Skein of Shadows (19 page)

She’d never faced one herself, though she’d been drilled in how best to defeat those most likely to be found on Khorvaire. The closest she’d come had been her battle with those yrthaks over the Thunder Sea just two months ago. A lot of good men had fallen that day. If they had to fight off a true dragon, a lot more would fall on this one.

Sabira finally caught sight of the dragon, skimming low over the dunes as it approached.

It was nothing like the dragons in the books she’d studied during her training. The reptile was covered in brownish-gray scales everywhere except for its head, which was covered in a mass of thick, short horns and resembled nothing so much as a lamprey, or perhaps a morning star crafted by an overeager smith. Winglike membranes stretched between two parallel lines of spines that ran along the length of the creature’s back, from the base of its spiked head to the tip of its tail.

“What in the name of Olladra’s larder is that?” she asked as she handed the spyglass back to Jester, vaguely repulsed.

“A sand dragon,” Brannan answered. He’d given the controls over to Xujil and climbed into the back of the wagon, rummaging around in one of the crates. He came up with a handful of green-fletched bolts and a crossbow, which he held out expectantly. “Well?
I
certainly can’t operate the thing.”

Sabira took the weapon impatiently from him and selected a bolt. But before she could load it into the groove, Greddark snatched it out of her hand.

“What the—?”

The dwarf ignored her exclamation, instead examining the bolt with a furrowed brow. Then he turned a baleful eye on the Wayfinder.

“You just
happen
to have bolts enchanted to pierce dragon scales?”

“Actually, I happen to have bolts enchanted to pierce any number of things. This crate alone holds silver bolts, bolts blessed by practitioners of every known religion on Eberron—and some unknown ones—and bolts that will bring a giant to its knees … probably even some that might do the same to a dwarf, if I dig deep enough.” The Wayfinder flashed that perfect smile. “You never know what you might face on an expedition. It pays to be prepared for every eventuality, no matter how unlikely. It’s kept me in business this long.”

Greddark harrumphed and grudgingly handed the quarrel back to Sabira, who quickly loaded it into the crossbow and moved into position, using the feed trough at the back of the wagon to steady her aim.

She could see the dragon without the spyglass now, a dark speck rapidly growing in size as it approached from the north. As it glided through the air, Sabira could see it wasn’t quite as large as she’d been expecting—the size of two of the wagons shoved together, maybe. She revised her estimate of the creature’s age—no more than a young adult, if the facts she’d learned as a Blademark could be applied to dragons she’d never seen in any of their libraries.

Hopefully, that should mean the reptile would rely less on magic and more on mundane attacks. But without knowing what sort of breath weapon the creature had, she wasn’t sure if that was a benefit or not.

“So,” she asked over her shoulder as she tried to keep the crossbow level while the wagon bumped along over the desert floor, “sand dragons. What do you know about them?”

“Not much,” Brannan answered from behind her. “I’ve never encountered one out here before, but I’ve heard stories.”

“Stories?” Jester asked, and Sabira could just imagine the red-armored warforged leaning forward eagerly on his bench.

“I’ve heard they can create sandstorms—a tale I think we can safely confirm—and that they prefer to attack from underneath the sand. Not much else.”

Wait. If sand dragons preferred to come at their prey from beneath the sand, then why—?

Sabira didn’t even have time to finish thinking the question. As the dragon came within bowshot of the rearmost wagons, it suddenly veered up and over the caravan, well out of range of both arrow and quarrel. As it crossed above their wagon, Sabira scrambled forward to the front, poking her head out beside a startled Xujil. She watched as the dragon swooped down behind a row of high dunes ahead of the caravan and disappeared. Though she scanned the horizon in front of them, she didn’t see it reappear.

“Stop the caravan!” she shouted to Brannan without turning.

There was utter silence behind her.

“Have you lost your mind?”

The Wayfinder’s voice was politely amused, as if he were humoring a lunatic while trying to determine if she were dangerous or not.

Now Sabira turned, her eyes narrowed and her jaw set.

“The dragon is ahead of us somewhere, on the ground.
Under
the ground, if the stories you’ve heard are to be believed.” She waited for understanding to dawn on the Wayfinder’s features, but his face remained affable and unenlightened. It was Xujil who caught on first.

“The beast is using the storm to herd us,” the drow said, the soft, oily words the first he had spoken in her hearing. Sabira was surprised at the anger behind them. Then again, she supposed that for someone who was used to leading others, being guided himself against his will must rankle.

“Classic hunting tactic. And we’re the buck with the trophy rack.”

Brannan took the revelation in stride.

“If we halt the caravan, we have no chance of outrunning the storm, and it’s the greater of the two dangers facing us. The dragon can only attack one wagon at a time; the storm can wipe out the entire caravan.” The Wayfinder’s expression was no longer so affable. “There is no choice here, Marshal. We press on, ambush or no.”

And as much as it galled her, Sabira couldn’t refute his logic.

“If that’s your decision, then at least have the caravan advance in a row instead of a column. That way we can bring more force to bear against the dragon when it attacks.”

Because that attack was as inevitable as the storm bearing down on them from behind. No predator would pass up such easy odds, least of all a dragon.

Brannan regarded her for a moment before his smile returned, a grin that Sabira would almost have called flirtatious, in other circumstances, on another man’s face. On
Brannan’s, she couldn’t help but regard it as calculating. Though the Wayfinder hadn’t said it in so many words, he’d made it abundantly clear that his bottom line was the main factor in any decision he made, including this one. That it was also the safest decision for the men in his employ was completely beside the fact, Sabira was sure.

“As you will, Marshal,” he replied, inclining his head to her. He glanced at Xujil, who’d looked back over his shoulder at Sabira’s command to stop the caravan, and was now waiting for instructions. “Slow it down.”

As the drow obeyed and turned back to the controls, Brannan dug around in a satchel tied to the rear opening of the wagon. He pulled out a length of bright red cloth, then leaned out the back of the wagon into the wind. With one end of the cloth clutched in each hand, he slowly spread his arms out, so that the red fabric was a bright, visible slash across his chest. After a moment, he brought his hands back together in front of him, and then repeated the gesture two more times. When he was sure the next wagon in line had gotten the signal and was passing it on, he balled up the cloth and replaced it in the bag.

“That’s rather primitive,” Greddark remarked, no doubt thinking up a way he could rig a more efficient system with some Dust of Disjunction and a little spit.

“Ah, ‘primitive.’ That’s a dwarven euphemism for ‘cheap,’ is it not?” Before Greddark could answer, the Wayfinder continued. “It may seem simple, but it’s the most effective means to communicate between wagons when the wind is howling too loud for voices to be heard and the glare of the sun blinds you to anything but the brightest colors.”

“There are spells to bypass those difficulties,” the dwarf
argued. “Cheap ones too.”

There were even spells that would protect the entire caravan from both sun and storm in the first place, Sabira knew, but they were also quite a bit more expensive than a few strips of cloth torn from the tent in the Marketplace.

“There are,” Brannan agreed. “But there are many places in the desert where such spells do not function as intended. If at all.”

Sabira frowned at that. Though such areas were common in the Mournland, where a magical cataclysm had wiped the nation of Cyre from the face of Khorvaire in the space of a single day, she’d never heard of any similar places outside the bounds of the dark gray mist. Then again, Xen’drik had been through its own cataclysm millennia ago, so perhaps the existence of pockets of warped magic here should not be such a surprise, after all.

“So map them and go around,” Greddark said, clearly still perturbed at the Wayfinder’s earlier insult, veiled though it had been.

“If it were that simple, I’d have paid for an army of surveyors to blanket the desert twice over and staked out the path for all to use,” Brannan said patiently. Sabira had no doubt
that
was true, though the Wayfinder was conveniently leaving out the part where he’d charge travelers half a year’s wages for the privilege of doing so. “Unfortunately, these areas never seem to appear in the same spot twice—another manifestation of the Traveler’s Curse, perhaps. In any case, it’s impossible to either anticipate or avoid them. Hence, the different colored cloths. And verbal signals and lamps as required. We’re not
complete
savages.”

Sabira turned back to the front of the wagon quickly
to hide her grin and escape Greddark’s glower. Despite her objections to Brannan’s business practices, she couldn’t help but admire the Wayfinder’s wit. In fact, it was one of the things she found most attractive in a man. She supposed it was a good thing he wasn’t a couple of decades younger, or Elix might not appreciate the stories she returned to Karrnath with.

Thinking of her not-quite-betrothed reminded Sabira again of the stakes riding on her return to Vulyar. If she’d known she was going to have to face a dragon on the way to rescue Tilde … no. It wouldn’t have stopped her from coming. She’d see this through and her debt to Ned and his family paid, one way or the other. Only then would she be truly free to give Elix the answer to the question he’d been waiting so very long to ask.

As Xujil slowed the wagon, Sabira scrambled up into the seat beside him, and she could hear her companions moving around in the wagon behind her, preparing for the attack. Other wagons began appearing on either side of theirs, flanking them. Soon, the caravan was advancing in a horizontal line across the desert, the dragon’s storm at their backs and the dragon itself somewhere in front of them, waiting.

But not for long.

Sabira scanned the ground ahead again, eyes narrowed against the glare as she turned her head in a slow arc from side to side. Xujil was on her left, operating the mechanical wagon’s controls via a series of levers and glowing dials. Beyond him, another multi-legged schooner skittered across the sand, its driver likewise joined by a crossbow-wielding copilot. To her right, one of the magebred camels
pulled another wagon. A gnome with a wand sat atop the animal, hunkered down between two of its three humps. Two other gnomes sat on either side of the wagon driver, one with a crossbow and one with a dragonshard-tipped staff. Sabira was glad to see the diminutive passengers. They were obviously from the Library of Korranberg in Zilargo, and while the library wasn’t a school of magic per se, it employed some of the mightiest practitioners in Khorvaire to protect its vaults and expand their contents. If she couldn’t have a contingent of Blademarks at her side to fight a dragon, she’d take a gaggle of spellcasting gnomes, and be glad for it.

The gnome closest to her—the one with the staff—caught her eye across the gap and winked at her. He’d seen the Siberys shard on her urgrosh peeking over her shoulder and probably thought she was a fellow mage. She was just nodding back at him when the ground in front of his wagon erupted in a spray of sand and a loud, inhuman bellow.

Sabira whipped her crossbow over, but what she saw momentarily stunned her.

The sand dragon had burrowed beneath the path of the oncoming caravan and waited until they were just above it. Then it launched itself upward, coming up underneath the camel and crushing the animal and its hapless rider between its huge, spike-framed jaws. The camel shrieked in pain as sharp teeth ripped through its abdomen and the force of the dragon’s massive bite broke the magebred animal’s spine. Its horrific lowing was accompanied by the higher-pitched scream of its rider as the gnome lost both his legs and the lower half of his torso to the dragon’s hunger.

Quickly shaking off the horror of the attack, Sabira
leveled her borrowed crossbow and squeezed the trigger, letting the enchanted quarrel fly. Bolts and spells flew at the dragon from the gnomes’ wagon and from the schooner on the far side of it, but the mundane missiles clattered off the reptilian creature’s tough scales and the spells fizzled and popped in one of the magic-warping zones Brannan had warned of. Only Sabira’s bolt struck home, slamming into the dragon’s neck and sinking deep.

With a roar, the dragon tossed its head, trying to dislodge the quarrel and the pain it brought. The movement tore the camel’s corpse from its harness and overturned the gnomes’ wagon, sending it tumbling toward the one Sabira rode in. Only some quick maneuvering on Xujil’s part saved them from a similar fate. The drow pulled on two levers while simultaneous kicking a third forward with his left foot, and the mechanical wagon scuttled sideways and forward, just ahead of where the wreckage of the other wagon landed in a cloud of sand and splintered wood.

Sabira had been reaching for a second green-fletched bolt, but the unexpected movement knocked the quarrels from her lap as she struggled to maintain her seat. Two landed in the sand outside the wagon and one fell to the bottom of the driver’s platform, got wedged between control levers, and was promptly bent when Xujil forced those levers in opposite directions. That left one on the seat between her and the drow. As she snatched it up and began to fit it into the groove, Xujil shoved her aside, just as the dragon’s tail went whizzing over the platform where her head had been a half a heartbeat ago.