another hissed. “The man will be blessed by Onysablet, The Living Darkness.”
They spread out, began to encircle him.
Dhamon laughed then, catching the creatures off guard. That he would find himself finally liberated from the red overlord only to stumble into the clutches of death was darkly comic. He could never be truly free, he realized. He could never be redeemed. Death, then, was the only solution – the one he deserved, and a more apt fate than becoming a spawn. He laughed louder.
“Is the man mad?” the largest asked. “No sanity in his fleshy husk?”
“No,” Dhamon answered, drawing a bre
ath and reaching for his glaive. “Not mad. But damned.” The haft of the glaive was warm in his hands, slightly uncomfortable but no longer painful. It did not burn him as it had when the dragon was manipulating him.
“Perhaps there is hope for me.” Dhamon whispered. “If I live through this.” He swung the weapon in a wide arc, forcing the three spawn back. “I’ll not become one of you!” he yelled.
“Then you will die,” the largest hissed as it leapt into the air above the sweep of the weapon.
Dhamon slashed at the closest spawn, the magical blade effortlessly parting the creature’s skin and plunging deep into its chest. The beast howled and fell back, released a stinging spray of black blood. Acid, Dhamon realized. Instinctively, he shut his eyes as the spawn’s burning blood showered the immediate vicinity. His face and hands were scalded, and he nearly dropped the weapon. His eyes stung.
“You will die most painfully!” came a sibilant voice from above him.
Dhamon tried to open his eyes, but the acid felt like hot daggers. Blindly, he drew back the weapon for another attack, aiming for where he thought the spawn was. But as he swung the weapon, the spawn bit into his shoulder, its claws digging deep. It was all he could do to keep on his feet and withstand the searing pain.
Another spawn darted forward and wrenched the glaive free. A scream pierced the swamp, guttural and earsplitting. “Fire!” the would-be thief howled.
Dhamon heard the soft thud as the spawn dropped the glaive. “The weapon burns evil!” Dhamon shouted, as he struggled with the large spawn hovering above him. Still blinded by the acid, he flailed his hands, finding the spawn’s muscular arms and trying to grab hold. The creature’s scaly hide was too thick to be harmed, too smooth for Dhamon to seize, but he hammered it with his fists.
The spawn tightened its hold on Dhamon’s shoulders and flapped its wings, trying to lift him above the swamp floor. It shook him violently as flecks of acid dripped from its jowls onto Dhamon’s upturned face.
“I will smash you!” it cursed. “The fall will crush your frail human bones, and your blood will seep into my mistress’s swamp. You killed my brother and wounded my comrade. The Living Darkness can do without the likes of you.”
“No! Do not kill him!” the one below Dhamon shouted. “Onysablet, The Living Darkness, would covet him. He is strong and determined. The dragon will greatly reward us for catching such a prize!”
“Let him come to her broken, then.”
The spawn flew lower and tossed Dhamon into a stagnant puddle. His fall was cushioned by the soft, wet ground. He fought to catch his breath, batting his eyes to clear them of the acid. His vision was blurred, but he could dimly see. The shapes were indistinct and gray – tree trunks, curtains of vines hanging down. There! A glint of silver. The glaive. And near it a spawn, a manlike black shape moving clumsily.
Dhamon gritted his teeth and dove for the weapon. The glaive did not burn, now. He lay there for several heartbeats, clutching the weapon, listening, waiting.
The soft flap of wings above him signaled that the one in the sky was coming closer. Dhamon rolled onto his back and swung the glaive upward in an arc.
The blade parted spawn flesh, nearly dividing the creature in two from sternum to waist. Dhamon rolled quickly aside, taking the glaive with him and narrowly avoiding the eruption of acid from the fatally wounded spawn.
“I will never be a spawn!” Dhamon spat at the advancing survivor. “I will never serve your black overlord! I will never serve another dragon again!” The glaive, wet from the blood and fetid water, nearly slipped from his hands as he hoisted it toward the remaining creature.
“Then you will die!”
The creature’s charge forced Dhamon back several feet, the spawn’s weight bearing him to the ground. Drops of acidic moisture fell from the creature’s lips and struck his chin.
“You will die for killing my brothers,” the creature snarled. “For refusing to serve Onysablet.”
I will die for killing Goldmoon, and for killing Jasper, Dhamon said to himself.
You will not die, said another voice, this one coming from the back of Dhamon’s mind. You must defeat the spawn. The red dragon had returned, Dhamon realized. “No!” he screamed. “I will resist you!” He tried to push Malys out of his mind.
Fight the spawn! Use the strength I give you!
“No!” Against Dhamon’s will, he felt his arms rise and his hands move against the spawn’s chest. His limbs, powered by the dragon’s magic, forced the spawn away. The muscles in his legs bunched, forcing him to stand.
His legs pushed forward. He bent and picked up the discarded glaive. The searing pain returned as his fingers enfolded the haft. A grin formed on his lips, one fostered by Malys. Dhamon’s body advanced on the remaining spawn.
“I am safe, man. You cannot fly. But you are not safe. You will die, man! Die by the claws of Onysablet. The Living Darkness comes!” The creature flapped its leathery wings and rose, angling its body between the thick branches of a strangler fig tree. From a place in the back of his mind, Dhamon watched the spawn fly higher as the swamp grew darker. Then he heard the crack of trunks breaking and trees being uprooted.
The inky darkness carried with it an overpowering stench of decay. It reminded the former knight of the smells that had assailed him more than a decade ago as he walked among the fallen on a battlefield in Neraka.
Though the red dragon manipulated him, she could not stop his involuntary actions. Shivers raced down Dhamon’s back, and he found himself retching from the nauseating odor.
“The Living Darkness will slay you!” came the cry of the spawn from high above him. “Or she will make you serve her until the flesh withers with age from your body! Until you die!”
Dhamon felt a jerk, and now he stared at a wall of blackness. He gasped as the blackness breathed and blinked to reveal a pair of drab, massive yellow orbs. The blackness returned his gaze.
Sable, Dhamon thought. The black dragon overlord. Despite the unnatural strength his link with Malys provided him, Dhamon knew he hadn’t a prayer of standing against the Black. And he knew Malys realized this also.
The blackness drew closer, her breath so foul Dhamon’s stomach roiled. So huge was the Black that Dhamon’s eyes could not absorb her entire form. I’ll not serve you, were the words his lips tried to form, but they were doomed words. I’ll not be a spawn. Kill me, dragon!
“You will not kill him, Onysablet,” emerged from his mouth. The words were rich and drawn out, inhuman sounding. Malys was speaking through him. “He is my puppet. He brings to me his ancient weapon. The scale, Onysablet. Look at the scale on his leg. It marks him as mine.”
“Malystryx,” the Black returned after several moments of silence. She dropped her gaze to Dhamon’s leg and then lowered her head in deference to the red dragon overlord. “I grant him safe passage through my land.”
No! Dhamon’s mind screamed. Slay me! I deserve my fate!
“He will bother no more of your creations, Onysablet.” Malys continued. “I will see to it.”
The Red turned her thoughts inward, admonishing her puppet.
You will continue through Onysablet’s realm, she instructed him. You will travel southeast until you near the border of mountainous Blöde. There are ruins at the edge of the swamp, an old ogre village called Brukt. A band of Knights of Takhisis is on their way there – my knights. I will not let them kill you, as your mind has told me is the custom with rogue knights. You will travel with them to my peak, where you will surrender the glaive and what, if anything, remains of your spirit.
*
Brukt consisted of a makeshift village surrounding a crumbling tower of chert and limestone propped up by two massive cypress trees. The tower was pointed and jagged at the fanglike top, and flower-covered vines grew up its sides.
Cobbled around it was a collection of huts made of bamboo and thatch and several lean-tos draped with lizard hide. There were a few sturdier buildings made of ston
es and planks, and one large structure with doors made from a wagon bottom. Some of the buildings carried weathered wording that suggested the planks had once been crates: Morning Dew Mead, Shrentak Leathers read some. A few others were in a language Dhamon couldn’t fathom.
A kender, a dwarf, and a small group of humans who were gathered at the base of the tower halted their conversation and stared as he approached. They were a scraggly lot, barefoot and in worn clothes. One motioned with his hand toward a lean-to, and a female dwarf stepped out of it to quickly join the others. Her fingers drifted to the handle of the axe stuffed in her belt.
“Friend?” she called in a rough voice.
“Friend?” the dwarf repeated. The kender joined her, whispering something into her ear.
Dhamon tried to answer, to tell them he was far from a friend, but instead was an unwilling agent of the red dragon. They should flee or kill him. But Malys held his tongue.
“He is with us.” The voice came from one of the stone and plank buildings. A woman pulled back a hide covering the doorway and stepped out. Despite the heat of the swamp, she wore armor – black, with the emblem of a skull in the center of the breastplate. A death lily grew from the top of the skull, encircled by a thorny vine. The red flame on the lily indicated she served Malystryx. A black cloak draped down to her ankles, held in place by an expensive clasp. Military decorations covering a shoulder of the cloak glinted in the morning sunlight. “Welcome to Brukt, Dhamon Grimwulf.”
“So he’s definitely not a friend,” the female dwarf muttered glumly.
“Commander Jalan Telith-Moor,” Dhamon heard himself say.
She nodded only slightly and walked toward him. A half-dozen knights followed her out of the doorway. “We arrived here very late last night,” she said in an imperious voice. “Here, in this desolate place, there seem to be a pair of spies sympathetic to Solamnia. We will root them out before we leave.” She pursed her lips in thought and studied Dhamon’s face. “Or perhaps...” She gestured, and two knights flanked him, indicating he should follow them inside the building.
