Fistandantilus Reborn

by Douglas Niles

  Seeing their looks of incredulity, Kelryn chuckled bitterly. “I knew the dragon was coming, so I had a few seconds of warning. While my men were charging onto the bridge, I jumped into a ditch. I was half buried in mud when the fire came!

  “And you are right, historian. The skull has to be in the lair of the dragon!” gloated Kelryn. “Apparently you are not the fool I took you for. Now you will take me there!”

  Danyal’s hand was already clenched around the hilt of his long knife and his knees were bent, ready to lunge toward the hated bandit who had somehow survived to follow them here. Before he could attack, however, he saw one more fact in the eerie red light.

  A tiny trickle of blood dribbled from the wound on the young woman’s neck, the place where the sharp knife point was pressed. Mirabeth held utterly still. Dan knew the cut must have hurt, but she revealed no trace of discomfort or fear. Instead, she looked at him with an expression that pleaded for him to stay calm, to listen, to think.

  Overcoming his fury and terror, the lad tried to do just that. Still, he growled a warning. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you. I swear by all the gods, I don’t care if it costs my own life. You will die!”

  Kelryn nodded in acceptance, as if the lad’s passion was the most natural thing in the world. “Just don’t you do anything that gets her killed,” he declared in an easy, conversational tone.

  “And now,” he added to Foryth, “I heard you say something about a map. Well, get it out, historian. You’re going to lead us all to the skull of Fistandantilus!”

  Danyal stared in disbelief, but it was Foryth who asked the question. “How could you have known about the dragon?”

  “What do you mean?” The menacing swordsman was nonplussed by the question. Then Kelryn pulled the bloodstone, still attached to its golden chain, from beneath his tunic. “He told me—the soul of the bloodstone, who waits for my coming, my prayers!”

  “Fistandantilus?” Foryth said with detached, scholarly interest.

  “The same. At last he has brought me to you, where my destiny and his shall come together!”

  “What do you want?” demanded Danyal. “Power? Knowledge?”

  Kelryn laughed. “I knew the historian had discovered my notes, and I suspected he would have solved the puzzle, learned where the dragon’s lair is.”

  “And the skull.” It was Foryth Teel who answered. Kelryn nodded, encouraging the historian to continue. “From the notes I saw in the library, you believe that the combination of the skull and the bloodstone will give you one of the great powers of Fistandantilus.”

  “The power to travel through time!” Kelryn Darewind could no longer contain his exultation. “The skull to show the way, and the bloodstone to give catalyst to my flight!”

  “But why?” Danyal was mystified. He could understand a lust for riches or lands, could even see a vague purpose behind a man’s desire to master other people, to make himself a lord or a king. But this was a craving that made no sense to him.

  “There is no greater tool for one who would seek to further his own ends,” Foryth Teel intoned. “A man who knows what will happen on the morrow can position himself to take full advantage of his enemies’ misfortunes. I’m afraid what I told you before is true: He could become unstoppable.”

  “And so he will!” gloated Kelryn. “My power in Haven, before the coming of the dragons, was a small and pathetic thing in comparison to the might I will wield when I am Master of Past and Present!

  “Now lead us through the mountains, historian. We go to claim the skull!”

  Chapter 39

  Threads

  Reapember, 374 AC

  It was so close now—the bloodstone was right here. He could almost feel it, could almost touch and taste the powerful talisman that was at the very heart of his immortal existence.

  But there was still interference, a fog of mysterious power that masked itself even as it competed for the artifact. It was a shield that refused to let him pass, denied him his ultimate triumph.

  It wasn’t the boy who was the cause of his frustration; he knew that with certainty now. Instead, it was an arcane force, a mysterious and extremely powerful essence that was for some reason centered around, but not within, the human lad.

  He possessed a talisman of arcane might that acted to thwart the will and intentions of the archmage. Even worse, there was something strangely familiar about that competing power, and it was every bit the equal of the archmage’s own might.

  And that meant that it was most assuredly something to be feared.

  Chapter 40

  Firemont

  Third Misham, Reapember

  374 AC

  “There—the twin peaks, with the smoking crater between them. That has to be the place,” declared Foryth Teel. His excitement over the discovery apparently overcame the fatigue, fear, and anger that had been with the companions constantly on their long, difficult trek through the High Kharolis.

  For a moment Dan felt his frustration and anger expanding to encompass the historian, who could be so detached about their own circumstances, but the lad quickly quelled the emotion, saving his antipathy for their real enemy.

  “The lake is steaming,” Kelryn Darewind added. “That’s got to be the boiling lake that shows on your map.”

  The bandit’s knife remained pressed against Mirabeth’s throat, though the man conversed about the view as if she weren’t even there. “The lair—and the skull of Fistandantilus—has got to be somewhere up that mountainside.”

  “Let’s see.…” Foryth Teel was not entirely convinced.

  He flipped open his book, tracing his fingers across the symbols on the page. “I see the boiling lake, and there we have the twin conical summits. But the glacier—there’s supposed to be a glacier.”

  For the thousandth time, Danyal’s hand closed around the hilt of his knife, and he cast a sidelong glance toward Kelryn Darewind. As always, it seemed the man had anticipated his interest. He winked, flashing the lad a smile as cold as the stare of a dead fish.

  “I have to admit this looks like the place,” declared Emilo Haversack.

  “Sure,” Kelryn chatted easily about the connection. “The two mountains are both pointed. And that one has a glacier on the south face, just like the map shows. Now, let’s move.”

  “Then that means the lair should be a cave mouth about halfway up the right-hand peak,” Foryth concluded triumphantly and with as much confidence, Danyal thought sourly, as if he were describing where in the marketplace one might find a vendor of melons. Still, the historian refused to be hastened as he scrutinized the view.

  Dan fought valiantly against the misery and hopelessness that threatened once again to drop him in his tracks. His only desire was to rescue Mirabeth, to get her away from Kelryn’s hands long enough to exact revenge upon the bandit lord.

  And then … and then what?

  He didn’t know. Of course, in the eight days since they had departed ruined Loreloch, Danyal had come to share some of the historian’s sense of their task’s importance. He recalled grimly the warning Foryth Teel had issued about the menace presented by the prospect of Kelryn Darewind’s success.

  Indeed, Dan had spent some of the last long nights thinking about those prospects. If the cruel bandit gained the power to travel through time, he could use that might to create an awful regime, a place devoted to violence and the worship of the vile, corrupt sorcerer.

  The journey had been difficult as the five of them had made their way through rugged mountainous country. Yet the days outdoors had hardened them all, and they had learned to take advantage of what shelter they could find. Usually they had camped without a fire, unwilling to draw attention to themselves, for they all feared the great serpent whose lair was the object of their quest.

  Huddling together under their two blankets, they had weathered the first blustery chill of autumn, determined to bring their quest to a successful conclusion.

  Three times they had been brou
ght to a halt as the kender was violently afflicted by one of his spells. Each had seemed, at least to Danyal, a little more severe than those that had come before. The first time Kelryn Darewind had been ready to kill the unfortunate kender. It had been Mirabeth who had quashed that idea, making it clear that she would sacrifice herself before she would allow it. Kelryn had been unwilling to relinquish his hostage, and for the first time, Dan had seen that the bandit lord was, in fact, as frightened as the rest of them of being left alone.

  For hours following that attack, Emilo had been unfocused, his eyes haunted by memories that he could not—or would not—recall. On the next occasions, Kelryn had reluctantly, and impatiently, waited for the kender to regain his senses and mobility.

  Fortunately they had seen no sign of the dragon. If Flayze had returned to his lair after destroying Loreloch, then he had either remained there or flown into a different portion of his territory. Now they regarded the mountain, sure that the monster lived here and anxious to find the safest route of ascent.

  Danyal wondered for a moment if, now that they had discovered the location, Kelryn might try to kill them. The lad resolved that wouldn’t happen without a fight. But apparently the bandit lord was still frightened of the prospects of going on alone.

  “You will go first, along with the kender and the historian,” Kelryn informed Dan. “The lass and I will follow along behind, just to make perfectly sure the rest of you stay honest.”

  “If you harm her …” Danyal didn’t complete the threat, but the fury burned hot in his eyes. Kelryn Darewind merely shrugged.

  “Let’s see … we can ascend the peak just about anywhere,” Foryth Teel suggested, anxiously changing the subject. “It doesn’t look like a real tricky mountain to climb.”

  “I think we should follow that gully,” Dan suggested, pointing to a ravine that scored deep through the rough ground on the mountain’s lower slope. “At least we’ll stay out of sight from the lair.”

  The others agreed, and they used the waning hours of daylight to reach the foot of the conical summit. The lake of steaming water was nearby, off to their left, and even from a quarter mile away they could see that the surface of the water actually boiled in places, bubbles gurgling explosively upward, a roiled swath of waves churning into steam. A thick plume of water vapor rose from the lake, shrouding the valley in a nearly eternal fog, and they were grateful for the added concealment, even as the clammy air kept the perspiration on their skin from dissipating and matted their hair and clothing into a perpetually damp mess.

  Despite the boiling lake, the air chilled rapidly with the coming of night. A cool wind blew down from the heights, and their breath frosted in the air as the four companions and their brutal enemy started the ascent.

  At least the gully proved to be a good choice of a route. Though they occasionally had to maneuver around large rocks or short, precipitous drops in the sloping floor of the ravine, the party was able to climb in a trench with walls rising twenty or thirty feet high to either side. For hour after hour, they made their way upward, pausing rarely for a few minutes of rest, but then immediately turning back to the challenges of the steep ravine floor.

  By mutual, unspoken assent, Danyal led the way. He and Emilo were the most nimble of the companions, but in the last days, the kender had seemed to lose some of his bold, carefree nature. Dan wasn’t certain whether this was because of the frequency and violence of the recurring spells, or because of concern for Mirabeth. In any event, the change had been dramatic and saddening.

  The lad carried a loop of short rope, the line one of a few things they had salvaged from the ruins of Loreloch, and over the steep stretches of the climb, he braced himself at the top and dangled the rope as an added handhold for his companions.

  In these sections, Kelryn Darewind climbed one-handed, keeping a tight grip on the knife and Mirabeth with the other. Any thoughts Danyal had about dropping the rope were quickly dashed when he saw that he would inevitably injure the lass as well as the bandit lord.

  It was after midnight when, having just completed a fifteen-foot stretch of vertical ascent, they paused for another gasping rest. It looked to Danyal as though they were only halfway up the steep, high mountain, and he suppressed a twinge of fear, not wanting to imagine what would happen if daylight revealed them to be far from cover, fully exposed on this craggy summit of bare rock.

  “Tsk—there’s a hole here,” Foryth said wearily. “I almost fell in.”

  A waft of steam in Dan’s face was the first indication that there was a deep break in the ravine floor. Following the warmth, Danyal came around a large rock to see a black hole in the ground, a gap large enough for a person—but certainly not a dragon—to squeeze through.

  “It’s a cave!” Danyal exclaimed.

  “It could be a vent for the dragon’s lair,” Foryth suggested thoughtfully, coming to stand beside the lad.

  “Let’s go in here, then,” the lad suggested. The warmth of the air felt so good that for a moment he was able to quell the emotions of fear and hate that were raging in his mind.

  The others agreed, so once again the human lad led the way. Danyal crawled on his belly, feeling the passage open up within a few feet of the first entrance. Trying to move silently, he reversed himself so that his feet were preceding him. Sliding on his rump, he came to a lip of stone. Despite the nearly complete darkness, he discerned a surface a short distance below his feet and was able to slide down until he was standing on a smooth, flat rock.

  In short order, the others had joined him. Though they moved without speaking, each whisper of cloth scraping over stone, each scuff of a bootheel finding purchase on the floor, seemed like a loud, resonant noise in the still darkness. Kelryn tightened his grip on Mirabeth, and as Dan’s face flushed, the lass looked at him with a mute plea. She wanted him to remain calm, and for her sake, he did.

  Gradually Danyal realized that it was neither utterly still nor completely dark within the subterranean chamber.

  “Go!” hissed Kelryn. “Lead the way!”

  A dull rumble of sound seemed to rise from the very rock itself. Indeed, it was not so much a noise as a vibration, a trembling that was apparent in the air and the firmament in equal portions. The ground seemed unsettled, and Dan wondered momentarily if the cave was on the brink of collapse. Still, the walls seemed solid, and on a practical level, the noise seemed likely to mask at least the small, incidental noises made by the four intruders. Furthermore, though the narrow entry passage screened all the ambient light of the night, there was a pale illumination that marked the curving outlines of a narrow, stone-walled cavern.

  There was a crimson tint to the glow, which suggested an origin in a hot furnace of fire or embers. Whatever its source, however, Danyal was glad for the light, relieved that they wouldn’t have to grope through darkness or, even worse, carry some sort of light that would clearly announce their presence to any denizen with eyes.

  By silent, mutual consent, they began to advance carefully along the cavern. The footing was surprisingly smooth. There was none of the loose rock or gravel underfoot that Danyal would have expected, indeed had encountered in every other cave he had ever explored. Instead, it was almost as though this stone had flowed here like thick mud, then hardened into the curves and whorls that made the footing in this smooth-walled passage such easy going.

  Warm, dry air wafted into their faces, the temperature increasing gradually to a baking heat that suggested a source of deep and infernal fire. The illumination, too, increased, until they were advancing through a cavern limned in crimson, with a fiery center beckoning and threatening from ahead.

  Finally they came to an end of their narrow tunnel, finding an aperture that was perhaps twenty feet above the floor in a much larger cave. The floor below them was crisscrossed with lines of bright red, like liquid flame, and a great black knob of stone rose from the midst of the vast circular chamber.

  There was no sign of the dragon. However, Danyal
stiffened when he felt Foryth touch his arm, then point toward a shadowy alcove on the far side of the cavern.

  A skull, a human skull, sat there, regarding them with black, eyeless sockets. Despite its fleshless inanimation, Dan felt a shiver of apprehension as he beheld the piece of bone. He could not ignore a sensation that those sightless eyes were staring right at him.

  “There it is!” Kelryn Darewind whispered, his face distorted by a leer of anticipation. Again he tightened his grip on Mirabeth, and his eyes found Dan. “You, boy. Go down there and bring it to me!”

  Danyal’s combination of emotions—his hatred for the bandit lord and his fear for Mirabeth’s life—must have created an amusing torment on his face. In any event, Kelryn Darewind looked at him and laughed as he pressed the dagger a little harder against her skin.

  “Why do you hesitate? Are you frightened finally?”

  Kelryn pressed forward, still holding Mirabeth as he herded the trio of companions to the lip of the drop. Danyal saw a narrow ledge and started along the descending ramp, clinging to the wall as he inched his way along. Foryth, then Emilo, followed. Still clutching Mirabeth in the crook of his arm, the bandit lord came along behind, keeping the knife poised for a killing strike.

  At last they worked their way down to the cavern floor, feeling the bedrock of the mountain quickly warm the soles of their boots and moccasins. In a small group, they crossed a stone arch that spanned one of the rivers. The crimson stuff was, in fact, molten rock, Foryth explained to Danyal.

  Finally they gathered before the alcove where rested the skull of Fistandantilus. Its sightless eyes still glared, and Danyal squirmed under the uncanny sensation that they were watching him.