Dragons of War (21 page)

"You have a good knowledge of the language and customs of the so-called Argonath cities."

"And you have spent time in the hinterlands there."

"That is why you have been chosen to advise General Lukash."

He looked down, oppressed by the pitiless stares of all five of them. He was but a gnat, a flickering thing of impulses compared to them. He struggled for the courage to speak, knowing that it was vital.

"But, Masters, there is a difficulty." He couldn't believe he was saying it, but he was.

"Difficulty?" A note of incredulity.

"General Lukash refuses to meet with me. I have had no contact with him. I cannot advise unless I can speak to him."

There was a long, ominous silence.

"Lukash will meet with you, Magician Thrembode. You will advise him." There was a dreadful finality in the words.

Dragon vision was acute in the darkness, the legacy of aeons of predation. In the forest of Valur, this was proving to be a useful trait.

Bazil moved again, closer, easing his bulk through the trees and then freezing behind a massive pine.

Up ahead the eerie light continued to shine from elfin lamps while the high whistling music went on unabated. Forest elves disported themselves on the shee, and they were too busy with the fun to notice the two-ton monster that crept upon them.

Once more he slid forward, stepping on a rotten branch that broke, but not very loudly. He froze. The music went on. He peered between the branches of two small pines and finally saw them at their dancing.

High and fey they were, leaping on pointed toe beneath the moon. The musicians, six of them, played flutes and whistles, tambourines and small snare drums. The dancers, perhaps two score, perhaps more, formed a circle in the glade. The music was elastic, lively, guaranteed to set the heels of anyone to bouncing, except for dragons, who were impervious to most magic in the world. While Bazil watched, the elves danced, spinning, twirling, and even tumbling. Some of them were spectacular tumblers, doing double back flips at the end of every turn of the reel. Hand-to-hand and toe-to-toe, they flew through complex motions and fancy steps.

Among them was a fellow with a regal bearing, clad in a costume of finely worked deer skin dyed a brilliant scarlet. He seemed a leader of some sort, someone who might have information.

Baz measured the distance to the fellow. Once out of concealment, he would have fifty feet to cover. He gathered himself. If anyone could tell him what had happened to Relkin, it would be an elf. They knew everything that happened in their woods.

High flew the dancers, back flips, spins, and all. Away sang the music, away to the Mountains of Lorn and the ancient days of yore. Suddenly the pine trees shook as Bazil lurched out of concealment and sprang among the circle.

There was a moment of incredulity. The dancers stopped, mid-whirl, on point, hands high and then with a collective shriek of dismay and bewilderment, they broke and ran like mice scattering from a barn cat.

The one clad in scarlet ran toward the forest with the acceleration of an athlete. Bazil altered course and sprang after him, gathering himself for a great leap.

He sprang, the elf darted sideways, and Bazil missed him. He tried to halt his momentum, but he'd jumped too hard and he lost his footing and fell and rolled into a thorn thicket.

When he'd extricated himself at last, there wasn't an elf in sight. With a groan, he started forward.

He'd been out in the woods for hours. Everyone else had long since returned to the
Alba
. The rest of the fleet had gone on. The
Alba
could only wait a few more hours.

But the boy was lost, bewitched, bedazzled, something had overcome his wits and he had absconded. Bazil had heard the tales concerning elf abductions and the dwarf slavers who lived below the ground. These were not the civilized elves he knew from the Argonath cities, with their sophisticated elf quarters. These were forest elves of Valur, with all its antique glories and hidden magic.

What was certain was that if he didn't find the damned boy, he was going to be without a dragonboy. He hated sharing. He'd had to share Relkin with the Purple Green for a few months and that had been rough. Now it would be even worse.

He chided himself for thinking this way. He had had Relkin since he was no more than a child. They had grown up together. They were each other's family. The dragoness hardly counted as family, since she was pursuing caribou and grizzly bears in the far north. Baz couldn't leave the dragonboy behind, he had to find him even if it was a damned nuisance to be out here, ripped up by thorns, hot and bothered, utterly lost, even bewildered.

He stumbled on through the forest, not knowing what he was looking for. In the glades he would look up to the moon, so bright, so pitiless. He cocked his ears but heard nothing, except once the cough of an elk in the distance.

Then while negotiating a thicket of small trees, he heard another sound, something that froze him in place. Someone was cursing at high volume. Loud vituperation in a high-pitched voice. The emotion was unmistakable, even if the language was unknown.

There was a moment's silence and then another outburst, the same elfin voice, a female voice.

Bazil moved in its direction, across a slope covered in laurel and box elder. It was impossible to be completely silent, but it didn't seem to matter. The female elf voice continued to vent loud criticisms. As he got closer, he could hear other voices, deeper than the elf's, shouting things back. They were muffled, however, and he knew they were shouting from within a structure, or a cave.

He pressed on and came over the top of the slope and saw an elf maiden in simple garb, leaning over the edge of a hidden passage. She screamed a few more choice insults and then turned away. Bazil saw a head come up from the ground and yell something after her in a tongue that he did not recognize. The head spat, then an arm came up, and pulled shut the trapdoor.

Bazil was on the scene moments later. There was no visible sign of any door. All he could see was bare ground with a rock half buried in it. For a moment the dragon was nonplussed. Then he shook himself from neck to tail. This was magic of course, and magic of a high order. He studied the ground. Clearly it was a puzzle of some kind. He wished Relkin was there. Dragonboys were so much better at this kind of thing than dragons.

He focused on the rock, about the size and smoothness of a dragon's egg. Cautiously, he reached down and touched it. It felt very smooth to the touch. He pushed at it with a finger. Nothing happened. He stood back and studied it. It was too smooth to be anything but part of the spell. There was something unreal about it. He tried it again. On a hunch he curled his big hand around it and squeezed.

Immediately it changed beneath his hand, shifting shape and becoming a big brass ring attached to a bolt sunk into the ground.

He pulled on the ring and a patch of ground six feet by four came up smoothly on invisible hinges. A set of steps led down into the dark.

He knew he was never going to catch that elf girl in the night forest. Perhaps he could get some answers to his questions down those steps. Someone lived down there, that much was evident.

Relkin ran lightly down the steps into the deeper darkness of the lower levels. Here the landings gave out onto immense halls, all empty and silent, replete with the dust of the ages. He had no light and thus did not realize that he ran beneath ceilings encrusted with gemstones and inlaid with gold. He noticed mirrors but did not know they were made of solid silver.

He heard the pursuit far above. Loud voices bellowed in the language of the dwarves. They were coming down after him, there were lanterns flickering in the stairwell.

He'd gone down twelve levels, and the last staircase had been several times as long as the first. Now the stairs ended, leaving him on a vast floor of stone carpeted in dust and the bones of unknown animals. In the light from the descending lanterns, he saw that there were tracks in the dust, quite recent. The skull of a dog lay nearby. He picked it up. Even in the dim light he could tell that it had been gnawed.

He set his jaw and headed through a wide entanceway into a space of immense dimensions, a ceremonial hall. Any sound he made seemed to echo back to him in the stillness. From far above he heard a triumphant dwarvish bellow.

He could just make out the dim outline of the far end of the hall. There was another double entrance. The doors had been broken down and lay shattered just inside the hall. Relkin picked his way through the rotten wood and went on into a second hall. There was a sour smell in here, something like unwashed socks. Now the light was so dim he could make out no far end or even the ceiling. The lack of light was going to make it difficult to go on too far in this underground city. What he needed to find was another staircase, some means of returning to the upper levels. Either that or a lantern.

He padded across the dust-strewn floor with a slow-growing sense of unease and awe at the scale of this room. It was bigger than the other one, bigger than even the Temple in Marneri.

He noticed that the sour odor was getting stronger. Something about it made the hair on his neck rise. He glanced over his shoulder and almost jumped out of his skin.

Lurching along just behind him was a pale manlike creature, covered in white hair, with red eyes sunk in cavernous sockets. It gathered itself to spring on him.

Relkin yelled in fright and jigged sideways, and the thing blundered by with arms outspread. He felt fingers brush past his face.

His heart pounding from surprise and fright Relkin danced backwards, away from the thing.

That smell came again, but stronger than ever. He looked back and saw another pair of similar creatures. Beyond them were others. With a sickening realization, he understood.

"Lurkers," he whispered. The legendary inhabitants of all the deep, dark places of the world. Lurkers! Misshapen things with long forearms and knuckles that brushed the ground. They were said by some to be the ancestral parents of the race of trolls. They ate whatever came into their cold, quiet realm. Now they lurched after him, grunting in anticipation of the feast to come.

He had no weapons, nothing to fight them with. They looked very strong, but they were slower than a man. He darted away from one pair as they came close and jinked past another one and went on until he reached a wall. He turned back to the dim light emanating from the distant stairwell. He started to run that way and then stopped. To go back there was to turn right into the dwarves. He couldn't go back. He had to go on. He turned and sped along the wall through the dark. He outpaced the lurkers and reached the remains of the doors at the far end of the great hall. These fragments of timber were still in place. They had been broken off at the ground, however, to allow the lurkers to pass through as they pleased.

The space beyond was totally dark. Relkin's nostrils twitched in time. That sour smell again, they were in there, waiting for him to blunder into their arms.

He backed away. The smell grew stronger, they were coming through the door for him.

With a cry of despair, he turned and ran back the way he had come. Lurkers were waiting for him.

It was like some nightmarish game, except that he was the ball and if they tackled him, they would eat him. The lurkers converged toward him, trying to herd him to the wall.

He couldn't allow that. There were ten of them at least, they'd catch him for sure if they cornered him. He braked, cut back, and spun away from one that dove in at him at knee level.

Another swung up an arm. He kicked it in the chest, felt the lurker give way, and then he sprang past, just evading the creature's grip. He ran for the end of their line, his breath coming harsh now as he accelerated to his limit.

He distanced them, and curved back to the door. He was faster than the lurkers, that was all he needed. But a few were still closer to the door, and they converged there quickly. He sprinted, pushing himself harder than he'd ever run before and slipped the grasping hands of the closest. He actually felt a hand slide down his back and almost grab hold of his belt before he was through and into the first chamber.

Thankfully, there were no more of them ahead, and he slowed a little and ran for the distant staircase. Better the dwarves than the lurkers any day. He muttered a prayer to old Caymo and wondered when the old god was going to take notice that his servant Relkin was in a terrible plight.

He left the hall and almost bounded into a small group of waiting lurkers. He ducked a hand, felt another grab his shirt, but tore free and spun around. A hand struck him in the face, and he swung and connected with a roundhouse left that hurt his fist. He stumbled, almost fell, and then was past them.

There was nothing to do but to run for it. There were more of the things emerging from another doorway. The lowest level was infested with them. His hand hurt, he cradled it in the other as he ran. They were right behind him, bowling along like apes on all four limbs.

He was trapped between the worst and the second worst possibilities in life—to be devoured by the lurkers or to be enslaved by the dwarves.

He reminded himself that while there was life, there was hope. He wondered if old Caymo was ever going to step in.

He wondered if he shouldn't try an appeal to the Great Mother.

He reached the stairs and sprang up them, two at a time.

The lurkers were on the stairs a moment later, and they sprang up them three at a time and soon began to gain on him. He looked back and received yet another fright as he saw how close they were.

The lanterns were still far above as the dwarves searched, level by level.

The lurkers were virtually designed for climbing stairs, perhaps the grim secret of their success. Once something came down into their world, it could never escape. Now they were snatching at his heels, even as he picked up the pace to take the steps three at a time.