Dragonsight

by Paul Collins

  Jelindel started downwards immediately. After one more glance at the sheer beauty of the cavern, Daretor followed. They had to watch where they put their feet; one step, if miscalculated, could plunge them instantly to their deaths on the sharp stalagmites far below. As it was, pebbles cascaded down the ragged edges and created larger landslides further down the sheer drop.

  It was an exhausting journey and they had little breath or concentration to spare for conversation. Only once did they speak on the way down. Jelindel had nearly fallen and had stopped to catch her breath and calm her nerves. If Daretor was uneasy with closed-in spaces, she was less than happy with heights.

  ‘I should have let S’cressling fry Fa’red when I had the chance,’ Jelindel swore under her breath.

  ‘You had him more or less disarmed,’ Daretor pointed out. ‘It wouldn’t have been honourable to kill him – though I could be persuaded otherwise now.’

  ‘Trust me, Daretor. An Adept 12 is never “disarmed”. I learned that much from Lady Forturian and Madame Dione.’

  They continued in silence. A little over an hour later they reached the ground and stopped to rest. Jelindel gazed about. ‘I need to go into the paraplane. The dragonsight should be visible from there.’

  Jelindel sat cross-legged on the ground and her gaze turned inward. From the outside, Daretor noticed little except that she sat still as stone. It was almost as if Jelindel had stopped breathing. Though Daretor would never admit it, he was frightened. He wondered what would happen if she did not find her way back. Would her body stay like that, growing weaker and weaker? Would it die and yet continue to sit there, unaware that it was dead? He shivered. Such thoughts were not worthy of a warrior.

  Jelindel was aware of his fears and almost smiled to herself. Normal human emotions became attenuated and strange in this place of shifting dimension and thought. In some ways it was like hiding in the ceiling of a building and gazing down through air vents into particular rooms. But it was also like being in the rooms looking up at the unseen watcher in the ceiling. In a sense she was watching herself watching herself.

  She pried her awareness away from this self-replicating process. The paraplane was notorious for its capacity to ensnare the untrained mind within its endless spider web of thought within thought, of sight inside seeing, of a maze of perception in which one could be lost forever.

  The secret was in the negation of the ego, the putting aside of self, and embracing all of creation. In this way her awareness moved out from herself, spun through the manifold dimensions that was the paraplane, and found what she was seeking.

  The dragonsight pulsed with an unearthly vitality. It possessed a signature that was utterly alien, yet not frighteningly so. It was not like most talismanic objects that harboured magic so black and corrosive that they could annihilate a mind that even casually brushed by them.

  The dragonsight was simply different. Not bad, not good. Just different and very powerful. She saw that it was, indeed, with a group of Stone People and that they were trying to hide it. It was some distance from where they were, and the path was unclear.

  ‘Jelindel!’ She vaguely heard Daretor’s cry and swept her awareness back in his direction. They were no longer alone. The newcomers’ intention was not clear to her, nor was their true nature in the physical realm she occupied with Daretor. She saw, branching off from herself and Daretor, all the past choices that had led them here and all the future ones that stemmed from this moment. In some of these, she and her lover lay dead.

  She brought herself back to her body and opened her eyes.

  ‘We have company,’ Daretor said.

  Standing silently some twenty yards away were a dozen Stone People.

  Jelindel nodded slowly, realising she had made a novice’s mistake. She had thought the name was somehow ornamental, but she had been wrong. These creatures appeared to be made of stone; they stood some four to five feet in height and their limbs and bodies were composed of slabs of crumbling rust-brown rock, though their eyes were as black as basalt.

  When their presence was acknowledged, the creatures moved forward a little. Despite their obvious great weight and solidity they moved with surprising agility.

  Jelindel had a vision of what it might be like to have one of these creatures come after her: a single-minded and inexorable boulder that never rested, never slept, till it squashed its prey.

  Jelindel held up her hand, palm outwards, in what she hoped was a common gesture. ‘I am Jelindel dek Mediesar from Skelt, a coastal realm of the upper world. This is my companion, Daretor.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ asked one, his voice like the grinding of stone on stone. Surrounded as they were by a sheer granite face, it felt as though the entire cavern had spoken.

  ‘We seek that which was stolen.’

  ‘Do you accuse us?’ rumbled the speaker.

  ‘No. This thing was stolen by a magician called Fa’red.’

  ‘You seek the dragonsight.’

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘We do not have it.’

  She could not tell from his voice if he intended ill or not. The inflections were too strange, too guttural, to translate into human experience. She flicked a look at the walls of the cavern and saw no escape path. Fa’red had chosen well.

  ‘That does not mean we cannot retrieve it,’ the speaker added. Now there was a hint of menace in his words.

  She gazed at the phalanx of Stone People with some uncertainty and took a deep breath. ‘You must know that this artefact is of great importance.’

  ‘It is of great importance to you. It is nothing to us. We do not concern ourselves with the doings of the upper world. Nor do we favour trespassers in our realm.’

  The creatures moved closer and there was now definite menace in how they regarded the trespassers. ‘You must go back to your world,’ said the one who had spoken first. ‘You are not welcome here.’

  ‘We cannot return until our quest is complete.’

  ‘Then perhaps you will never return.’ There was a rumble of agreement from the other Stone People and they began to edge forward. Jelindel and Daretor took a step back. Daretor laid his hand on his scabbard, forgetting he no longer had a sword. In any case, it would have been useless against the granite hides of these creatures.

  ‘Wait.’

  The others stopped as one of their own pushed forward. He came close to Jelindel and Daretor and almost seemed to be sniffing.

  Then he turned back to his kin. ‘We must help these soft skins,’ he said.

  The first speaker rumbled in what the Q’zarans took to be dissent. ‘We do not meddle, Olag. You know this. If they cannot leave as they have come, then their lives are forfeit.’

  ‘You do not understand, Taroc,’ Olag hissed. ‘They have been inside the Stone of Temis!’

  The Stone People stared at Jelindel and Daretor in awe. Finally Taroc said, ‘Is this true? You have been inside the Ark of the People?’

  Jelindel returned the stare. To Daretor, she said, ‘He refers to the Tower Inviolate …’

  The swordsman nodded cautiously. A great sigh escaped the mass of Stone People, and the tension eased.

  ‘We will help you.’

  ‘Why is the … Stone of Temis so important to you?’ Jelindel asked gently, not wishing to offend.

  ‘That is a story as long as the universe and twice as wide,’ said the speaker. ‘Suffice to say that it is the vessel that brought my people to this world, that gave us this great rock as home and harbour, after a journey lasting many long ages. It is the holy place of my people. The Ark. The New Beginning. By some miscalculation, or evil, the Stone of Temis vanished, leaving a wasteland in its wake, the one you call Dragonfrost. With it went the dragons.’

  ‘You don’t mind that we have violated your fabled ark?’

  ‘Mind? How could we mind? If we should forbid others to gaze upon the greatest jewel of this or any other paraworld, we would know no end to our shame.’

  �
�Even villains?’ Daretor asked.

  The Stone Man shook. A shroud of dust and pebbles tumbled from him. ‘How may bad people become good, unless they come to know ultimate goodness?’

  There seemed no answer to this and the Q’zarans made no effort to find one.

  Jelindel returned to the quest at hand. ‘About the dragonsight,’ she said. ‘You should know that the dragons have come back to Q’zar, and the talisman we seek is –’

  The Stone People suddenly erupted into a clamour that sounded like an avalanche. They ignored the Q’zarans for several long minutes. Finally the grinding hubbub subsided and Taroc addressed them.

  ‘I apologise for our inattention. We are overjoyed by this news. Of old, my people knew the dragons. We were allies. They were of the sky, but their bones were as old as the earth, and we forged a kinship that was rare in those ancient times.

  ‘When they went away we mourned for centuries, never expecting to see them again. Tell me, soft one, have they returned to Dragonfrost from whence they departed?’

  Jelindel nodded cautiously.

  ‘What has the dragonsight to do with all this?’ the grinding voice asked.

  Jelindel explained that she deduced the dragonsight was the heart of the old dragon itself, the Sacred One, and that with its aid the rulers of the Tower Inviolate had enslaved the dragons for a thousand years. The gem had to be returned to the dragons to set them free.

  ‘You go then to set them free?’ a Stone Man asked. ‘Not to enslave, not to destroy?’

  ‘We go to liberate, even if we lose our lives in the doing,’ Jelindel said. Beside her, Daretor nodded his support.

  The Stone People held a low grinding conference. After a time they turned to Jelindel and Daretor. ‘We will help. There is a small band of our people that have been led astray by the magician you named. He poisoned their hearts and ruined their minds, and now they do not know the difference between good rock and bad, between day and night. We have left them to themselves for too long perhaps. We will now rectify this matter. They have the dragonsight.’

  Moving through rough-hewn tunnels that reached deep within the earth, an army of Stone People tromped the ground with barely more than a tremor. Jelindel and Daretor had difficulty accepting their situation. They had been startled to discover that the Stone People could literally walk through walls, melting into the rock and passing through it, albeit slowly, as if they moved through thick treacle. Just as easily, they could sink into the ground, and create fissures through which their guests could squeeze. The Stone People were to the rocky earth what fish, or perhaps sharks, were to the great oceans.

  How far they travelled, Jelindel did not know, but the journey took several hours. By the end, Jelindel and Daretor were bruised, cut and exhausted. Taroc came to them at the stopping place.

  ‘You must sleep,’ he said. ‘Our people will see to the preparations. We will wake you.’

  With that he stepped backwards and melted into the wall. Jelindel and Daretor threw themselves down, too tired to care. Within moments they were asleep.

  They woke to a low rumbling that seemed to come up from the depths of the earth.

  Taroc appeared. ‘War has begun,’ he said. ‘Our former brethren are stronger than we thought, for they use dark magic. Can you destroy such arts?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Jelindel.

  ‘Come with me quickly then. I will guard you as best I can.’

  They hurried after the Stone Man, darting down tunnels, pushing and pulling one another through fissures, some of which had been newly fractured.

  They arrived at a different and, if possible, larger cavern. The geology of this one was more grim: it had been formed by a convulsion of the earth, and scoured by gushing lava flows and volcanic activity. The rocky floor had been wrenched into contorted shapes, and great gouges cut through the ground as though a giant sword had slashed at it.

  ‘It’s hard to breathe,’ Jelindel shouted to the Stone Man.

  Sulphurous gases were choking them, but Taroc nudged them forward. ‘We must hurry.’

  Then a hail of rocks rose high in the air and arced towards them, as if launched from unseen catapults. ‘Behind me,’ rumbled the Stone Man.

  Jelindel did not move; instead, she spoke words of magic. Blue light gushed from her lips and formed a spinning vortex in the air. The rocky projectiles slammed into the tornado of light, spun several times, then were flung back on perfect reverse paths.

  The Stone Man gazed at her in apparent approval. Then rocky hands shot out from the ground and grabbed his rock-sized ankles. He tottered sideways, and suddenly he was being pulled under. He struggled, but more granite hands seized him.

  ‘Go. That way,’ he boomed, pointing. ‘Destroy the dark magic!’ He vanished into the earth; a slight bubbling of the cavern floor the only sign that he had been; then it too subsided and the rock was rock once more.

  Jelindel and Daretor hurried in the direction Taroc had indicated and clambered over the scree. From the top of the slope they had a good view of the fighting. It was a battle like nothing they had ever seen before.

  The field was jammed with Stone People, tearing off chunks of rock and stone and hurling them with deadly accuracy and mind-numbing speed at their adversaries. The missiles flew through the air and impacted loudly, shattering heads and chests, and amputating limbs. The dead and dying slowly sank into the earth from whence they had come eons past.

  The two sides surged against each other, making headway, then losing it again. They were well matched in sheer brute strength, though the opposing side was small in numbers. In the rear ranks of the opposition, Jelindel could see a clump of Stone People surrounding something that emitted a flickering light.

  ‘The fools,’ she cursed. ‘They’re using some kind of magecraft. They’ll bring down the roof if they’re not careful.’

  ‘That might not matter to them,’ Daretor opined.

  ‘Perhaps, but it will be decidedly uncomfortable for us.’

  A wave of darkness rushed forward like a small tidal wave and slammed into the front ranks of the Stone People, shattering them into pebbles. The wave dissipated and was then followed by another that hurled itself outwards. Jelindel reacted immediately, muttering a spell, and flinging it away.

  The two forces impacted with a sound like great metal drums colliding. There was furious struggle between the two magical forces for a moment, then both vanished.

  The battle continued unabated. Projectiles shot back and forth, Stone People clashed face to face with awesome results, their stone fists literally hammering each other to pieces. At the same time, others emerged from the ground or from walls and boulders, or melted into them to appear somewhere else in a surprise attack.

  ‘Can you help them?’ Daretor said, steadying himself with outflung hands as the ground twisted and rolled.

  Jelindel too spread her hands for balance. ‘I have no way of knowing who are Taroc’s people and who aren’t,’ she said. ‘The best I can do is ward off the magic used by the other side.’

  Jelindel turned her attention to the group at the back. ‘Of course.’ She looked at the ceiling, where an extrusion of basalt showed. Almost without thinking, she hurled a massive spell at the dark basalt. An instant later it wrenched free of the roof and plunged straight down upon the group using the dark magic. The rest were discouraged and within moments the battle was over, the Stone People under Fa’red’s control having retreated into the rocky rampart at the rear of the cavern.

  Daretor caught Jelindel as she collapsed from the strain of maintaining her magic. Rocks were still raining down, so he heaved and dragged her to safety. No sooner had he crouched over her, than a figure rose slowly from the stone at their feet. Daretor jumped back in alarm. But it was Taroc. He appeared unhurt.

  ‘We thought you were dead,’ said Daretor.

  ‘Stone People are hard to kill. You can shatter us into pieces sometimes and we will reform, though it might take a hundred of yo
ur years.’

  He held out a lumpy gem of reddish jade, bound by a short leather thong.

  ‘The dragonsight,’ Jelindel whispered. ‘You found it.’

  ‘It was with those you crushed, as we knew it would be.’ He handed the artefact to her. ‘Now that we have kept our part of the bargain, you must free the dragons.’ And he told her what to do with the dragonsight when they reached the Tower Inviolate.

  ‘We will do this,’ said Jelindel. ‘I promise you.’

  ‘I am known to the Sacred One. When you see him, tell him that the Stone People have not forgotten the kinship between our races.’

  The Stone People led Daretor and Jelindel to the surface, where they discovered they were in a mountain range west of Braven-hurst, barely two hundred miles from Dremari. They bid Taroc and his people farewell.

  Jelindel looked out across the plain. ‘With luck S’cressling will scent that we’re above ground.’

  ‘Give me the ground to walk on anytime,’ Daretor began, then thought twice about that statement. After what they had just experienced, the ground would never be the same again.

  They climbed wearily down a steep gorge to a wide valley. Here, they tarried only a short time before S’cressling alighted beside them. A grinning Osric leapt off the dragon’s back to greet them, followed by Zimak.

  ‘Nothing like a dragon to stage a jailbreak,’ said Zimak. ‘How have you two been faring?’

  Jelindel gave Zimak and Osric a hurried account of all that had happened.

  ‘So you were caught between a rock and a hard place?’ Zimak said, but the pun was not even sneered at.

  ‘You have the relic?’ Osric said.

  Jelindel showed them the dragonsight. Zimak was curious in a professional, thieving manner, but it was Osric’s reaction that startled them. He almost swooned, and S’cressling lumbered closer to observe the relic. Thin tendrils of smoke wafted from her nostrils.

  ‘We’ve wasted enough time,’ Jelindel said. ‘It’s a long flight to the Tower Inviolate.’

  ‘Let’s hope it isn’t too long,’ Daretor said grimly. ‘I feel the poison like meltwater in my blood.’