by Kirk Dougal
Saleene surged to the front, leading us on a twisting path toward the road down the side of the mountain to Coalton. Card and DeBrest stayed with her but I dropped back, watching rear guard. The shades of pink streaked through the remaining sunlight and night deepened near the destroyed buildings, adding courage to our pursuers and speed to the chase. The sight made me swing the reins at my horse's flanks, whipping the mare even faster. I looked forward in time to see the other three round the corner in front of me, and I steered my horse into the turn.
I nearly collided with DeBrest's mount.
The trio had stopped in the middle of the road. In front of us was the main gate and just beyond, the courtyard and the road leading down. But I barely noticed them.
Between us and the gate stood a double row of people, short enough to only reach my chin. Their clothes were the color of the surrounding stones, covering pale skin set against overly large eyes.
“Move out of the way or we'll run you down!” My threat rang hollow off the devastation surrounding us.
The group bared their teeth in response, pointed stubs silhouetted by black maws.
“Out of the way, Beast.” Card moved his horse forward and drew back his arm, the stones wrapped around his hand again. It never thrust forward.
Slop suddenly faced us from in front of the group. One second the ground had been empty, the next blink he was there, his multicolored coat standing out even more against the backdrop of the gray people.
“I can't let you do that, wizard,” he said. “They're under my protection, the same as the master's.”
“The gods protect us,” Saleene whispered. “The castle survivors. They're Eaters.”
Slop's story about the rest of the people going below and catching the sickness held new meaning now. As did Traxel's little sign of remorse about the loss of Coalton's remaining people.
“We need to get by,” I said.
“Show them Master Dyllar,” Slop replied. “They will let you pass.”
I held the spear in front of me. A few of the gray people noticed and a murmur spread through their ranks. My horse, sweating and tossing its head, took two prancing steps forward and the group split, moving back to the sides.
So it was, us inching forward and the Eaters giving ground. While half the sun still hung above the horizon, we passed the last of their ranks. The other three headed straight for the road down, but I stopped and glanced back at Slop.
“Will you be able to get back to your house?” I asked.
Slop laughed, the sound jarring against the destruction and sadness permeating Dunollie Castle. “I'm more worried about you making the journey to fight the dragon. The Master is upset that his ring is being used for such an evil purpose. I will give you what help I can.” He waved as I turned, his final words following me over the side of the mountain and down the road.
“Don't fail to send Master Dyllar back to me.”
I just caught a glimpse of the back of Card's horse as it descended into a growing fog. White tendrils reached out to me, swaying on the air, moving with our passing. The outstretched arms thickened, joining together into thick stumps and finally a wall that darkened to gray. I passed through, trying not to think about the sheer drop and trusted my horse. Card was gone now, only the clip-clop of hooves on stone to tell me I was not alone.
A cold breeze pushed at my face, finding a gap between my cloak and neck before trailing down my body. My breath added to the fog, trails of steam exiting my nose and joining the mist surrounding me. Ahead, someone yelled, possibly DeBrest, his voice so muffled the words were too thick to enter my ears, too indistinct to register in my thoughts. Another icy wind, this one even stronger, whipped around my body and remained, forcing me to sway in the saddle to keep my balance. My horse skittered sideways a step before I jerked her up short, not knowing how close we were to the edge.
The gray, which had gone almost to black, brightened, more light seeping into the edge of my sight. Every step forward I saw more, my mare's head bobbing in front of me, then the ground passing beneath her hooves. The air, however, remained cold.
My bubble of sight extended out several feet and a shadow loomed before me. I reached for my sword as the monster approached, my mind seeing a massive beast set on attacking, only to have the form shrink to the size of a man and horse in front of a great wall of ice, stone peeking through in thin spots.
“Where are we?” Card asked.
Before I could answer, another yell sounded in front of us, and we urged our mounts forward, traveling down a sloping path. The fog, now white again, pulled back more with each passing stride, revealing more of the world around us until suddenly the sun shined bright overhead, a spotlight after a sea of darkness. The cold backed away. Saleene and DeBrest sat on the trail in front of us, staring down, the young duke turning in his saddle to look at Card and I.
“Can you believe it?' he asked, his voice rising with excitement. “And I'm not sick.”
We were nearly a third of the way down the far side of the White Mountains, the vast grassy plain of Farwolaeth stretching out before us. Off in the distance, the ring of rock surrounding the castle rose like an open fist, a dark spot in a sea of gold.
“Slop said he would do what he could to help us on our journey,” I said. “I never thought he meant this.” I turned in my saddle, glancing back up the trail behind us. The fog was now completely dissipated, and I saw the White Hall Pass, the sun of a new day glinting off the ice walls.
“Beast,” Saleene said, pointing. “Look to the south.”
I moved again, this time reining my mare around to face where Saleene gestured. Long lines of gray crept slowly across the ground, from this height appearing to be worms inching their way across the plain. But I realized the lines were incredibly long to be seen from this far away.
“The Gargians,” Card said. “It looks like the rumors were true.”
I nodded, glancing at the other three.
“Let's get as far down the mountain as we can before we make camp. Tonight, we'll figure out how we're going to make that army work in our favor.”
*****
We found several boulders set together and camped on the uphill side, chancing a small fire away from the plain below. The icy wind was gone this low, and it had grown hot enough in the afternoon that all of our cloaks had been shoved into saddlebags but the fire was as much for our state of mind as it was for warmth. Facing a dragon was enough to make conversations slow, but adding an army bent on revenge into the mix drove all words away.
I chewed on dried beef and travel bread while I watched Saleene. She sat on the opposite side of the fire, the quilted shirt I usually wore underneath my armor spread on the ground by her feet. Her saddlebags were also on the ground, and she kept reaching inside for more of the dragon scales she had gathered at Dunollie Castle. She arranged the scales on the shirt, overlapping them in rows. After a while, her hand went into the saddlebags and it came out empty. She muttered a few words I did not understand and leaned back on her heels, studying the pattern and making adjustments.
“What're you doing?” I asked.
She tossed one of the scales into our fire, and then went back to changing the positioning of her find. After a few more minutes of quiet, except for the crackling of the fire and her muttering, she took a stick and flipped the scale out by my feet.
“Pick it up,” she said.
I stared at the scale, expecting to find a smoldering husk. Instead, the outer layer of the dragon appeared untouched, not even a smudge of ash on it to say it had been in the flames. I reached down, my fingers hesitating, lingering above the scale while I waited for the heat to make me draw them away. When it did not appear, I picked up the dragon remain. It was not even warm, still cold to my touch.
“Adding the scales should buy you some extra time,” Saleene said. “They won't stop all the flames, in fact, I expect it'll still be pretty damn hot, but a couple of extra seconds might be all you need to sho
ve that spear into the dragon's heart.” She shook her head. “But I don't have enough to cover you completely. We had to leave the castle too fast.”
“Beast, stand up with your shield and the spear as if you were attacking,” Card said.
With me acting as a modeling dummy, Saleene and Card discussed what absolutely needed to be protected, finally deciding on my chest and stomach, the part of my upper left arm that was not protected by the shield, and my right arm.
“Your back is going to be wide open,” Saleene said.
“If I'm running away and give the dragon a shot at my back,” I said, “then everything's gone to hell and it won't matter if I'm burned to a crisp.”
Saleene pulled out a couple of extra bowstrings she had grabbed at the Breton castle while Card went to work on a scale with his knife, trying to punch a hole through for the lacing. No matter how hard he twisted or stabbed, he could make even a scratch in the scale. As a last resort, he pounded the handle of the knife with a rock until the blade tip broke off.
“Let's try this,” I said, standing up with the spear. The words had no more than left my mouth than a jolt went through my hand, numbing it up to my elbow. I yelped and dropped the spear in surprise, wiggling my arm in an attempt to restore some feeling. “I don't think Master Dyllar likes that idea.”
We sat and stared at the scales, seconds turning minutes. DeBrest walked back into the light and found us still trying to discover a way to improvise the dragon armor.
“The path below is clear and the horses are settled,” he said. “What're you trying to do?”
Card explained what had happened, and DeBrest nodded, running a hand through his hair as he listened.
“Sounds like only a dragon can get through a dragon's scales,” DeBrest said. “Too bad we don't have another dragon that might help us out.”
The memory of Dunollie Castle leaped into my mind, especially our time when we tried to leave.
“Maybe we don't need a whole dragon,” I said. “Maybe just part of one will do. Everyone show me what you grabbed off the dragon skeleton at the castle.”
DeBrest reached into his pouch and pulled out what I thought at first was a small tooth but turned out to be the broken tip of a much larger piece. I showed the others the dragon glass on my palm.
“I tried to grab a talon but the smallest one I found weighed too much to bring back,” Card said.
“All I thought to grab were the scales,” Saleene said.
We looked at the tooth and the solidified remains of the dragon's eye. The tooth had already broken once so we knew it could be fragile. But the glass felt solid in my hand. I squeezed my fingers until they went white from the pressure but the sliver remained in one piece. I tossed it to Saleene who held it up, the flames dancing through its facets and throwing multicolored fingers of light around her feet.
“Try it,” I said. “If it shatters, we'll give the duke's tooth a try.”
She nodded, placing the tip of the dragon glass on the scale where she wanted the hole. Before she could pick up the stone to try to pound it through, she gasped.
The dragon glass glowed, pinks changing to scarlet and then on to the color of dried blood, so deep it was almost black.
“The scale feels soft underneath the dragon glass,” she said to me.
“Push on it.” My words were so low, I thought I might need to repeat them but Saleene looked down again and her wrist flexed.
The dragon glass snapped through the scale like a knife through a ripe melon, tension to cut through the rind, but then soft and easy.
“This will work,” Saleene said. Her voice was level but her eyes were wide open, the whites showing around the centers.
“Take the first watch,” Card said, waving me away. “We'll both work on this to have it done by the time you return.”
*****
I stood in the shadow of a massive boulder, the moonlight and wind blocked by its shelter. The plain opened up below me, a black canvas spotted with a few dots of light in the distance, watch lights on the walls of Dinas Farwolaeth. I glanced to the right and saw nothing. The Gargians must be running a cold camp, and I wondered if they knew about the dragon, understood what they would be facing in the next day or two.
A stone rolled out of the night, tumbling down the path a few feet away. I turned and faced up the hill.
“Beast,” Card whispered. “Beast, where are you?”
I stepped into the failing moonlight, and he jumped sideways, slipping down the path a few more steps.
“Sweet Jesus! You scared the shit out of me.” He moved closer, and we stepped into the shadow so I could continue my watch without being seen.
“The new armor is almost done,” he continued. “Saleene thinks it will hold up. You can try it on when you get back to camp, and if we need to make any adjustments, we can do it tomorrow as we ride.”
I was glad it was too dark for Card to see my face. He might be able to see the wetness in my eyes.
“Thanks. I don't know what to say.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “You won't have any protection, Card.”
“I've got my magic. All the rest of us are expendable. But not you, RJ. You've got to get through the dragon and into that castle to find out what's going on. Nothing else matters.”
“I've been thinking about that,” I said. “We've got too many targets for just me.”
“What do you mean?”
“At the same time you and I are out in front of the castle fighting the dragon, someone needs to go after the man with the ring. I think he's the key.”
Card was silent for a few seconds. “If we were able to kill him, the dragon might fly off without someone to keep him a slave.”
“Or someone might be able to grab the ring and control the dragon.” I paused, letting the words sink in. “If we're right and the terrorists are also using Dinas Farwolaeth for money transfers as well as meeting spots, then someone will need to take control of the money here and not let anyone else have it until we have a solution. Anyone who controls that dragon can keep the treasure safe.”
“What are you thinking?” Card asked. I could not see his face any better than he could see mine, but I heard the edge in his voice, an argument already bubbling to the surface although he had not yet heard all of my plan.
“You're the only avatar who uses magic in our group,” I said. “The rest of us have magic items, but you actually use it. You might be the only one who can make the ring work for them.” I waited for the outburst, the claims that I was wrong. They did not come.
“I've been thinking the same thing,” Card said. “But that's going to leave you three out there alone, taking on a dragon and the Farwolaethans and maybe even the Gargians. Those aren't good odds, Rick.”
“We've got to end this now. We may never get another chance like this. By now, Tower should have had time to place Saleene and DeBrest's players under protective details. My body is safe inside the facility. If we die in here, even if they steal our IP tags, we'll be okay.”
“I wish we could go to your temple,” Card said. “Let the Oracle know our plan.”
“There's not enough time.” I shifted my weight, letting my face cross into the moonlight again so he could see me. “The Gargians offer us a huge advantage by using them as a distraction. When they attack, so do we. Hopefully, between them going after the castle and my taking on the dragon, we'll cause enough confusion for you to slip through and get the man with the ring.”
“There's damn little chance of this plan working. You know that, right, Rick?”
“Just get to him as fast as you can. I don't know how long we can keep everyone else busy. There's no room for error on this one, Card.”
Chapter 46
We rode hard the next two days, afraid the Gargian army would begin their attack before we were in position. But just before dusk fell on the second day, we found ourselves back in the gully where we had hidden on our last trip to Dinas Farwolaeth, alone on the flank of the
castle.
That was as disturbing as anything else in our plan, the fact I had not seen any sign of the Gargians since we made it back down to the level of the plain. One day long gray lines of men had been marching across the plain, and the next, they were gone without a single track left in their wake. I was not the only one bothered by the missing army either.
“Where'd they go?” Card said, the last rays of orange and pink making his red robe appear dark and brooding. “How do you hide a whole army?”
“You're the damn wizard,” I said, the words grating over my teeth. “You tell me!” It had taken us so long to get close to finally having some answers that I was on edge, my nerves frayed to within a hair of snapping.
“I can scout around before dark,” Saleene said. “Maybe see if I can figure out where they went.”
I nodded. “Don't go too far in case we need to move fast.”
Saleene nodded and inched her way up to the lip of the depression, peeking over the edge and swinging a leg up. That was as far as she moved forward before tumbling backwards, reaching for her dagger as she rolled toward me. A black-winged figure swooped through the gully, and I stumbled to my feet, trying to grab the spear and swearing because my shield was lying on top of my pack a few feet away. I would never retrieve it before the dragon attacked.
But flames did not pour down from the sky. Instead, the body reduced in size to a large eagle, the black shadows receding and leaving the sunsets colors playing against its white breast. The animal's wings beat the air, slowing its next dive until it landed on the only spot that was above ground level. Its claws screeched as they scraped along the metal of my shield. I walked to the eagle, only needing to bend a little at my waist to look it in the eye.
“Dowland,” Tower's voice said, the words escaping the eagle's open beak. “We've received an intelligence report that there are at least three large attacks planned by terrorist groups. We've stopped a fourth cell in Boston, but there may be more, and we still don't know where the other three are going to attack. If you're in position to do anything to help us stop them, please do it fast. We have someone stationed as the Oracle around the clock. Just get us some word.”
