“So ye did say, but we were thinking ye’d check back with us at day’s end,” the ranger tried to explain, though he was beginning to catch on that he and this ghost were not reasoning along the same lines.
“Why?”
“Oh, never mind,” Ardaz interrupted, hopping between the two, impatient for news. Ardaz saw it, if Belexus did not: the spirit’s calm demeanor hinted at success. “The peak. The peak. Oh, did you find the peak?”
DelGiudice pointed to the northwest. “Not so far,” he explained.
Belexus moved as if to give the spirit a hug, but backed off immediately, remembering their unsettling first encounter.
“But it’s hard to see,” Del explained. “You have to approach at just the right angle, or all it looks like is rocks. Except from that way,” he added quickly, pointing straight north. “From that way, it looks like a shark’s fin on an ocean swell.”
“Ye’re sure it’s the peak?” Belexus asked, his excitement ebbing as doubts began to creep in.
“From the south it is,” Del replied happily. “An old man, just as you drew. But only from the south. Come along, I will show you; we can get there before the sun goes low if Calamus is swift of wing.”
The ranger and the wizard went at their packing with vigor. “Oh, come along, Des,” Ardaz called repeatedly to the sleeping feline. “And do hurry, for a grand day it is! It is!”
The wizard stopped in midpirouette and considered the cat carefully. “Grand?” he asked. “I call it a grand day, though I’m about to walk into the lair of a great dragon? Oh, silly me!”
Desdemona spat at him and turned away.
Ardaz shrugged and finished his work.
They were airborne soon after, the wizard and ranger and the still, sleeping cat, atop mighty Calamus, following Del’s speeding spirit through ravines and around great jags of stone. They had to stop several times so that the ranger and wizard could warm their bodies, but, as the spirit had predicted, they came in sight of the mountain—and there was no doubt that it was indeed the mountain—shortly after noon.
They circled it once, then put down on a lower ledge, having found no obvious entrance of any sort.
“Well, if this is the place—and I do not doubt my sister—” Ardaz reasoned, “then the dragon has been inside a while, I daresay, and the snow and the wind have apparently sealed the wyrm away. Not that that’s a bad thing!”
“But not a good thing for those meaning to get inside,” Belexus replied. “I’m not even for guessing where we might start looking for a door.”
“I can get in,” Del said suddenly, and both his companions turned on him.
“I thought that nonliving matter presented a barrier even to you,” Ardaz reasoned. “Or why haven’t you fallen under the ground, after all?”
“Fall?” Del echoed, as if the concept itself seemed foreign to him. “Oh, yes, of course. I cannot fall, for gravity has no hold on me,” he explained. “But you are correct in that I can touch stones and the like. They’re more dense than your own bodies, you see, and so I cannot pass through them.”
“Then how’re ye meaning to get in?” Belexus asked.
“Cracks in the wall, of course,” Del answered.
The ranger turned to inspect the stone, but saw no obvious cracks.
“You have to look closer,” the spirit explained. “They’re there, I know, and I can get through them.”
“It seems that our meeting was good fortune indeed,” the ranger said.
“Lead on,” Ardaz bade.
Del did just that, his form becoming two-dimensional, a most disturbing sight, and then slipping into the stone wall easily. He came back soon after, announcing that the particular crack was a dead end, but he tried again, and then again, and over and over, until finally, he did not return so quickly.
He had come to an inner chamber, a tunnel winding through the mountain. To his relief, and surprise, he found that he could see as readily in the dark as in the light. It made sense when he thought about it, for he wasn’t actually here, in this physical place, for he wasn’t actually corporeal at all. Darkness was an obstacle to physical eyes, but not to the entity that Del had become.
He considered the tunnel before him, its arching ceiling and fairly smooth walls. If he could only find a way for his friends to get in, it would be wide enough for them, he knew. But which way was out, and which deeper in?
On a mere guess, Del went left, floating swiftly along, until he came to a wall, again with cracks through which he could maneuver. He found that the wall was not so thick, only a foot or so, coming out of the mountain under an overhang of rock not so far from where he had left his friends. “Belexus could knock through that,” Del reasoned. “Or Ardaz certainly could.” The spirit smiled as he remembered the first time he had met the bumbling wizard, the time Ardaz had used a bolt of lightning to remove a huge rock from the meadow at Brisenballas. How the wizard had hopped about, his fingers burned by the stroke!
But the spirit reminded himself that Belexus was in rather a bit of a hurry, and he filed the memory away for another time. “Not yet,” he decided, and he went back through the crack, back into the tunnel. Before he brought Belexus and Ardaz to the spot and got their hopes up, he thought it wise to make sure that he was leading them correctly. And so he went the other way down the tunnel, past the spot where he had first entered, and farther on into the mountain. Down and down he traveled, the corridor widening and narrowing, sometimes with a low ceiling, and other times covered by long and high shafts, so that there was no ceiling visible. He came to one chamber filled by dark water, which he merely floated over, and was relieved to see that there was enough of a ledge for his friends to get by.
Then came a steep, descending slope, and down Del went. He sensed something different about this area, and in tuning his other senses, found that the air was warmer and that a subtle, rhythmic vibration was all about him.
As he neared the bottom of the slope, he understood the rhythm to be the breathing of a dragon—a huge, sleeping dragon.
Now he moved more cautiously, though he could rationally tell himself that this wyrm, however magnificent, could not hurt him. There was something in the air, beyond the warmth and the snores, some tangible aura, inciting terror. Del tried to tell himself that it was just his expectations of what a dragon might be that were making him tentative, but soon he came to understand that it was indeed something more than that, something very real.
He went through another few passageways, a veritable maze now, though the sound and the heat proved a ready guide. Then he turned a final corner and came into a chamber, and such a chamber as poor Del had never imagined! All those past legends of dragons flooded back to him now, ignited by the incredible scene: the wealth, the jewels, and mostly, the great wyrm itself, fifty feet long though it was curled in a ball. If Del had been a corporeal being, needing to draw breath, he knew that he would not be able to do so. If he had been a corporeal being, if he had made even the slightest sound, the dragon would have awakened and he would have been destroyed. It was that simple, that cut and dried. He would have been destroyed, with no other possibilities plausible.
Those thoughts propelling him, Del was back through the maze, back up the slope, and nearly back to the far end of the tunnel before he even registered that he was running away.
“You do not want to go in there,” was the first thing the spirit said to his companions when he rejoined them outside the mountain. “Trust my judgment on this.”
Belexus and Ardaz exchanged knowing glances. “So you saw the wyrm, eh?” the wizard asked.
The spirit nodded.
“Big wyrm?”
Again the nod.
“Mighty wyrm?”
Again the nod.
“Scared you?”
And once again, the nod.
“This must be the place,” Ardaz said dryly to Belexus.
“Did ye see any o’ its treasures?” the ranger asked of Del.
&nb
sp; Again the nod.
“The sword I telled ye of?”
The spirit tried to recall the scene. He remembered the mounds of glittering treasures, but nothing in particular stood out to him, nothing except the great dragon.
“It was probably there,” he said at length. “But that is not reason enough to go in there!”
“Ye just show me the way,” the ranger demanded.
“No.”
“I’ll not be arguing with ye, ghost o’ DelGiudice!” Belexus growled sternly. “I come for one thing alone, and I’m meaning to have it, or meaning to die in trying to get it!” “You will.”
“That big?” Ardaz asked, scratching his beard.
“Bigger,” replied Del. “In all my wildest nightmares, I could not have imagined a creature so terrifying.”
“Everyone says that when first they see a wyrm, even a little one,” Ardaz explained. “A bit of dragon magic to flutter the heart. But no matter. We both have seen the likes of a dragon before, and know the terror and the danger. We came here expecting it, but came here anyway, since that sword which lies in the lair is most important—more important, I daresay, than all three of us put together. So be a good ghost and show us the way in, and let us be on with it.”
DelGiudice stared long and hard at Ardaz, and then even longer at Belexus, and seeing the unblinking resolution etched on their faces, he relented. “Get on Calamus,” he instructed, and when they were ready, he flew off to the ledge under the jag of rock, a treacherously narrow place where Calamus could not get a solid footing, and so Ardaz and Belexus had to leap off, while the pegasus circled away, a sleeping Desdemona comfortably sprawled across his back.
Ardaz called to the cat repeatedly. Then, with no response forthcoming, the wizard coaxed Calamus into circling close and stooping violently, shaking the cat free. Belexus caught her, and got a good swipe across the face for his efforts. Hoisting Desdemona by the scruff of her neck, he handed her over, none too gently, to Ardaz.
The ranger’s mood grew fouler indeed when Del explained that the passage was behind this wall of stone. “Well, yerself can go through a crack,” the ranger remarked.
“But it’s not so thick,” Del tried to explain.
“We’ll be waking the whole mountain, and all the dead things the dragon’s eaten, if we go to knocking through the stone!”
Ardaz was already at work on it. He tap-tapped gently with his staff, listening closely to find what was solid stone and what just a thin wall blocking an open passage. Then, the tunnel located, the wizard traced out a rough door with water. He stepped back, tucked his staff under an armpit and rubbed his hands together, then waggled his fingers. “Not so long ago, I could have just made it all go away, you know,” he explained. “Blast the fool Thalasi and all that he ruined!”
With a sigh he set back to work, bringing magic into the air about him, sending it in small, focused waves at the wet lines on the stone. He sent the water deeper into the rock, into the very essence of the rock, and soon the line that had been marked with water darkened and sharpened, now seeming more like a smooth crack in the mountain wall.
Ardaz sighed again and slumped, obviously weary. “The door,” he explained. “But do be careful not to make a racket when opening it.”
“And how are we to do that?” Belexus asked.
Ardaz blinked many times as he considered the perfectly smooth stone. “Oh.”
“I’ll push it out, you catch it,” Del reasoned, and before anyone could question, the spirit slipped through the wizard-made crack. A moment later, the door shivered, and the top portion slipped out just a fraction of an inch, but enough for mighty Belexus to hook his fingers on. The ranger’s muscular arms bulged as he tugged and the stone slipped out more and more, so slowly. And then, suddenly, the top came out from under the wall and the slab fell forward, and only quick reflexes and great strength allowed the ranger to hold it steady, get it under control, and then turn it aside and let it fall down the mountainside.
“There. No more noise than the avalanche that likely happens here every week,” Ardaz said, and neither Del nor Belexus could tell if he was being sarcastic or not.
“You’re sure about this?” Del asked one final time.
Belexus stepped right by him, into the tunnel.
“On we go,” Ardaz announced, but he stopped suddenly, snapped his fingers, and brought a small fire to the top of his staff.
“That should properly announce us,” Del said, and there could be no mistaking his sarcastic tones.
“We’re not for seeing in the dark,” the ranger said.
“I do not understand why you are so afraid,” Ardaz asked of Del as they started off to follow Belexus. “Can’t bite you, after all, and will likely break a nail if it tries to swipe at you. Hmmm, but I wonder about the fire.”
Del looked at him and shrugged; then, without hesitation, he moved his ghostly hand near to the fire atop the wizard’s staff. Closer and closer Del’s hand went, though his eyes and his rational memories of fire screamed in his mind that he should stop. Still, he felt no pain, no heat, none at all. He closed his eyes, then, denied the logic that this semicorporeal form imparted, and moved his hand down and down, finally feeling the knob of the wooden staff against his palm. Del opened his eyes to see that the fire burned about his hand and through his hand, but did not consume the flesh and did not pain him in the least.
“Oh, the dragon will like you!” Ardaz beamed, but he had spoken too loudly, drawing an angry “Sssh!” from Belexus, and then from himself, the wizard slapping a hand across his own mouth.
They went on quietly then, down and down, through the tunnel, through the maze of chambers and side passages, following the heat and the rhythmic breathing—and that breathing gave them all hope, for if they could catch the wyrm asleep, then perhaps they could find the sword and be away, or perhaps slay the beast before it ever awakened.
Such thoughts were fleeting, though, for both Ardaz and Belexus knew that one did not steal unnoticed from a dragon’s hoard, and that slaying an adult dragon quickly was near to impossible; and of course Del, who had seen this one up close, knew better than to believe truly that either task was possible.
They turned the last corner—all but Desdemona, who whacked Ardaz across the face, leaped from his arms, and shot back the way they had come—and there, looming before them, just as Del had described it, lay the great dragon, the huge lizardlike creature, massive wings folded up neatly upon its scaly, spiked back. And such a glitter of treasure was about it to bring great wealth to all of the folk of all of Calva, though, with the spectacle of the great wyrm before them, the others hardly noticed a single coin.
Belexus put a finger to pursed lips, then motioned to the left, but before he could take his first soft step, the monstrous, horned head swung out on a long, serpentine neck, coming to an abrupt halt barely ten feet from the three, and seeming a whole lot closer than that!
“Oh, pooh,” Ardaz said.
“WELL, THIEVES,” the deafening dragon voice bellowed, and Del feared that the vibrations alone would shatter his semisubstantial form. “HAVE YOU ANY THOUGHTS YOU WISH TO SHARE BEFORE I ENJOY MY FIRST MEAL IN CENTURIES?”
Chapter 13
The Master
LONG AND UNCOMFORTABLE had been the first reunion, the meeting of Thalasi and his former henchman, the wraith of Hollis Mitchell, out in the rainy, mud-slickened courtyard of Talas-dun. That initial discussion had ended without battle, but it had been only a prelude, a testing ground, both of the powerful and evil beings understood, for it was no longer clear which of them was the stronger, which the true master. And both craved that position and that power.
Nor was the pecking order among the castle’s troops firmly established. Talons argued and fought with talons: those Mitchell brought in, tribes mostly from the lowland swamps south of Kored-dul, against those of the mountain tribes Thalasi already had stationed in the place; and the zombies, standing perfectly still unless ordere
d to some action by either the wraith or the Black Warlock, kept every living creature on the edge of its nerves.
That heavy tension had to be alleviated, and soon, Thalasi knew, or their discomfort and confusion would not only destroy any plans of conquest, but would likely spell doom for the mighty fortress itself, an eruption of insanity that would take down the very walls of the place. Thus, Thalasi bade Mitchell to join him in his throne room the next day.
Again the cold rain pelted the castle, the gloomy day nearly as dark as the night, with heavy clouds and drenching downpours and the occasional flash of lightning. Thalasi thought that quite appropriate, and perhaps advantageous. Reaching out for universal power had always been easier in times of thunderstorms, when some of those violent powers were so near and readily available.
Mitchell had to know that, too, and the fact that the wraith came into the throne room without being asked twice was a bit unnerving to the Black Warlock. Why was Mitchell so confident?
“When first I returned to Talas-dun after the battle of Mountaingate, there were two in charge here,” the Black Warlock began.
“Talons?” Mitchell said, scoffing, as if to remind his former mentor that no talon could ever prove any real threat.
Thalasi shook his head. “Two within me,” he explained. “The dueling spirits of Martin Reinheiser and Morgan Thalasi, each fighting for dominance in this singular mortal shell. It could not be so, not then and not now, not within me and not within Talas-dun. The talons must know without doubt the identity of their true leader, and the zombies cannot be effective if caught in a tug-of-war of wills.”
“The talons are yours, the zombies mine,” Mitchell decided.
“No!” Thalasi was quick to retort.
“Only the staff gives you any power over them,” the wraith went on, not backing down an inch. “Yet I have innate powers to command the undead. With the staff in my hands—”
“With the staff in your hands, you would have no need of me, and no need of any living talons.” Thalasi sneered, so easily understanding the true intent behind the wraith’s proposal. “Take me for no fool, wraith, and forget not that it was I who created you.”
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