The Rite (14 page)

The landwyrm had nearly reached the crevasse when Kara lurched up onto her knees, singing words of power. The final, sustained note swelled louder and louder until the stone beneath the landwyrm’s shattered into chips and pebbles, and it floundered in the treacherous footing. The conjuration had evidently taken all of Kara’s remaining strength, for she collapsed facedown.

Still, she’d delayed the landwyrm long enough for Raryn to complete his own spell. For a moment, a fresh wind, smelling of verdure, gusted through the cave, and he felt connected, almost rooted, to the earth. Up the link surged an exhilarating wave of vitality that washed his sickness away.

He bellowed a war cry to attract the landwyrm’s attention, then charged. His greatest fear was that it would go ahead and toss Dorn in the abyss before turning to face him, It was what Raryn would have done in its place. But maybe frenzy had eroded its battle sense at least a little, for, still dangling Dorn from its jaws, it pivoted.

Raryn avoided two claw strikes, meeting the second with a counterattack that drew a spurt of blood and half-severed a toe. That was good as far as it went, but he needed to get at the landwyrm’s vitals, not just its extremities. He retreated, and when it started to follow, instantly sprang forward. The maneuver brought him within striking distance of its chest and he swung with all his strength, trying to shear through scale and ribs to the heart and lungs.

He drove in three blows before the reptile threw itself down, and he had to scurry to avoid being crushed beneath it. His feet slipped in the rubble shattered by Kara’s spell, and he nearly didn’t make it. The landwyrm tried to scramble back to its feet, but seemed to lack the strength to raise itself. The dozens of wounds it had suffered were taking their toll. It seemed surprised at its weakness, and before ii, could collect itself, Raryn lunged and buried his axe in the underside of its neck. The landwyrm collapsed.

Raryn immediately looked around to find out how Chatulio was faring. For a second, he only saw the remaining cave-dwelling dragon, gliding, seeking its foe. Then the copper flapped out from behind a massive stalactite several yards ahead of it. The slender subterranean drake spat a plume of its roiling corrosive breath. Caught squarely by the burst, the target exploded into a flock of giggling, flatulent pixies.

At the same moment, Raryn spotted the real Chatulio, no longer flying but walking upside down on the cavern ceiling as easily as a spider. Since the copper had distracted his adversary with a phantasm, he was able to smother the subterranean wyrm in a sheet of his own smoky breath. To Raryn’s surprise, the dark reptile’s scales didn’t char and bubble at its touch, but when the slender wyrm wheeled to face its attacker, the ranger perceived that the assault had nonetheless had an effect. The cave-dweller’s movements were slower than before.

Conceivably it could have cleansed itself of the enchantment with a counterspell, but Chatulio didn’t give it the chance. lie sprang from the ceiling and seized the other dragon in midair.

Grappling and thus unable to fly, they plummeted to the cavern floor with a prodigious slam that, amazingly, stunned neither. Entwined, snarling, grunting, rolling to and fro, they tore at one another with fang and claw.

His normal quickness unimpaired, Chatulio could rip more often than his adversary, and over the course of the next few heartbeats, the difference told. Finally he caught the cave-dweller’s sinuous neck in his jaws, and with one convulsive effort, bit it in two. Gore fountained from the stump.

His exposed skin bruised and scraped, Dorn yanked his iron arm free of the landwyrm’s fangs, breaking one in the process, then clambered to his feet.

Are you all right?” Raryn asked.

Dorn ignored the question to rush to Kara. Raryn followed.

The half-golem rolled her over onto her back, and snarled at what he thus revealed. Kara’s lavender eyes peered groggily from a field of raw, seeping burns, and Raryn reckoned it exceptional luck that the dark wyrm’s breath hadn’t seared them blind as well. It had spattered her scalp, though, singeing patches of her moon-blond hair away and fouling her with the stink.

Dorn extracted a healing draught from his belt pouch and held it for her to drink. But either she was too addled to understand or too feeble to swallow. She choked, and coughed the clear liquid out to run down her blistered chin.

Then something gave a rumbling growl. Dorn and Raryn lurched around. Standing over the headless corpse of his erstwhile foe, Chatulio glared at them. Raryn realized the agitation of combat had brought madness bubbling up inside the copper’s mind.

“Easy,” Raryn said, “easy. The fight’s over now, and we’re your friends. You don’t want to—”

Chatulio roared and stalked forward.

Raryn took hold of the vial in Dorn’s hand. “You’ve got to hold him back,” he said, “while I help Kara. Her magic’s the only thing that can calm him.”

Dorn grabbed his sword, jumped up, and advanced. Chatulio pounced and slashed with his foreclaws. Dorn tried to twist aside. The talons still rang on the iron half of his body, and knocked him staggering.

Raryn couldn’t watch whatever would happen next. He had to concentrate on Kara. He recited the charm that had augmented his own vigor, and as before, a forest-scented breeze gusted through the cavern. Kara shifted her limbs, and the dullness left her eyes.

Raryn offered her the healing elixir. She guzzled, only to retch it out once more.

A few yards away, Chatulio conjured a flare of yellow light that made Dorn shout in pain, then followed up with a sweep of his tail. The hunter barely managed to jump over the blow which would otherwise have shattered his leg of flesh and bone.

“Drink slowly,” said Raryn to Kara. “It’s the only way you’ll get it down.”

The bard gave a feeble nod.

Chatulio clawed. The attack clanged on iron, failing to penetrate, but hurling Dorn back against a massive lump of a stalagmite. He sprawled atop it, waving his sword, seemingly unable to rise. The impact had knocked the wind out of him at the very least.

Chatulio reared above him, throat swelling as he readied his breath weapon.

Kara finally managed to swallow some of the potion. Smooth new skin flowed across some of her blemishes, and her breathing eased a little.

“Prop me up,” she whispered, “so I can sing.”

Raryn heaved her up into a sitting position, but wondered if she’d be able to sing even so. She was still so weak. But her vibrant voice emerged as rich, sweet, and precisely cadenced as ever, the melody charged with a power that supplanted the fear and desperation in the ranger’s mind with calmness and a profound feeling of good will toward his companions.

Until the song broke off abruptly, in the middle of the fifth line. Kara slumped in Raryn’s arms, her head lolling.

Still, she’d endured long enough. Her power had quelled Chatulio’s frenzy for a little longer, anyway.

“I’m sorry!” the copper cried. “I’m so sorry. Dorn, are you all right?”

The human demonstrated that he was by clambering off the stalagmite and turning to Raryn to ask, “How is she?”

“Still alive,” said the dwarf, “but in need of more help than my charms and our elixirs can give. They’ll have real healers in the monastery.”

“Then let’s move out,” said Dorn.

They trekked onward through the stony labyrinth, Chatulio bearing Kara on his back. Raryn remained uncertain of their course. True, he’d guided his comrades correctly as far as the rope bridge, and maybe that was cause for optimism, but it was no guarantee that he wouldn’t stray from the right path eventually.

As he peered for a sign, or paused to ponder a choice, he could feel Dorn’s urgency like heat from a fire. His friend

was all but frantic to reach their destination. But the big man never demanded that he hurry. He knew a ranger needed time to exercise his craft.

At last they wove their way through a field of stalagmites, rounded a sharp turn, and beheld an incline. At the top was a ledge, and at the back of that, a large, iron-bound door set into the cavern wall.

Chatulio ran up the slope as easily as if he were loping on a flat surface. Unwilling to be left behind, Dorn scrambled up the incline as fast as he could, digging his iron claws into whatever handhold presented itself. Raryn brought up the rear.

Dorn clambered past Chatulio’s dangling tail and up onto the shelf, where the copper had risen onto his hind Legs to make more room for his companions.

“I knocked,” Chatulio said, “and called out, but no one’s answered yet.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dorn said as he pulled back his iron fist to punch the door.

“No,” Kara groaned from her perch atop Chatulio’s spine.

She sang an arpeggio that momentarily made Dorn feel a strange, poignant yearning to yield to her in some unfathomable way. The door did surrender itself, quivering and clanking as locks and latches disengaged. Spent, Kara seemed to slump back into semiconsciousness.

Dorn thrust the door open to bang against the wall. On the other side was a shadowy corridor of worked stone, lit by a few magical lights set at regular intervals. Affixed to the wall like torches in sconces, shining with their own steady golden luminescence, the enchanted lamps were roses sculpted from crystal.

“Looks like a Monastery of the Yellow Rose to me,” Chatulio said.

Dorn strode down the hallway bellowing that they needed a healer. His companions scurried after, Chatulio filling the passage. The seekers passed dozens of storerooms, and chambers filled with ranks of towering bookshelves, before a gangly, shaven-headed boy on the verge of manhood stepped from a doorway. He was dressed simply, all in gray, and had a wooden amulet carved in the form of bound hands—Ilmater’s emblem—dangling around his neck. He goggled at the strangers, his eyes widened in panic, and he whirled and ran.

“Wait!” Dorn shouted. “We’re friendly!”

It did no good. The youth had unexpectedly come face-to-face with a dragon—and a monstrosity with iron limbs—while wyrms had the monastery under siege. Naturally he believed the worst.

Not wanting the novice to raise the entire fortress against them, Dorn gave chase, but realized almost immediately that he couldn’t overtake him. The boy was a good runner, and had too much of a lead.

Then a shaft streaked past Dorn and hit the youth in the knee. It had been a tricky shot in the cramped confines of the corridor, especially with the half-golem between the bow and the target, but not impossible for an archer as adept as Raryn. The blunt fowling arrow knocked the boy down.

Dorn sprinted and threw himself on top of the novice. The boy screamed until the hunter backhanded him.

“Shut up!” Dorn snarled. “Shut up, look at us, and think, damn you! I’ve got you down helpless on the ground and I’ve got spikes and claws on my hand. If I wanted to kill you, I’d smash your skull and that would be that. The dwarf could have shot you with a sharp arrow. The drake could have sprayed you with his breath. But he’s a good dragon. A copper. If you try, you can see the color of his scales even in this light.”

The monk peered, squinting, and some of the fear faded from his expression, which still left him looking too weary and care-worm for one so young.

“Who…. who are you?” he asked.

“Friends,” said Dorn. “We came through the caves, but we ran into trouble. Our companion needs a healer. Right now.”

“The clerics are all on the upper levels,” said the boy. “Everyone is, except the youngest neophytes, the wounded, and those of us charged to mind them.”

“Take us.”

“You don’t understand. You can’t hear it this deep in the rock, but the wyrms are attacking. The priests are busy fighting them. No one can break away to—”

“Shut up!” said Dorn. “Listen. My comrades and I are good at killing dragons. We’ll kill some for you now, to pay for the healing Kara needs. But somebody is going to care for her. Otherwise, we’ll help the wyrms bring this pile down around your ears.”

The monk swallowed and said, “Come on, then.”

Limping, he led them to a broad staircase that, zigzagging back and forth, carried them higher and higher. As they scrambled upward, Dorn started to hear the cacophony of the battle raging above his head, the sounds weirdly distorted by the tons of intervening stone, but recognizable nonetheless. The roars and hisses of dragons, and the boom and sizzle of their breath. Their human prey crying out in desperation, and screaming in agony.

For a moment, much as he lived for the satisfaction of killing wyrms, he also flinched from what was to come. He was weary from clambering and trudging through the caves, and sore all over from the beating the landwyrm had given him, in no condition to plunge into a new fight. But he reckoned he had no choice.

So don’t be weak, he told himself. Don’t be tired. You don’t have any right to be. Softness is for people, and you’re not one anymore. You’re a thing of metal, built for killing. Just go do it.

Finally the monk opened a triangular-arched door, admitting a gust of smoky air, the stink of burned flesh, and sunlight. After his hours underground, Dorn had to squinch his eyes to slits and wait for them to adjust to the brightness.

Once they did, he peered out into a courtyard. High walls surrounded it, and a net made of rattling chains with

barbed hooks attached covered the top. Other such constructions stretched between towers like enormous spiderwebs. Together with mystical barriers—floating sheets of flame, clouds of spinning blades, planes of seething light—conjured by the monastery’s spellcasters, the nets made it difficult for the wheeling, swooping dragons to fly or fight in the air immediately above the stronghold.

Yet the mesh couldn’t stop the scourge of their breath, or the relentless pounding savagery of their sorcery. Sometimes it even failed to hold back the reptiles themselves, if they were eager enough to break through.

A colossal green plummeted at one of the wall-walks and the curtain of chain strung above. The drake’s momentum tore the net loose from its moorings, and it slammed down atop the battlements tangled in the wreckage, with the hooks embedded in its scaly hide. That should have hampered it, but when monks came running to engage it, it struck and clawed at them with all a wyrm’s horrific speed. its strength was such that the chains simply snapped like threads to accommodate its movements. It clawed two monks to death in as many seconds, flinging their tattered bodies off the wall to thump down in the courtyard.