Mask of Dragons (29 page)

At least until the runedead had killed most of the people of Mastaria. 

Yet the maze of caverns in the Veiled Mountain made the San-keth temple below Castle Cravenlock seem small by comparison. 

They passed through another vast cavern, one that showed more signs of ancient masonry. The floor had been leveled and paved in hexagonal flagstones, and more of the strange carvings marked the walls. Adalar wondered who had put them there, and why. Had this place once been ruled by the San-keth, or perhaps the soliphages? Maybe the dragon had come here, killed the previous residents, and then claimed the mountain for her own.

The next chamber was even larger, so large that Adalar could not see the far side. It was a vast domed cylinder, its floor entirely covered by a rippling pool of glowing lava. It was a sea of molten stone, the very heart of the Veiled Mountain. Perhaps when this chamber filled up, the mountain’s crater would explode with fire. A bridge of worked stone crossed the chamber, arching over the lava to the far wall of the cavern three hundred yards away. By some cunning art builders of the bridge had driven supports into the lava lake, and both supports and bridge had survived the passage of the centuries, and more importantly, the centuries of flowing lava. 

Nevertheless Adalar’s skin crawled as the crossed the bridge. 

For all their brilliance, the ancient builders had not thought to include any railings. 

It was narrow enough that they had to walk single file, and they were hideously vulnerable to ambush during the crossing. Facing Rigoric in battle with room to maneuver had been bad enough. Adalar didn’t even want to imagine fighting the Champion on this narrow span, with fiery death awaiting him on either side. 

Fortunately, it seemed the Prophetess and Rigoric had the same fear, and no enemies awaited them on the other side. 

“Gods and ancestors,” said Earnachar, wiping sweat from his brow. The bridge ended in a wide arch of stone, its sides marked with more of the strange symbols. “I never want to do that again.” 

Adalar glanced at Sigaldra, but she said nothing. Her face was drawn and paler than usual. Halfway across the bridge, her boot had slipped on the smooth stone, and for an awful moment he had been sure that she was going to overbalance and plunge into the liquid fire. He had caught her belt, but she had been as white as a freshly laundered sheet ever since. 

“You’ll have to do at least once more, my lord headman,” said Romaria. 

“What? Why?” said Earnachar. 

“You do want to leave again, don’t you?” said Romaria.

Earnachar growled something under his breath.

“More stairs, my lord,” said Timothy, lifting his ball of shimmering light. Another broad flight of stairs climbed higher into the mountain, illuminated by the harsh glow of the lava below. Yet Timothy’s light reached further, and higher up Adalar saw that the stairs and the walls shimmered with white light. 

“It’s like they’re made of crystal,” said Sigaldra, blinking. “The walls, I mean.”

“No,” said Romaria. “They’re covered in frost.”

“Frost?” said Adalar, incredulous. “Here? After all that lava?”

“It must appeal to Azurvaltoria’s twisted sense of humor,” said Mazael. “First fire, than ice. All part of her game. Just as well that we dragged our cloaks with us.” 

They climbed the stairs. At first it seemed impossible that Adalar was looking at a layer of ice upon the walls. The air still felt as hot and stifling as the inside of a blacksmith’s shop. Yet as they ascended, the air grew cooler. It was a relief after the hot caverns below, but soon it became uncomfortably cold. Adalar thought of the stonemasons who had once worked in the quarries near Greatheart Keep, shattering boulders by pouring boiling and freezing water over them in rapid succession, and wondered if the same fate would befall him. 

Yet he didn’t shatter. He did almost slip when his boot rasped against the ice upon the stairs.

“Careful,” said Sigaldra, grabbing his elbow.

Adalar offered her a tight grin. “Better to fall here than from that bridge.” 

She smiled a little at that. “True.”

“Best not to fall at all, my lord,” said Timothy. “Rolling down the stairs from this height would result in many broken bones.” 

“And then you would likely roll off the archway and land in the lava anyway,” observed Basjun. 

Adalar snorted. “Not quite the end I imagined for myself.”

Sigaldra raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you thought you would die in battle surrounded by thousands of runedead?”

“I…” started Adalar, and he fell silent. 

He had expected that. 

He had expected that ever since the Great Rising. Even after the destruction of the runedead and the defeat of Lucan Mandragon, he had expected ruin to befall him. That certainty had remained with him, the utter conviction of inevitable catastrophe and certain death. 

He had certainly not expected to end up creeping through the lair of a mad dragon with the liege lord of the Grim Marches and his half-human wife, a bombastic Tervingi headman, a wizard, a Skuldari follower of the Amathavian church, and the beautiful holdmistress of the last of the Jutai…

She was beautiful, wasn’t she? He had never quite realized it before.

And to his surprise, Adalar was laughing.

“What?” said Mazael, looking back with bemusement. 

“Life is strange,” said Adalar. “It’s just…if you had told me a year ago that I would be chasing a mad sorceress into a dragon’s lair, I would have thought you were mad. Or drunk.”

“Men are often both,” observed Basjun. 

“Aye,” said Adalar. “Maybe I’m mad.”

“Are you all right?” said Sigaldra. 

“I think so,” said Adalar. “I shouldn’t be, but I am.” He smiled at her. “Let’s go kill the Prophetess and get your sister back.”

She laughed a little, taken aback. “If you insist.” 

“I’m so glad we’re all in agreement,” said Mazael. “Come along, Adalar. If we’re going to play at being noble knights who rescue the innocent maiden, we may as well have our swords ready.” 

They continued climbing the stairs, the ice glittering upon the walls, their breath steaming in the frosty air. At last the stairs ended, and opened into another cavern.

Adalar took a moment to look around.

The previous caverns had been filled with fire and molten stone, but glittering ice filled this cavern. Ice covered the walls and the floor, and snow stood heaped in drifts. From the floor rose giant clusters of pale blue crystals, some of them larger than a horse, glittering and shining in the glow of Timothy’s spell-light. After a moment Adalar realized that the crystals were giving off a gentle glow of their own. 

“Beautiful,” murmured Romaria. 

“A crystal cavern,” said Basjun.

“Chilly,” said Sigaldra.

“And easy to track,” said Mazael, pointing. 

Footprints marked the snow, and Adalar felt a flicker of excitement. Those had to be the tracks of the Prophetess and Rigoric. One set of tracks was enormous, likely from Rigoric. The second set was smaller, and the Prophetess had left those behind. There was a third set of tracks, though…

“Liane,” said Sigaldra. “Liane is with them. Liane was just here.” 

“And she’s alone with the Prophetess and Rigoric,” said Romaria, a hard satisfaction in her voice. “There aren’t any soliphage tracks with them. It looks like the salamanders and the lava accounted for them all.”

“No Crimson Hunters, either,” said Mazael. He frowned. “Would the Crimson Hunters even leave tracks?”

“Spirit creatures do not always leave footprints,” said Timothy, “but I suspect the Crimson Hunters are massive enough to leave traces.” 

“She could summon more, though,” said Sigaldra. 

“Not if we kill her before she works a spell,” said Mazael. 

He stepped forward, and the floor shivered beneath Adalar’s boots. A freezing gale sprang up from nowhere, howling through the crystal cavern like the wail of a damned soul. The loose snow whipped up in a white curtain, and suddenly seemed to harden, crystallizing into a wall of solid ice.

“Mazael!” shouted Romaria.

Lord Mazael was stuck on the other side of the frozen wall.

###

Mazael turned, Talon in his hand, and sought for any foes in the frozen cavern.

He saw nothing. The snow still stirred and billowed in the gale, but the wind was dying down. He turned back to the frozen wall. He wasn’t sure how large it was, but he thought it was at least two or three feet thick, and it sealed off the rear of the cavern. 

What was the point of that? A trap, to cut him off from his companions? Or to cut them off from him? The ice wall would not last long. He already heard the thumping from the other side as Basjun and Earnachar brought their heavy weapons to bear against it. 

Mazael turned again, and Mother Volaria was waiting for him.

“Perhaps it is time,” she said, “we had another little talk.” 

This time she used the form she had worn in Armalast’s Guesthouse, the lovely young Skuldari woman of about twenty-five years. She still wore the high-collared, sleeveless dress, and it struck him that her pale eyes and white, white teeth were similar to the colors of the glittering crystals. 

“An ice wall?” said Mazael. “A little dramatic, don’t you think?” 

She shrugged, a twitch of her slender shoulders. “The dragon is quite fond of fire. It makes for a pleasing contrast, I think.” 

“I see,” said Mazael. “So are you on the dragon’s side? Are you Azurvaltoria’s…apprentice, I suppose? An ancient dragon might be able to teach you secrets of magic known to no one else alive. Or her slave, perhaps?” A more disturbing thought occurred to him. “Or do you command the dragon?” 

That white smile flashed over her pale face. “On the dragon’s side, child of the Old Demon? What a thing to say! I am on my side, and my side alone.” 

“I imagine,” said Mazael, “that Azurvaltoria would not be at all pleased to find you here.”

“She is not fond of trespassers,” said Volaria. “You should understand that, I think. What have you done to the Malrags and the Tervingi and everyone else who tried to invade the Grim Marches?”

“Then you are friends with the dragon, or at least allied with her,” said Mazael. “Else she would not allow you to stand here.”

“Perhaps, my dear child,” said Volaria, “she doesn’t know that I’m here.”

“I somehow doubt that,” said Mazael. “I’ve enjoyed these excruciatingly mysterious little talks of ours, but my enemy is a short distance away. So unless you have some business with me…”

“I’ve come,” said Mother Volaria, “to give you some help.”

“What kind of help?” said Mazael.

“A little lesson in history,” she said. 

“History,” said Mazael, remembering his earlier dark musings about bony fingers rising up from the past to strangle the present. “History is dangerous.”

“Mmm,” said the Volaria. “Good. A fool would not understand the value of what I am about to say.”

“So,” said Mazael. “What kind of history?”

“For you, family history,” said Volaria. “A story about your father.” She stepped closer, pale eyes glittering. She ought to have been freezing in that sleeveless dress, but she looked perfectly comfortable. Of course, her entire appearance was likely an illusion. “A long, long time ago, your father tricked, defeated, and bound Marazadra. Once she had physical form and could walk the world, invincible and invulnerable, but she was banished, her power and essence bound in the spirit world.”

“I gathered as much,” said Mazael. “The Prophetess said something similar.”

“The Old Demon had gotten her out of the way,” said Volaria, “but he couldn’t kill her. Not even your father could kill a goddess. And the means of her return was readily at hand, for she had foreseen her defeat at his hands. She left behind an instrument of power, a means by which she could be summoned and given physical form once more.”

“The Mask of Marazadra,” said Mazael. 

“Indeed,” said Volaria. “The Old Demon, of course, knew all this. Not even he could destroy the Mask of Marazadra, for it had been charged with Marazadra’s own power. He also knew that the worshippers of Marazadra would do anything to claim the Mask and summon their goddess back. So he needed to find a place to hide the Mask, a place where it would be safe and unused.” 

“Such as the lair of a great dragon,” said Mazael. 

“He came before Azurvaltoria a long time ago,” said Volaria, “and challenged her to a duel of magic. In her pride and folly, the dragon accepted. She knew that the Old Demon could not harm her or kill her, but she did not realize the Old Demon was cleverer than she was. He defeated her and bound her to the Veiled Mountain and to the mountains of Skuldar, commanding her to look after the Mask of Marazadra for all time.”

“He didn’t care about Marazadra,” said Mazael. “He just wanted her out of the way so he could harvest the power of the Demonsouled.” 

“And so Azurvaltoria has been guarding the Mask of Marazadra ever since,” said Volaria. “A secret forgotten by even the soliphages themselves, forgotten until the Prophetess dug the bones of the secret from the dust of history. And now the Prophetess has come to bring it to light once more.”

Mazael shrugged. “If the dragon is so concerned about it, then tell her to burn the Prophetess to ash. I’ve seen the kind of power the dragon wields, and I’ve seen the kind of power the Prophetess has. Azurvaltoria could crush the Prophetess easily.” 

“Your father,” said Mother Volaria, “had rules.” 

“Aye,” said Mazael, “but not by choice. He was half-demon, half-spirit, so the rules of the spirit world bound him. He could not harm or kill someone unless they attacked him first. What do those rules have to do with Azurvaltoria?” 

“What else do rules govern?” said Volaria in a quiet voice.

The ice wall behind Mazael thumped. 

The realization came to him in a dark flash.

“Games,” said Mazael in a quiet voice. “Rules bind games as well. Which is why you’ve been talking to me about games, isn’t it?”

“Your father loved games,” said Volaria, “but he also loved cruelty for its own sake, just as a man might admire sculpture or painting or a sunrise. That, and the nature of a magical binding compels rules. So when the Old Demon bound the dragon, the binding included rules. She could not simply kill anyone who came to steal the Mask, no. She had to give them a chance of victory. To lay out a game for them that they might win. Of course, it could not be an easy game, no. But a game with a chance of victory nonetheless.”