Dragonsight (30 page)

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 your 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.’

Zimak patted his body. ‘Now that you mention it, I too have a chill. Only I thought I got it riding S’cressling. While you two were cosy down below, Osric and I have been freezing our orchids off.’

Daretor had no strength to dispute Zimak’s statement. They climbed aboard the dragon, and a moment later they were aloft. S’cressling banked sharply, swooping southwards.

Chapter 12

INTO THE SPIDER KINGDOM

S

’cressling’s huge wings beat the air like thunder, and the noise of their passage echoed through the mountains. Wandering shepherds, leagues away, looked up, fearing some nameless threat.

Jelindel and Daretor drowsed on the cramped deck, glad to be in the open air and beneath the sun again, despite the cold. Osric was overjoyed that they had recovered the dragonsight. S’cressling too seemed happy in an inscrutable, dragonish sort of way.

Despite her exhaustion, Jelindel roused herself enough to ask Osric and Zimak about Melyar. ‘She made it back all right?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ said Zimak. ‘The woman wouldn’t stop crying. She kept going around touching everything and she pinched me at least four times. She said she couldn’t believe her good fortune. And she had these flimsy bags that broke the moment you put anything in them. Gah, it’s no wonder the woman’s gone mad, living in such a weak paraworld.’

Osric took over. ‘By then, the festival was ending, so we were able to find her a place to stay. We also purchased her passage with a camel train back to D’loom. She had been very happy till then. I asked her why her mood changed so suddenly. She said all her family and friends must be dead or gone by now. I told her that that did not need to be the case and that the Temple of Verity was still a strong order. She looked more hopeful after that.’

Jelindel only wished she could have been there when Melyar arrived. More to the point, it raised her belief in her own abilities. She had somehow magicked Melyar straight back to her original anchor on Q’zar. That had involved a degree of precision that she had never dared hope for.

‘Hakat and QeSu, what of them?’ asked Daretor.

‘Gone forever, thanks to Jelindel,’ said Zimak. ‘And the thieving scoundrel’s taken the machine, too.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Jelindel. ‘The machine he can keep. And I did nothing to them.’

‘Yes you did. They have been so inspired by your powers and scholarship that they want to be just like you. Melyar promised to get them into the Temple of Verity. Hakat as a lackey, of course, not a neophyte.’

‘You’re making this up,’ said Jelindel, her eyes narrowing.

‘Not at all. In order to repay you Melyar said she had to do something for someone else. For once the truth is funnier than a joke. You seem to have an inspiring effect on weak minds. Fortunately I’m thick-skinned, and am proofed against you.’

‘Zimak, your skin is so thick that an arrow would go all the way through without encountering anything else but skin.’

Zimak patted his paunch. He looked at Daretor’s glaring face. ‘You’re right. There does seem to be a fair bit of it.’ i

Zimak was rankled by Jelindel’s earlier comment about him being thick-skinned. So much so he could not help goading her. Sitting opposite them and stuffing dried beef strips into his mouth, he said, ‘If you two don’t wake up I’m not keeping any of this for you.’

Without opening his eyes Daretor grunted a reply: ‘Good. More chance you’ll choke to death.’

‘That’s a fine thing to say to somebody who’s occupying your body and who’s saved your life several times over.’

‘And I yours,’ Daretor grumbled, sleepily elevating one eyebrow. ‘As for the body, you’re welcome to it. I have this one more or less how I want it and I’ve decided that size and brawn doesn’t matter.’

A gamin of a smile touched Jelindel’s cheeks, but she kept her eyes closed. A shout from the mane drowned Zimak’s attempt at a scornful reply.

‘I’ve been looking over the maps and our path to the Tower Inviolate will not be easy,’ Osric said.

‘Is nothing easy these days?’ Daretor grumbled, pushing himself up on one elbow.

‘As long as I can sleep,’ Jelindel murmured. ‘Finding the dragon sight despite Fa’red’s interference wasn’t the easiest heist I’ve been involved in.’

Osric sat down near Jelindel. Sensing his unease, she struggled back to alertness. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘I believe so, although all is not what it appears.’

‘Aha.’ She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. ‘Something troubles you?’

‘Not me,’ said Osric. ‘S’cressling is the troubled one. Her dragon sense has her restless.’

Daretor sat up. ‘I judge we have five days before the poison takes effect. Is there a safe way to the citadel? Any more of these delays will put an end to us.’

‘I don’t know as yet,’ Osric said. ‘But I was thinking … you have the dragonsight and it is said that the jewel can sometimes see the future. Perhaps it would be wise to consult it.’

Jelindel frowned, fishing out the crimson gemstone from where it hung inside her tunic. It pulsed a dull red, with a rhythm that had an odd familiarity, as if it were telling her something that she should know.

Osric eyed it with awe and reverence. It was a talisman of great power that meant far more to him and his people than to the wayfarers who were his friends.

Jelindel gazed at the dragonsight. ‘Despite all my skills, Osric, I still have no idea how to use it. That it has immense power, I know. I can sense it. My heart seems to have fallen into rhythm with its beat. But the key to its power is beyond me, at least for now. Still, I will keep prying at it; perhaps I’ll get lucky.’

S’cressling suddenly banked sharply. A sound like a plague of locusts filled the air even as the dragon bellowed in anger and defiance.

Fighting to keep their footing, the four scrambled about the deck and gazed in horror at the sight before them. The air was alive with fearsome creatures that manoeuvred to and fro in an insane dance, as if engaged in an aerial dogfight. S’cressling had blundered into the middle of a lethal battle by dropping out of the clouds above.

‘By all my odd gods these are not of Q’zar,’ Daretor swore.

‘Just where are we?’ Zimak demanded of Osric.

Jelindel turned to the dragonrider. ‘Could the Tower Inviolate have brought these things in with it?’ And other creatures too, she wondered.

Osric held on tight as S’cressling jerked to one side. ‘We’re within the citadel’s realm.’ He shook his head wildly. ‘I’ll try to explain later. Hold on.’

The creatures were giant spiders, covered in sharp steel-like bristles and chitinous armour. They had long vivid orange and black legs that whipped and sliced like scimitars. Their fangs, trailling thick ropy threads of saliva, worked hungrily, snapping open and shut like bolt-cutters, while two rows of ruby eyes glinted.

Vast plumes of liquid silk trailed from their finger-like spinnerets, knitting into broad webs, with which they trapped and worked the invisible air currents, steering first one way and then another with astonishing and frightening speed. Although there were many species that travelled thus upon Q’zar’s air currents, none was the size of these monstrosities.

‘What in Black Quell’s beard?’ Zimak said, barely above a whisper.

‘Look out!’ warned Jelindel as a spider came sailing low across the deck, its fangs slashing at Daretor. He threw himself down, narrowly avoiding the lethal sword-length teeth.

Osric rushed forward to command S’cressling. The ponderous dragon flat-planed its membranous wings and sailed swiftly past two spiders plummeting in a deadly embrace.

Zimak gripped a safety rope and pulled himself toward his fallen companion. Holding the rope with one hand, he unsheathed his sword and stood guard over Daretor until he found his footing. ‘Here,’ Zimak said, throwing Daretor a sword. ‘Don’t get my body damaged.’ He threw a short sword to Jelindel, who caught it deftly.

Jelindel kept her head down but watched the aerial combat carefully. ‘I think there are two sides fighting one another, and that we have flown into the middle of it,’ she said as S’cressling ducked and wove her way through the melee.

‘That’ll be a comfort when we’re diced and sliced, and in their bellies,’ Daretor ventured.

‘Osric, can we get away by diving?’ Jelindel called.

Osric nodded and shouted something that was ripped away by the wind. S’cressling went into a steep dive.

‘I think he said, “Hang on”,’ cried Zimak, as the deck tilted alarmingly. The tactic didn’t work. Whatever battle the spiders were engaged in had come to its conclusion, and while a number ballooned away into a nearby cloud, others twisted and dropped in pursuit of the dragon.

Clearly, S’cressling was far too large a target for the spiders, but her puny riders were not. The spiders made several lowflying swoops across the deck, snatching at them. Their ability to manoeuvre was daunting.

S’cressling’s jaws snapped open and a jet of fire shot out, roasting a spider in midair and catching the webbed plume of another. The spider web flamed and dissolved instantly. With a hideous screech, the spider clutched its abdomen with its legs and dropped like a stone.

Zimak and Osric cheered, but S’cressling’s attack did nothing to deter the other spiders, except to give them a deep respect for the front end of a dragon. Consequently, the Q’zarans were taken completely by surprise when the spiders attacked from behind.

Jelindel slashed at one attacker but her sword merely glanced off the spider’s fangs as they snapped about her. She felt two sharp pricks in her shoulders and a moment later two hairy legs swept her up. Within seconds its bristles pinioned her like living vices. Fighting a creeping drowsiness she muttered a spell. Tiny guttering blue light formed about her lips then lashed out at the closest spider, binding it instantly in a coruscating shell of electric light. Just as quickly the spell dissipated on the wind. Jelindel finally succumbed to semi-paralysis. The spider crouched, then launched itself into the air.

Unbalanced by S’cressling’s attempts to escape, Daretor and Zimak also fell easy prey to the attackers.

Only Osric was spared as he was too far forward and therefore close to S’cressling’s deadly furnace.

Moments later, the triumphant spiders rose at great speed into the upper air currents, far beyond S’cressling’s ability to follow or retaliate.

Osric’s small voice rose up from below. ‘I will find you!’

The spiders flew so high that it was difficult to breathe. The bitter cold froze their limbs and further dulled their minds. Jelindel expected to die and thought that this was probably a far more pleasant end than what their captors had in store for them.

So it was that after many hours Jelindel became dully aware that it was getting warmer. From this she deduced that either the venom was fading or they were descending. Both proved to be the case as she glimpsed a vast forest below. Soon she could smell pollen and resin on the air, and hear ululating voices and the thrumming of many feet. She glanced at the others. Zimak was either unconscious or dead; Daretor was hanging slack against the spider’s legs but his eyes flicked open and met hers. He gave her a wan smile.

‘We’re not yet dead?’ he croaked.

She could barely make out the words. ‘We may wish we were,’ she managed to say.

‘Aye,’ he said, and relaxed into his tormented slumber.

The warmth was a profound luxury, like discovering an oasis in the desert. Jelindel felt her limbs revive and her mind become fully alert.

It was clear that the spiders were dropping toward the thick forest canopy. As they did so, Jelindel noted that their captors were gradually changing colour to blend in with the new environment.