The Ancient

by R. A. Salvatore

  The giant howled and swatted him, launching him away, and only good fortune and a beam of wood prevented Bransen from going over the lip of the chasm. As soon as he had steadied himself, his legs dangling over the ledge, he looked back in fear, expecting the behemoth to rush over and finish him, but the damage had been done, and now powries swarmed over the supine giant, hacking with abandon.

  Cormack slid down low and clamped his hands on Bransen’s shoulders, desperately steadying him. Bransen started to assure the man that he was all right, but a shriek from the north, a supernatural, preternatural piercing screech, cut him short.

  When he looked at the small dragon swooping across the lines of cowering barbarians, Bransen knew at once that it was Ancient Badden. Leathery wings propelled the beast with great speed, its long hind legs and talon-tipped feet snapping down to keep the warriors ducking and diving aside.

  It screeched again, and there was magic behind that powerful wail, for many men fell to their knees, screaming in pain and grabbing at their ears. A dragon claw caught a woman by the shoulder and jerked her from the ground with such force that one of her boots was left behind! With that one foot holding her tight, the dragon’s other foot raked at her, talons tearing clothing and skin with ease.

  The creature banked and rolled back under, and with a sudden halt of its momentum, hurled the broken woman like a missile through the throng of barbarians. The dragon breathed forth a line of fire, immolating some and creating an obscuring fog.

  Spears reached up at it but they seemed to bother the beast not at all, for they did not penetrate its armored body, or what seemed like a magical barrier encompassing that body. The defiant dragon issued that deafening, earsplitting screech again, sending more warriors to their knees in pain.

  “We have to help them!” Cormack cried, tugging Bransen back from the ledge. He scrambled to his feet, as Bransen did behind him, and started for the Alpinadorans.

  “That is Badden,” Milkeila mouthed in horror-filled understanding.

  Bransen grabbed Cormack by the shoulder, tugging him about. “The castle,” he said.

  “We have to help them!” Cormack implored.

  “We help them by taking the castle,” Bransen replied. “It is the source, the conduit, of Badden’s power.”

  Cormack glanced back at the desperate fight to the north, but desperate acquiescence was in his eyes as he turned back to Bransen.

  “Go on! Go on!” Bransen shouted to the powries, for he saw that the way was clear. “To the castle doors, for all our sakes!”

  But few powries heeded that call, entranced by the allure of bright giant blood, and with still more behemoths to be tripped up and slaughtered. And the hesitancy of the behemoths—obviously they had fought the tough little powries before—only made the dwarves hungrier.

  “Mcwigik!” Cormack called, and the dwarf skidded to a stop and turned to face the humans. “To the castle!” Cormack yelled, pointing emphatically that way.

  Mcwigik put on a sour look, but he did stab out his arm to stop Pergwick from running by. Cormack nodded and started off, Milkeila and Bransen close behind. By the time they crossed the glacier to the ice ramp leading into the castle, Mcwigik and his three cohorts trailed in close pursuit.

  A strange sense of urgency came over Bransen, then, and he overtook Cormack, moving from a trot to a sprint for the front of the large castle. He looked all about as he ran, though his path was straight. Were Brother Jond and Olconna still alive?

  How much he suddenly cared about the pair and the other prisoners surprised Bransen, and he silently cursed himself for his hesitance back on the path. How could he have considered turning aside? He lowered his head and ran on faster, right to the base of the ice ramp that led up through the carved towerlike guardhouses that flanked the opening to the castle’s bailey. But there, right at the base of the ramp, he skidded to a stop, and he quickly put his arm out to block Cormack from running by him.

  “It is warded,” he explained.

  “How do you know?”

  Bransen shook his head, but did not otherwise answer. He fell within himself, finding the line of his chi and willfully extending that life energy down to the ground beneath him. He felt the power there, clearly, and discordant with the teeming magic that had constructed and now maintained this castle.

  “He says that it is trapped,” Cormack said to Milkeila when she came up beside them, the four dwarves huffing and puffing close behind.

  Milkeila nodded her agreement almost immediately. Her magic was quite similar to that of the Samhaists, both drawing their energies from the power of the world beneath their feet. She stepped up tentatively and began chanting and rattling her claw and tooth necklace.

  She nodded again and looked back to Cormack. “Our adversary has collected the muted countering energies to his construction together in this one place,” she explained. “It is a powerful ward.”

  “Can you defeat it?” Cormack asked.

  “Or can ye bleed it?” asked Mcwigik, and Cormack looked at him curiously, and all the more curiously when he noted Milkeila nodding and smiling.

  The shaman tentatively walked up the ramp, rattling her necklace before her as if it served as a guard to the release of Samhaist magic. As she neared the opening to the castle bailey, she began to softly chant while jiggling her necklace with one hand and running her other hand in the air right near the doorjamb without touching it. Immediately the gleaming ice began to sweat and drip, and little flames seemed to dance within the ice itself.

  Bransen felt it all profoundly. He understood Milkeila’s counter; she was calling to the ward in measured volume, bringing it forth in bits and pieces to release the pressure. He nodded as he came to understand the trapped flames in the doorjamb, designed to burst forth with tremendous energy if any crossed through without the appropriate magical commands.

  As his understanding of both the ward and Milkeila’s apparent answer to it crystallized, Bransen joined in the effort, channeling his chi to tease out pieces of the warding magic. Now the jamb was sweating all about so profusely that a steady drip fell from the overhead ice beam like a moderate rain.

  “Yach, but ye’re to drop the whole thing!” Mcwigik grumbled.

  “Exactly what the trap was designed to do,” Bransen explained. “But Milkeila and I have diffused it enough so that …” With a grin back at the dwarf, the Highwayman darted ahead past Milkeila through the opening.

  Flames burst forth all around him, a sudden and sharp release of energy, but nowhere near what it would have been initially.

  “The explosion would have taken down the front wall,” Milkeila explained, leading the others through the puddles and the portal to join Bransen. And not a moment too soon, for they found their friend already engaged with another contingent of the stubborn and pesky trolls.

  The first spear thrown his way had become Bransen’s weapon as he sprinted right into the midst of the creatures, who quickly formed a semicircle about him. Holding the light spear in his left hand only, Bransen thrust it out to the left, and as he did, he hooked its back end behind his hip. Using that leverage, he swept the spear across in front of him, catching it in a reverse grip with his right hand. He kept the spear head moving left to right, as if he meant to put the thing right around his back, but instead rolled it in his fingers, deftly flipping it to a forehand grip with his right before stabbing it out that way. The troll on that flank, taking the bait that the spear would fast disappear behind the man, had just lifted its club and begun its charge when the thrusting spear pierced its chest.

  Bransen bent his arm at the elbow powerfully, sending his hand straight up, and he flipped the spear back across his shoulders. He caught it with an underhand grip with his left and subtly altered the angle of momentum, rolling it completely around to stab out in front of him, again left to right. He loosened his grip, letting the spear slide forth as if in a throw, but caught it firmly lower on the handle with his left and grasped it at midpoint w
ith his right, then stabbed diagonally out to his right more powerfully, retracted, reangled and stabbed straight ahead, then again, turning his hips to put it out right of his position in three short and devastating thrusts.

  Three trolls fell away. The others of the group fell back on their heels, confused and frightened, and just as Bransen’s friends rushed past him, overwhelming the lot of the trolls. Only an unlucky turn, a broken spear hooking at a bad angle, caused a wound on any of the companions, catching Pergwick painfully in the hip.

  The dwarf shrugged off any attention, though, and matched the pace of the others as they charged across the courtyard to the castle’s inner door. Again Bransen took the lead, and again he thought to filter out his sensitivity to magic to seek out wards. But the door slid aside and out jumped a man dressed in Samhaist robes and holding a short bronze sword. For a brief instant, Bransen thought it to be Ancient Badden, and he instinctively pulled up.

  That proved a fortunate delay, as the Samhaist sent a gout of flames out through his hand to engulf his sword blade and came forward with a series of mighty sweeps, extending those flames out before him.

  Mcwigik ambled by Bransen and nearly right into them, before finally stopping with a shout of surprise. He shouted again when Bransen leaped atop him, then sprang from the dwarf’s sturdy frame, soaring high and far, lifting his chi as he went to carry him far above the expected mortal boundaries. He threw his spear at the man as he went, but the Samhaist was appropriately warded against such missiles and it did not penetrate.

  It was no more than a diversion, anyway, and Bransen soared up and over. The surprised Samhaist turned his blade upward to try to intercept, but Bransen was too high. He landed behind the Samhaist, turning as he descended, and as the man tried to turn, Bransen shot his arm through the gap in the man’s bended elbow, then knifed his hand up behind the Samhaist’s neck, catching a firm grip. He turned with the Samhaist, staying right behind him and up against him, and as soon as the man tried to reverse back the other way, throwing back his shoulder and arm instinctively to break his momentum, Bransen similarly knifed his other arm in the same manner as the first. Now with both of his hands clamped behind the Samhaist’s neck, “chicken-winging” his opponent’s arms out behind him in the process, Bransen easily turned the man and tripped him up.

  They fell together, the Samhaist facedown and with no way to free up his arms to break his fall. Bransen added to the impact by shoving out with his hands just before the Samhaist’s face hit the ice.

  Bransen sprang up, running right over the man to grab the fallen sword. He was content to leave it at that, but of course, the powries were not. They came in stabbing and slicing, pounding the poor fool back to the ice in short order, so they could dip their berets in his spilling blood.

  Through the open door went Bransen. Milkeila came in right behind. “We need to find Badden’s place of power,” she said. “There must be one greater than all the others.”

  Before Bransen could agree, Cormack rushed past and shouted, “Brother!” Both Bransen and Milkeila turned his way. The pair then followed Cormack’s gaze to the side where a group of miserable prisoners huddled, most prominent among them a man wearing Abellican robes.

  “Jond,” Bransen breathed, and he thought again of his hesitation back on the ledge, and his serious considerations of just turning around and going south to find Cadayle and Callen.

  The Highwayman’s face flushed with shame, and even more when Brother Jond called out, “Bransen Garibond, have you come to save us, friend?”

  Friend. The word bounced around Bransen’s mind, an indictment made all the more damning because Brother Jond didn’t even understand that it was one. Cormack had reached him by then, working the ropes to free the man and the others around him.

  “Not one will be able to aid us in this battle,” Milkeila was saying when Bransen finally joined the couple at the prisoners’ side.

  “Well found, friend,” Bransen said to Jond, and he couldn’t suppress his horror at seeing the man’s maimed face, scarred slits where his eyeballs once were.

  The blind monk followed the voice perfectly and fell over Bransen, wrapping him in a hug, sobbing with joy and appreciation.

  “No time,” Milkeila said. “That beast is outside, killing my people! I am certain that his power is concentrated in here through some conduit to the magical emanations beneath this glacier.”

  “A dragon is he!” one of the other miserable prisoners proclaimed.

  “Horror of horrors!” another chimed in.

  “Whenever Ancient Badden appears to us, he comes down the ramp across the foyer,” Brother Jond blurted, shaking his head and pushing Bransen back to arm’s length, as if trying to sort it all out.

  Bransen recognized the desperation on his face, the need to help here, to try to repay Badden for the injustice that had taken his sight.

  “Please! Help me!” came a cry from behind, and all turned to see the Samhaist Bransen had clobbered, crawling on his elbows toward them, the four powries close behind. “Help me!” he said again, reaching plaintively toward the human intruders. As he spoke, Bikelbrin came up beside him, spat in both his hands, and took up a heavy club, lifting it for what was sure to be a killing blow.

  “Hold!” Cormack yelled at the dwarf, and he rushed back. “He can tell us.”

  The warriors of the tribes increased the number and ferocity of their attacks on the dragon. As one, they dismissed their fear and threw their spears, or rushed to engage the beast whenever it swooped low enough for them to reach. They hardly cared for the trolls, then, for next to this monster, those creatures seemed no more than a nuisance.

  But the dragon seemed unbothered by it all, seemed pleased by it all. Toniquay and the other shamans, chanting more fiercely to inspire and protect and strengthen their charges, throwing whatever offensive magics they could conjure at the beast, understood better than their noble and ferocious warriors.

  And in that understanding, they trembled with fear.

  For the dragon not only seemed impervious, but seemed to grow, in size and in strength. No spear penetrated its scaled armor, and no warrior stood against it for more than a few heartbeats. Tearing claws and snapping maw, thunderously beating wings and snapping, clubbing tail drew a line across the Alpinadoran ranks, laying men and women low with impunity.

  “How do we even hurt it?” Toniquay heard himself asking. Hoping to answer just that, the shaman completed his spell, bringing forth a bird sculpture he had just magically fashioned from the ice. He held it up before his lips and blew life into the small, crystalline golem, then thrust out his arm, launching it away at the dragon.

  The gleaming ice bird flashed overhead, gaining tremendous speed before crashing hard into the dragon.

  If the great beast even noticed the animated missile, it did not show it, and the ice bird exploded into a million tiny and harmless droplets of water.

  Toniquay winced, and then did so again as he saw another man lifted into the air in the dragon’s rear talons. Those mighty feet squeezed powerfully and with such force that the poor warrior’s eyeballs popped from their sockets, blood and tissue flushing out behind.

  Toniquay could only suck in his breath in horror.

  They hustled up the ice ramp, Brother Jond leaning heavily on Bransen and the four dwarves bringing up the back of the line, carrying the captured and battered Samhaist by the wrists and ankles.

  The ascending corridor wrapped around to the right as it rose, crossing over one landing and then another, both circular and both centered by the same wide icy beam that seemed the main support for this part of the castle structure.

  “I’m not thinking he’s long for living,” Mcwigik said, and the people in front paused and considered the poor fellow, and winced as one as the dwarves just let him drop face down on the floor.

  “Don’t ye even be thinking of it,” Mcwigik warned them, and Bransen laughed at the accuracy of the dwarf’s guess, for he too could clearly
see the silent debate between the two over whether or not they would use their healing magic to help the man.

  “We cannot just let a fellow human die,” Milkeila remarked, as much to her fellow humans as to the dwarves.

  Ruggirs walked up beside Mcwigik, stared hard at the humans, then stomped on the back of the Samhaist’s neck. Neck bones shattered with a sickening crunch and the Samhaist twitched violently once or twice before lying very still.

  “Yer magic’s for meself and me boys, and don’t ye even think o’ using it on one of them that we’re fighting when there’s fighting afore us,” Ruggirs explained.

  “Yach, but it’s not looking like he was hurt that bad after all,” Pergwick said from behind the angry Ruggirs, and Bransen understood the statement to be for the sake of the humans and nothing more, a way to accentuate Ruggirs’s point.

  “But ye was right, Mcwigik,” Pergwick went on. “He weren’t long for living.”

  Mcwigik waved his hand at the humans, bidding them to move along.

  They wore expressions of shock (even outrage, in the case of Milkeila and Brother Jond), but they did indeed move along, for they hadn’t the time to discuss the powries’ tactics.

  At the top of the ramp, they came into another circular room, and recognized that they were in the highest tower of the many-turreted castle. Here, too, the support beam ended, but at floor level and not at the ceiling, for it was no support beam in the conventional sense at all.

  It was the base of a fountain, one that sprayed a fine and warm mist into this room. That mist contained power, Bransen recognized immediately, and so did Milkeila. That mist was the stuff of Samhaist and shaman earth magic, the exact conduit Milkeila had sought.