The Rage (22 page)

Taegan bowed and said, “I’ll never forgive myself for attacking you. I’ll do anything in my power to make amends.’

“I’m used to being mistaken for some kind of ogre,” the huge man said with a shrug. “I’m Dorn Graybrook. These others are Pavel Shemov, Will Turnstone, Raryn Snowstealer, and Kara.”

The avariel said, “My name is Taegan Nightwind, former maestro of the Nightwind Academy, and I’m grateful to you all. If you hadn’t passed by…”

“We didn’t just pass by,” said Will, the baffling. “We were looking for you. Well, your school. We’ve been going from one salle to the next, trying to find out where Gorstag Helder studied. I kept thinking we should stop, get some sleep, and take up the search again come morning. But we were too keyed up, and I guess it was just as well.”

“Gorstag was my student,” Taegan admitted.

Pavel glanced around, making sure no one was close enough to eavesdrop, then said, “We’re trying to learn more about the trouble that led to his death, and we know fencing meant a great deal to him. Did he confide in you? Or was he particularly close to any of his fellow pupils?”

“Unless I’m very much mistaken, you’re outlanders,” Taegan said. “Why do you care what happened to Gorstag?”

“Because he ran afoul of the Cult of the Dragon,” Kara said. “Do you know of it?”

“Of course he does,” Dorn snapped, as if it had galled him just to hear her speak. “That’s why the demons—” “Abishai,” Pavel murmured.

Apparently his store of esoteric knowledge had enabled him to identify the creatures.

“That’s why the abishai attacked the school,” Dorn went on, “and why he immediately assumed I was an enemy. Isn’t that right, elf?”

Taegan disliked being called “elf,” but thought he had more important issues to address.

“I ask again,” said Taegan “How does this concern you?” “If Gorstag told you anything,” said Kara, “he probably said he was working for the Harpers.”

“That’s you?”

“No,” she said. “He was mistaken. But what matters is that we know what he believed. We wouldn’t, had his employer not sent us to investigate his murder.”

“So,” said Will, “can you help us?”

Taegan wondered if the outlanders would buy the book and folio, and if so, how much they’d pay. It could be the remedy to the disaster than had overtaken him, yet he found he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask. Somehow honor precluded it, though he wasn’t sure if it was an irrational feeling of obligation to Gorstag, his genuine indebtedness to Dorn and his companions, or the lust for a pure revenge on the cultists, unsullied by considerations of profit, that balked him.

Whatever it was, he simply said, “We have stories to trade, and I suspect it will take a while. Let’s not do it standing in the street. I know a tavern nearby where they’ll rent us a private room, fetch water, soap, and towels so we can clean up, and cook us breakfast, too.”

The kippers, eggs, and scones were only a memory by the time Taegan had heard their tale and related the greater part of his own.

“I suppose,” he said, “that after two failed attempts to kill me eye to eye and blade to blade, they decided to try arson instead. Even if the fire didn’t eliminate me, it would probably destroy the purple book, and that was preferable to leaving it in the hands on an unbeliever.”

“I hope,” said Dorn, “that when you separated from me at the end, you went to retrieve it and the loose papers, too.” “Actually,” said Taegan, “yes?’

He made a stack of dirty plates to clear a space on the ring-scarred tabletop, then fetched out the articles in question.

“May I?” Pavel asked. He picked up the book, frowned

at the sigil embossed on the spine, and riffled through the pages. “It’s the Tome of the Dragon. The unholy screed of the sect.”

“Can you read it?” Raryn asked.

“No. It’s written in cipher. But Fm sure that over the centuries, somebody succeeded in translating a captured copy. My hunch is that if… well, call him Sammaster for the time being, even though we pray he’s an impostor… if Sammaster recorded any information about the Rage just now commencing, it’s in the notes.”

He traded the book for the folio, examined the first few pages, and his mouth tightened in vexation.

“I take it,” Taegan said, “you can’t make sense of those, either.”

“Worse,” said the cleric. “At least the tome uses Thbrass. The characters in the notes don’t come from any alphabet I’ve ever seen?

Perched atop the long-legged stool that raised him high enough to use the table comfortably, Will snorted. “As if that means anything. You pretend to be a scholar, but we all know you can barely write your name.”

Pavel bristled and said, “You slandering maggot. I’m literate in eight languages and can recognize a good many more?

“Well, I doubt you know all the tricks thieves use to keep their business secret. Give me those.” He took possession of the documents, made his own inspection, and eventually said, “Bugger.”

“We don’t need to read them,” growled Dorn. “We just have to hand them over to Brimstone, whoever he is, and we’re done, remember?”

“Do you mind if I tag along?” Taegan asked.

The gods knew, he no longer had anything else of pressing importance to do.

The night was warmer than Dorn had expected. Balmy air had blown up from the south to provide a first teasing promise of spring. Still, though he’d done plenty of it in his time, he disliked traveling cross-country in the dark, even when the territory seemed as clear, settled, and peaceful as the farmland surrounding Lyrabar. Something could still creep up on you.

Accordingly, he supposed he should be glad Kara retained something of a dragon’s keen senses even in human guise. She seemed to see in the dark as well as Taegan, maybe even as well as Raryn, which meant the band had another able lookout watching for trouble. Yet it irked him somehow.

His mood soured still further when she dropped back from the head of the column to tramp at his side along the slushy, rutted road.

“If we truly are about to part,” she murmured, “I want to thank you and apologize for deceiving you.”

“Just pay what you owe.”

She sighed. “I understand why you hate dragons. But we aren’t all alike.”

He didn’t bother to answer.

“If you think about it,” she persisted, “you’ll realize I only lied that first night and only about how I received my wounds. Everything else I told you was the truth. I just didn’t give you all the details.”

“You did lie afterward. You pretended to like me.” “I did. I do.”

“Like me .. “It was hard to say. The mere thought seemed to trigger a chorus of derisive laughter inside his head. “Like me as a woman likes a man. A trick to make sure I’d fight to protect you even against Lareth’s agents.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Curse you, can’t you talk straight even now, or does your tongue always fork whatever form you wear? We’re two completely different kinds of creature.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Through the ages, drakes who can shapeshift have often loved humans or elves.”

I doubt they picked cripples and freaks to be their partners, Dorn thought, but that retort was too bitter to utter.

Instead, he said, “Maybe every species has its perverts.”

“It isn’t perverse. It’s natural, particularly for song dragons. We differ from the rest of our kind in a number of ways, and one is that we’re particularly at home in human guise. We spend the majority of our time that way. We have a legend that our earliest ancestors were entirely human, until a god blessed them with the power to transform.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “I’m just your hired bodyguard doing a job that’s nearly over.”

“Very well, if that’s the way you want it.”

She lifted her hand as if to touch him, evidently thought better of it, and returned to the front of the procession.

A few minutes later, Raryn called, “I think I see it.”

He led them off the road and up a hill. Deep snow lay there, untrodden by anyone before them, and they slipped and floundered as, their steps crunching, they made their ascent. Taegan spread his raven-feathered wings as though he meant to fly to the summit, then opted to remain on the ground. Maybe it was a gesture of camaraderie, or maybe he wanted to make sure he didn’t blunder into a trap all by himself. For after all, what they did know about Brimstone, except that a damned lying wyrm wanted them to bring him the tome and folio.

As it turned out, they weren’t advancing into any sort of ambuscade. Nothing waited on the hilltop but the ten weathered menhirs, nine standing, one toppled. Will paced about, peering down the slopes.

“Say his name and Brimstone will hear and come running, but from where?” he asked. “It’s just open fields for a mile all around.”

“He’ll hear by magic, you dunce,” Pavel replied.

His own powers were largely depleted. He’d cast a good many healing spells to help the victims of the fire and wouldn’t have a chance to replenish them until dawn. Still, he managed to set the head of his mace shining like a lamp,

then used the golden light to examine the nearly illegible glyphs incised on the menhirs. He scowled.

“What’s wrong?” Raryn asked.

“This is a bad place,” the priest replied. “Servants of Bane raised this circle.”

Dorn understood why that concerned him. They’d had dealings with Zhents and other adherents of the Black Lord of Hatred and Fear—unfortunately, the god’s worship flourished in the lands surrounding the Moonsea and found them to be a despicable pack of reavers and necromancers. Still…

“It looks like the Impilturans exterminated this particular coven a long time ago,” he said. “Or else it died out on its own.”

“True. Yet I have to wonder what sort of person would choose to associate himself with this site for any purpose whatsoever.”

Will said, “We know how to find out.”

“Yes,” said Dorn, “and let’s get it over with. Everyone, look sharp. Brimstone!”

The response came instantly. For a split second, he had the dizzying sensation of plummeting—or hurtling, he couldn’t really tell—through a void seething with light. Then, once again, he had a solid surface beneath his feet. He peered about, felt a jolt of terror, and reflexively snatched for the hilt of his sword.

Transported by magic, he and his companions had materialized in the very place Will had always dreamed of: a dragon’s cavern lair, where the flickering greenish light of two huge, ever-burning torches glinted on the coins and gems that overflowed their coffers to carpet the limestone floor. Unfortunately for the halfling thief, or anyone else inclined to pilfer, the owner of all this wealth crouched in the midst of it, regarding his visitors with crimson eyes luminous as coals.

Like most people, Dorn generally used the terms “dragon” and “drake” interchangeably, but from his studies, he knew

that sages, when speaking precisely, employed them to designate two different genera of wyrm. Drakes were generally smaller than their cousins, but not always. The ooze drake he’d hunted in the Flooded Forest had been one exception, and the smoke drake who even then loomed before him was another.

His scales charcoal gray with dark red dabs and streaks, a jet-black ridge of stiff cartilage jutting from his spine, stinking of combustion, Brimstone was almost as huge as Azhaq.

The half-golem had his sword halfway out of the scabbard before recalling he’d expected Brimstone to be a wyrm and that they’d come to deliver Sammaster’s papers to him, not fight. True, it was startling to find himself face to face with the creature so suddenly and equally disquieting to see that Brimstone belonged to a notoriously vicious species instead of one of the ostensibly kindly ones, but maybe that in and of itself was insufficient. reason to deviate from the plan. With a pang of regret, he shoved his weapon back into its sheath, then glanced around to make sure his companions had no immediate intention of attacking the reptile, either.

Most of them were all right. Pavel, however, his normally calm, pleasant expression supplanted by a snarl of righteous fury, recited the opening words of an exorcism and brandished his sun medallion. The sacred amulet shone with a dazzling brightness. For a second, Brimstone flinched from the glare. Then he lunged, huge jaws spreading wide.

Dorn, Kara, and Will scrambled into the smoke drake’s path. Brimstone could easily have smashed right through them, possibly trampling them in the process, but lurched to a halt instead. Meanwhile Taegan grabbed Pavel’s upraised arm and struggled to wrestle it, and the luminous medallion, down.

“Stop this!” Raryn shouted.

“It’s not just a dragon,” Pavel replied, “it’s undead! Can’t you feel it?”

Actually, Dorn couldn’t, but he didn’t doubt that his friend could. Priests had special powers against the restless dead and accordingly, a special duty to suppress them. Servants of the Morninglord, with their bond to the purifying sun, waged the eternal war with particular zeal.

“It doesn’t matter,” Raryn said. “We promised to help Kara. We need to, if we’re going to deal with the Rage. That means a parley, not a hunt, so put out the glow!”

Pavel stopped struggling against Taegan, and the bright white light faded away. He glared at Brimstone.

“You and I aren’t finished,” he said.

The smoke drake ignored him to glower at Kara.

“I didn’t tell you to bring anyone else,” he hissed. His voice was startlingly soft for such a vast creature, virtually a whisper. “Certainly not a fool like this.”

“What are you?” she said.

“Drake,” he said, “and vampire, as the little sun priest perceived.”

“Then you can only mean us ill,” Pavel said. “The charter of the Cult of the Dragon is to help undead wyrms conquer the world.”

Brimstone sneered and said, “But not undead wyrms like me.” He returned his attention to Kara. “Must you have your lackeys here?”

“We’re not leaving,” said Raryn. “At least not until we’re sure we aren’t delivering the information we carry into exactly the wrong set of claws.”

“I want them with me,” Kara said. “They’ve earned the right, and it’s my hope they’ll agree to aid me further in the days to come.”