The Lake of Death

by Jean Rabe

  For several minutes the only sounds came from the swamp—the soft splash of the otters, the cry of a hawk, the rustling of leaves. Dhamon listened to the land, smelled it, let the scent of the swamp roses luxuriate in his mouth. He watched Feril, who sat unmoving, head still tipped up and eyes searching for something.

  What did she really want? What did he really want?

  Feril and his treasure, he knew. Impossible to have both, it seemed.

  He closed his eyes and tried to recall the Feril of old. She was so light now, his scales so thick, he couldn’t even feel her when she touched him. He could faintly smell her and the flowers she clutched. In the back of his mind he saw her from years ago—the proud, strong Feril with long hair and tattoos on her face, and the Feril now. If he was a man, he could feel the softness of her skin again.

  What did he want?

  Ragh sat against the trunk of a pin oak, fingers interlaced across his stomach. “Needle, tonight, last night, I’ve not…”

  “You don’t like my cooking?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I do. Very much. I was going to say I’ve not enjoyed cooked food this much for some time.”

  “Cooking’s for civilized folk, Ragh. Never thought of draconians as…” She stopped and scowled, half at herself. “Sorry, didn’t quite mean it like that. I just sort of… used to… picture draconians as eating things raw, all the time.”

  “Like wild animals.”

  “And more for eating elves than keeping company with them.”

  Ragh swatted a beetle crawling on his knee. “You’d be picturing us right, for the most part.”

  “I see now that you’re not a typical draconian.” Grannaluured was fishing around in her pack, tugging out her pillow and a cloak, then pulling out a drinking flask and tossing it over to the grateful sivak.

  “Most of the times I had cooked meals I was wearing someone else’s form—a dwarf, an elf, a human… they all can stroll inside a tavern and order up the special of the evening. A draconian… well, there’s not many places we can do that safely, though I’ll admit to frequenting a few inns in Shrentak when I worked for Sable.” He held up the flask, running his fingers around the lip. “What’s this we’re drinking tonight?”

  “That’s real good stuff, Ragh. Dwarven ale made deep under the mountain. Came from a master brewer I spent some time with. You drink it down and it’ll lighten the load in my pack. Maybe when that ale fuzzies your brain a little, you’ll let me give you a tattoo and tell me the tale of what happened to your wings.”

  Ragh grimaced. “No to the tattoo. You can give another one to the elf if you want to lighten that pack by getting rid of some of that paint.”

  “Dye.”

  “As for the wings…” He pulled the cork out of the flask and took a deep pull. “In the memory of the Dark Queen, this is good stuff, Needle.”

  “As for the wings?”

  “I mentioned that I used to serve the overlord Sable. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve done lots of things I’m not proud of. Anyway, one day she tossed me off to one of her minions… or so I’ve been told. There are some things I don’t remember, and losing my wings is one of them.” He took another long swig. “I’m glad I don’t remember that part, Needle, but I do remember the flying. Wonderful flying…” He finished the ale and let the flask fall from his fingers. He leaned his head back against the trunk and closed his eyes.

  He didn’t open them again until some time had passed. It was deep in the evening; owls were flying overhead. There was no sign of Dhamon or Feril, though that didn’t surprise the sivak. He figured they were still talking somewhere. They both liked to talk; they could talk a kender’s head off.

  What did surprise him was the female dwarf. Enough moonlight had filtered down so that he could see her plainly. She had dragged the satchels under a narrow cedar and was rooting through the one he’d been carrying, pulling out the small magical baubles and holding them up to inspect them, one by one.

  Ragh’s tongue was thick, and when he made an attempt to shout to her—wanting to warn her to take care—no words came out. He tried to stand and his first attempt met with abject failure. He was dizzier than he’d ever been. True, he’d finished off the flask, and though he recognized potent ale when he drank it, it shouldn’t have been enough to make him feel so dumb-headed and weak.

  Did you drug me? he mouthed. Poison me?

  He tried to get up again, this time getting to his knees just as the dwarf pulled out two vials filled with magical elixir. With a harrumph, she dashed them against the tree and dug into the satchel again.

  “Hey,” Ragh managed. “Stop that!” The words came out all strung together and unintelligible, but his voice was loud and caught her attention.

  She whirled around, suddenly agile despite her years, dropped his pack and stepped on it, grinding her heel against its precious contents. “Ragh, you should’ve stayed sleeping,” Grannaluured said as she reached for her pick. Ragh wobbled to his feet. Then she reached for the pack with Obelia inside and put it on her back. “Sleeping, you’d be the innocent, and here I was starting to like you.”

  The draconian readied himself for her charge, though he was having a hard enough time just standing. Instead, she surprised him one last time, grabbing up the satchel she’d stepped on and dashing away between the trunks of two weeping cedars.

  “Damn,” he said as he lurched after her, careening into trees and tripping over exposed roots. “Damn it, Needle. I was getting to really like you, too.”

  22

  Hours had passed, hours of circular talk without any decision. It seemed to Feril that Dhamon was genuinely torn. That maybe he was better off as a dragon.

  “I think you like flying, this swamp, everything better as a dragon.”

  “No. There’s one thing that will never be… better.”

  “What is that?”

  “I’ve thought long and long about it, Feril. I want to be with you. I know I frighten you as a dragon. I know that I have a chance with you, if I become human again, so I want to be human, but I fear you’ll leave again.”

  She stood, balancing on his snout, in the darkness finding a trace of her own reflection in his huge shiny eyes. She let the flowers fall from her fingers. “You don’t frighten me, Dhamon. Not as a dragon, or human. I won’t ever leave.”

  “Dhamon! Feril!” Ragh stumbled into the clearing. “Needle, she’s not the sweetheart we thought her to be. She’s stolen the magic trinkets from the lake and fled, and she’s got the pack with the Qualinesti spirit in it.” He waved his arm, indicating the direction he thought she’d gone in. “It’s my fault, I trusted her. By the memory of the Dark Queen’s heads, I’ve no idea where she went.”

  “Then we’re wasting time,” Dhamon said. “Let’s go.”

  Dhamon didn’t dare fly here; Sable’s minions would have passed the alarm, so they crashed through the darkness. Dhamon concentrated on the smell of the dwarf, grateful she’d been working in the mines so long and was rather pungent. He had been taken in by her, too. Perhaps she’d been genuine at first, but their tales about Dhamon, dragon scales, and potent magic artifacts had struck a greedy chord. She had been eyeing their packs and lusting after the magic inside.

  It was near dawn when they caught up with her, as the female dwarf had taken a twisting, turning course, at times criss-crossing a sluggish river in an attempt to lose them. Her bootprints here and there were filled with water.

  “I’ll give her a nod for her courage,” Ragh said. “All alone in this swamp, a dwarf. She’s gutsy. Even I don’t travel through this swamp alone.”

  The sky was lightening; they could see through the gaps overhead. Dhamon pointed a talon toward small objects that she’d dropped. Feril and Ragh were quick to scoop up all the beads and tiny figurines they could gather.

  “She doesn’t realize all of this stuff is valuable,” Ragh said. “She’s not a wizard, so she can’t know. She seems to be hoarding the gold and silver bits.” He
scowled to spot a carved turtle, missing its head, strewn on their path. He dropped the once-magical item, knowing it was useless now. “Maybe she’s just so mad at us for losing Feldspar and Campfire that she’s trying to punish us.”

  “Maybe.” This from Dhamon, who was stretching his neck between the trunks of bald cypress trees. “It’s thick up ahead. I can’t go any farther. Ragh!”

  Ragh left the collection of figurines and beads and plunged ahead. The intertwining branches blocked most of the light, but Ragh could see the dwarf now.

  Grannaluured was hunched over one of the stolen satchels, back to a reed-thin gum, pick raised above the remainder of the magical baubles that were scattered on the ground in front of her. She was muttering to herself. Nutty as a fruitcake, Ragh told himself sadly. In her left hand was a scroll, one that Feril and Obelia had said was necessary for the spell they intended to cast on Dhamon.

  “Stop what you’re doing, Needle!” Ragh approached slowly now, hands out to his side. “We’re sorry about your mining friends. The quake wasn’t our fault, either. I know you have grudges against us, but this is not healthy, what you’re doing.”

  “This is not about Campfire, Feldspar, or Churt.” Grannaluured said as she turned, glaring at him, an anger in her eyes that gave the sivak pause. “And it’s not about losing the dragonmetal or the mine collapsing.” She drove the pick down on a tiny glass. Sparks erupted when it shattered. She raised the pick again.

  Ragh ran at her, splashing water as his feet pounded across the marshy ground. “That’s enough, Needle!”

  “Don’t hurt her!” Feril cried, close behind. She fast followed the sivak, cradling her broken arm. “Let’s talk to her first! See why…”

  Ragh had already leaped at the dwarf. Grannaluured’s pick sliced the air beneath his feet. She had pulled back for another swing when Ragh bowled into her, slamming her back into the tree.

  He thought the impact would have stunned her, but she was still active, struggling against him, at first trying to jab him with the pick, then dropping it and kicking furiously at his legs.

  “There now, Needle,” he said, grunting. “Don’t make it worse on yourself.” He pinned her arms to the ground, grimacing as she landed a few solid kicks to his stomach.

  “Ragh, let her up!” Feril was at his side, tugging him off Grannaluured. “Don’t hurt her.”

  “Because she’s old? Because we killed a couple of her friends? Because she just ruined a lot of the magical stuff we needed to make Dhamon human again?” Spittle flew from the sivak’s lips as he swiped a claw across her chest. “Don’t hurt her because she’s a good cook, maybe? That’s the only good reason I can think of not to kill her here and now.”

  The Kagonesti continued to try to pull him off the dwarf. Finally Ragh gave in, stepping back and planting his feet on the pick so the dwarf couldn’t grab it again. Grannaluured scrambled up, and Ragh grabbed the other pack off her back. She backed up against the tree. The chainmail shirt she wore was shredded in the front by the dragonmetal-tipped claws of the sivak. Where he had cut through the chain-metal, no flesh was revealed. Instead, a black scale gleamed on her body.

  Ragh gasped in horror, pointing for Feril’s benefit. “Look! She’s an agent of Sable! Dhamon,” he shouted for the dragon’s benefit, “she wears the Black’s scale. Just like you wore Malys’s scale!”

  The scale was black as midnight, covering Grannaluured’s chest and abdomen. The scale was bigger than the one that had been branded against Dhamon’s human leg, and it was solid, not streaked with silver as Dhamon’s had been.

  “It had to have come from Sable,” Ragh hissed. “No other dragon on Krynn could have…”

  “We don’t know where it came from or why she’s cursed with it,” Feril cut in. She stepped close to Grannaluured, gently touching the top of the dwarf’s head, sticky with blood from Ragh’s blows. “I need to heal her.”

  “No!” Dhamon bellowed, his head thrust above the canopy, his rumbling word shaking the ground and rustling the trees. “Ragh is right. She is one of Sable’s evil minions. Feril, remember Malys’s scale? This is the same kind.”

  Feril shook her head as she fussed over Grannaluured. “It’s not her fault, any more than it was yours. Don’t worry, I’ll not let them hurt you, I promise Needle.”

  Dhamon snorted in contempt, letting out a breath that stirred the trees and undergrowth all the way down to the saw grass. He exchanged a hard look with the sivak. “Admirable of you, Feril. Keep your eye on the dwarf, Ragh.”

  “My pleasure.” The draconian bent and grabbed up Grannaluured’s pick and tossed it several feet away. “All makes sense now, Dhamon. When I watched Feril and Obelia scry in the water, looking for Sable’s scales, we saw faces of men and dwarves. By the Dark Queen’s head, I swear now one of them was Needle’s mug. Thought nothing of it at the time, but I bet there were scales on all those puppets of Sable. Had to be. Bet ol’ Campfire, Churt, and Feldspar had scales, too. Bet their client for the dragonmetal was old Sable herself. Damnable dragon!”

  Dhamon’s eyes were cloudy. “All the pain I felt from that scale. The dwarves surely have felt the same.” He glanced at Feril, busy with her healing efforts.

  Ragh shot a question at Grannaluured. “Hey, how long has Sable been inside your head?” He poked her with a talon, drawing an irate look from Feril.

  Grannaluured didn’t answer for several moments, as Feril continued to treat the wound on her head and prod her elsewhere to make sure she was all right.

  “Yes, I serve the mistress of the swamp,” Grannaluured answered at last. “For more than two decades I have been blessed to wear her scale.”

  Dhamon’s eyes widened in horror. “Needle…” His voice was a whisper, but it rumbled easily to her. “Does Sable see through your eyes?”

  Pride filled Grannaluured’s face. “Yes, through my eyes,” she echoed. “She sees what I see, hears what’ I hear, feels the wind that washes across me. I am an extension of the mistress of the swamp. Glorious Sable has blessed me. She sees you… filthy, disgusting dragon-who-is-not-a-dragon. Stinking, hideous beast! She sees you!”

  “She’s mad, is what I think,” Ragh said. “Driven mad by the damnable Black.” He stared at Feril, busy healing, then glanced again at Grannaluured, who was wildly casting her eyes around and muttering to herself. “Elf, she’s a lost soul, you must realize that. The dragon’s been inside her so long she hasn’t got any willpower left.”

  “Feril knows,” Dhamon said sadly. He closed his great eyes, digging his talons into the wet ground. “And Sable knows we’re after one of her scales. The dwarf’s been stringing us along, hindering us, while Sable waits and watches.”

  Ragh stabbed a finger at the dwarf. “We can use her scale! Rip it off her traitorous chest and use it for the spell!”

  “Yes,” Dhamon said.

  “No,” Feril interjected sharply, “It would kill her.”

  “So what?” said Ragh. “She’s better off dead than having Sable in her head! Dhamon knows that! He prayed for death when he wore Malys’s scale.”

  Feril pushed Ragh’s hand away. “Can’t use that scale anyway. The magic in it won’t be strong enough—it’s been siphoned into the dwarf for too long.”

  “Dhamon, I should kill her.”

  “Yes, you should,” said the dragon. Ragh and Feril both tensed. “Let her be for now, Ragh.”

  Grannaluured’s eyes grew wide. Her voice was even, unsettling. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me, silly sivak and stupid Dhamon. Mistress Sable hates you, Dhamon-dragon. She will stop your plans and crush you. She’ll make certain you’re never human again. She’ll make certain you’re dead.”

  Dhamon pulled back from the trees, leaving Ragh and Feril to the dwarf. He moved silently away, listening to their continued heated discussion.

  “The other dwarves, Needle… were they Sable’s spies, too?” Ragh demanded.

  The dwarf didn’t answer.

  “We can�
�t just leave Needle here,” Feril said. “She’s old and still injured a little.”

  “She’s a needle all right. A needle in our hearts. A needle for Sable, her eyes stabbing us.” Ragh snarled at the dwarf. “Sable can watch over her here, if she’s a mind to, heal her the rest of the way or let her rot.” The draconian squatted and began putting the few undamaged baubles back in the satchel. “You better pray you haven’t ruined Dhamon’s chances, Needle. If you’ve broken so much that the spell’s beyond us, I’ll hunt you down and kill you myself, Sable or no Sable!” To Feril, he added fiercely, “Needle—and Sable—don’t know where we’re going next. We can still make this work. Oh, she’ll be looking for us, and if we don’t hurry, some of her other ‘eyes’ will find us. Let’s get moving.”

  Feril cautiously backed away from Grannaluured, picking up one magical trinket Ragh had missed. She passed him the scroll she had taken away from the dwarf. He carefully put it in the satchel.

  “Dhamon’s right. I should kill her now,” Ragh said. “For her sake and ours.”

  “He also told you to leave her be.”

  “I should kill her first and leave her be afterwards. C’mon, let’s find Dhamon.”

  Ragh left first. Feril followed after a few moments, catching up with him and handing him one more figurine that had escaped his notice.

  “You can’t really feel sorry for Needle,” Ragh said.

  Feril ruefully touched the tattoo the dwarf had etched on her arm. “There’s not enough ‘sorry’ in this world for what the dragons have wrought,” the Kagonesti said.

  23

  Dhamon stomped ahead, his tail swiping at small trees and his heavy footfalls crushing the undergrowth. He was so angry he forgot all stealth. He lurched against a golden python wrapped around the trunk of a tree. The beautiful but deadly snake fell limp to the ground, and when Feril hurried by, trying hard to keep up with Dhamon and Ragh, the Kagonesti stared at it sadly.