Bastion of Darkness (21 page)

“My staff! Oh, grab my staff!” the ranger heard Ardaz cry, and he turned and saw the wizard holding the staff out toward him, both it and Ardaz glowing a soft blue.

Belexus dove. He heard the blasting exhale, the fiery gout, as he caught the staff’s end and fell facedown to the stone. He felt sticky, gooey, as if he had jumped in a vat of thick cream, and in the instant before the flames
engulfed him, he noted that he, too, was suddenly glowing that same bluish color.

Then he felt the heat, and saw only the bright orange glow of the flames rolling over him, engulfing Ardaz, and rolling out toward the spirit of DelGiudice, who was standing off to the side and who was not glowing with the wizard’s protective shield. On and on came the searing blast; Belexus could feel the gooey shield thinning, and feared that it would not hold. He heard Ardaz screaming, whether in horror or in pain, he could not tell, and heard, too, DelGiudice’s shrieks. Had the ghost, who had not gotten to Ardaz or the staff, been consumed?

Then it was over, as abruptly as it had started, and the ranger pulled himself up from the soft, molten floor. The burn area did not reach to DelGiudice, Belexus noted with relief, seeing the ghost still standing there, terrified and unmoving. Ardaz was making fast through the molten sludge toward the exit, crying for Belexus to hold fast to his staff.

The ranger plodded to keep up, taking care to get his feet up high before the stone could solidify, thus trapping him in place.

They cleared the edge of the burn area, Ardaz tugging Belexus free of the last grasping stone then urging him on, both of them calling for DelGiudice as another line of fire came forth, licking at their backsides, chasing them right out of the room.

“DelGiudice!” Belexus called, his tone frantic, for the ghost was not with them.

“We have to make it into the narrow tunnel!” Ardaz yelled back, pulling fiercely at his staff, offering no room for debate. “Run, oh, run away! I do daresay, that one’s breath will melt us both!”

*  *  *

He heard them running, calling, and initially thought it prudent to chase after them, to get as far away from this horror as possible. But unlike his first visit here—when the wyrm had been asleep, when he had not witnessed the fiery breath—Del found that this time his sensibilities betrayed him. He knew that he should flee, and yet he could not, held firmly in place by a profound, completely illogical, and completely consuming terror. He winced, his will nearly breaking altogether, when the wyrm loosed another searing blast down the corridor after the departing wizard and ranger.

The dragon started after the pair, but skidded to an abrupt halt, its huge claws screeching on the stone, digging deep lines. The reptilian head swiveled down and about, and lizard eyes narrowed, as if the great beast had just noticed the third of the intruder party.

“Greetings,” Del heard himself saying, and he wondered why.

The dragon responded with typical impatience, sending forth its fires over poor Del. And the ghost screamed—how he screamed!—as the bright flames washed over him, filtered through him, bubbled the very stone at his feet. On and on it went, on and on Del screamed, but his yells diminished before the dragon fires lessened, as his physical sensibilities broke through the barrier of terror and informed him that he was not burning, was not hot at all, that the dragon fire had no effect whatsoever!

He looked up at the wyrm, could hardly make out its horned head through the flaming deluge, and waited, and waited, until at last the fire stream ended.

“Impressive!” Del congratulated.

The sheer power of the outraged dragon’s ensuing roar split stone, and down came the snapping maw. Unsettling indeed was that sight to Del, the rows of spearlike teeth chomping over him, seeming to bite him in
half. But again the mouth only closed with a resounding, empty snap, the dragon’s maw passing right through the insubstantial ghost, and when the wyrm lifted its head, Del stood impassively in place, looking up at it.

“Again, I must agree that you are quite impressive,” Del, growing ever more confident now, mustered the courage to remark. “Ineffective, but impressive.”

He nearly swooned at the sheer speed and power of the claw slash, the three-taloned weapon swooshing right through him, screeching off the still-warm stone at his feet, tearing deep jagged grooves.

“YOU ARE NOT REAL!” the wyrm cried, and Del took note of the slightest hint of distress in its godlike voice.

“Yet here I stand,” Del started to respond, but the dragon was paying him no heed at all.

“WHAT TRICK IS THIS, WIZARD?” the wyrm roared. “WHAT DISTRACTION? BUT YOU SHALL NOT ESCAPE! YOU WHO DARED TO DISTURB THE SLUMBER OF SALAZAR SHALL NOT LIVE TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY!”

“Oh, and it is a bright day,” Del remarked, for no better reason than to distract the wyrm again, to indeed distract it that his friends might hustle out of the caverns.

Salazar ignored him though, and moved out of the chamber with awesome grace, seeming more a stalking cat than a bulky lizard.

The ghost thought to follow, perhaps to pester the dragon all the way, or to dance about it in the coming confrontation in an effort to take some of the creature’s focus from his friends. Del couldn’t help a long glance at the treasure mounds, though, as splendid as anything he could ever imagine—at least in this form, on this world. And when he did glance back that way, a flash of gleaming white light caught and held his eye.

There it was: the sword Belexus had described, stuck into the side of a huge pile of gold and silver coins. There could be no doubt about the identity of this blade, for there could be no other to match it in all the world. Despite his fears for his friends, Del found himself drifting toward the sword. He reached down tentatively and felt its shining hilt: bright, silvery steel woven with threads of the purest gold. Slowly, reverently, Del drew it forth from the pile, marveling at its blade—blue-gray, but edged on both sides with a thin line of roughly triangular diamonds, like little pointy teeth or—the thought suddenly came to Del from some far-off, fleeting memory—like little white-wrapped Hershey’s Kisses. He didn’t have to run his finger along that blade to recognize its sharpness; in fact, so wicked did it seem that Del was actually afraid to touch it, fearing that this sword would somehow transcend the boundaries of the material plane and his present spectral state and cut his digits clean away.

Del had no idea of how strong he was in this condition, but he understood that this sword was incredibly light and perfectly balanced. He gave it a slow swing, marveling at the diamond light that trailed its swishing cut.

Then he remembered, suddenly he remembered, that his friends remained in dire trouble. Off he went at full speed, and he heard the roar of Salazar, heard the “Oh, bother” of Ardaz, and knew that he had tarried too long.

Belexus went forward in a roll, under the dragon’s bobbing chin, between its forelegs. He rose on his feet with a powerful thrust, driving his sword straight up and hoping that the beast would prove less armored underneath.

No such luck, and as the blade jabbed, bent, and
skipped harmlessly to the side, the ranger had to leap and dive again, out from under the dragon, for Salazar, no novice in battle, simply buckled its great legs, dropping its tonnage straight down.

Belexus barely missed that crushing blow, and he came up hard and pivoted abruptly, bringing the sword in a mighty over-the-shoulder chop. Again the screech and the sparks, and this time, the ranger believed that he had actually cracked a scale.

That realization brought little hope, though, for he was working hard, far too hard, for each swing, and the damage, even from this one, proved minimal at best.

Even worse, the last hit only got the dragon angrier, if such a rage was possible, and even more animated. The great claws tore at the stone, bringing the creature in a devastating turn to keep up with running Belexus. The long, serpentine tail whipped about, smashing a rocky outcropping into a pile of broken rubble. And that turning head, trying to catch up to the ranger, held a blast of fire ready to incinerate the man.

“Use yer lightning!” Belexus begged Ardaz, but the wizard, knowing that any offensive spell he might invoke would likely only anger the dragon even more—and even worse, might rebound off the solid scales, doing harm to Belexus or to Ardaz—was busy concentrating on his next defensive shell.

Belexus came running back in a loop, the turning dragon’s head right behind, and the ranger dove again for the staff, catching it just as the fiery breath rolled over him. On and on it went, but this time, Ardaz and Belexus, protected by the shell, didn’t stand there screaming, but rather used the plumes of fire and smoke to slip away, into the next chamber. Then, when they had put the continuing fires behind them, they broke into a dead run.

The dragon’s angry and frustrated roar signaled all too clearly that the beast was again in pursuit.

“Ye keep going,” Belexus bade the wizard. “I’ll stop and slow the thing, and might that ye’ll find yer way out!”

Ardaz grabbed him doubly tightly. “Oh no, no, no!” the wizard cried. “The wyrm will incinerate you, and hardly slow. Or maybe he’ll just run you over, flatten you in the corridor, on his way to get to me! You keep running with me, fool hero; I need your speed to help pull me along!”

Indeed, the ranger’s stride was much greater than the old wizard’s, and Belexus was pulling Ardaz along at a great clip. Not great enough, though, the ranger feared, as Salazar’s continuing tirade of wicked threats loomed ever closer.

“We canno’ get away like this!” the ranger complained.

“Why did we come in here at all?” Ardaz screamed back at him. “For a sword? A single, stupid sword?”

In reply, Belexus gave a sharp tug that turned Ardaz about ninety degrees. The wizard gave a stifled cry, thinking he was about to slam the wall, but he went into blackness instead, a small side passage.

“Douse yer wizard light,” Belexus bade him, squeezing by and pulling the wizard along.

Ardaz looked at his staff curiously for a moment, then, with a word, extinguished the fire burning atop it. On they went. They heard the dragon skid up in the main corridor, near to where they had detoured, and a great sniffing sound told them that the wyrm had not been fooled.

“Run on!” the pair cried together, and Ardaz added, “I do daresay!”

The wizard desperately tried to summon another defensive globe, but he wouldn’t be fast enough this time,
and only Belexus’ pulling saved him, took him far enough down the side passage that Salazar’s fiery blast only tickled his backside.

“THIEVES!” the dragon bellowed, and that roar seemed worse by far than the dragon-fire breath. “WHAT TRICK IS THIS?”

“Trick?” Belexus echoed curiously. “Going down a smaller tunnel’s no trick. Not a good one, anyway,” he added when he turned a slight bend and came against solid stone, the dead end of the passage.

“Something else?” Ardaz asked with a shrug, and his thought was bolstered a moment later when he heard the dragon rush off, back the way it had come.

“Are ye thinking that we should go back out there?” the ranger asked after a long, quiet while.

Ardaz shook his head so fiercely that his lips made smacking sounds.

“Well, put up yer light,” the ranger said, and when Ardaz complied, they saw that they had indeed come to a dead end.

“Only one way out,” Belexus reasoned.

Again, the wizard’s lips smacked wildly, ending when Ardaz pursed them and blew out the fire at the end of his staff.

“Then we’ll be sitting here a bit and waiting,” the ranger said, and it was obvious from his tone that the notion didn’t wear well upon him.

“Just give the wyrm a chance to get farther away,” Ardaz begged.

“If DelGiudice coaxes the thing on a merry chase, then might be that we can get back in the treasure room and sniff about for the sword.”

The darkness in the tunnel was complete, but the ranger could well imagine the incredulous look Ardaz was offering his way.

“We come for the sword,” the ranger announced with more determination than he had been able to muster since first he sighted the terrible dragon.

“We ran away,” Ardaz said dryly.

“Only to regroup and go back,” Belexus said determinedly.

Ardaz’ snort showed that he was far from like mind.

“We can’t be letting the wraith—”

“Oh, bother the wraith, and Thalasi, too,” the wizard interrupted. “I’d fight them both with my bare hands before I’d go back into the Salazar’s room! Have you gone mad, then?”

In response, a grumbling Belexus crawled over Ardaz, none too gently, and started back down the passage. The wizard couldn’t make out many of the words the ranger was muttering, but he heard “Andovar” and “vengeance” quite clearly.

“I do daresay,” Ardaz mumbled, and with a helpless shrug, he crawled into line behind the ranger, even brought up his staff-torch a moment later—not that his courage had increased, just that he was feeling so ultimately stupid that he figured he might as well take this quest all the way. If they were indeed going back after the wyrm, then they might as well let the wyrm know it. “Might get it over with more quickly,” was all the explanation Ardaz offered to Belexus when the ranger turned back to stare incredulously at the light.

They came to the lip of the tunnel and paused there, listening to hear if the dragon was waiting quietly just around the bend. Then Belexus hesitated once more, taking a long while to try to muster the courage to peek out. It mattered little, the ranger told himself, for if the dragon was nearby, waiting to spring, the beast could just as easily go to the mouth of the hole and let loose its
fires, for the ranger and Ardaz could never scramble far enough away in time.

Still, thinking about an action and performing it can be two very different things, and Belexus had to wait a moment longer before he found the strength to ease his head and the lit end of the wizard’s staff out into that wider tunnel.

All was clear, so the ranger crept out, then motioned Ardaz to follow—then reached back and pulled the trembling and unmoving wizard out. The ranger pointed right, back toward the treasure room, but Ardaz stubbornly pointed left, back toward the exit.