The Dragonstone (69 page)

“I hate to admit it,” said Egil, “but Aiko does have a point. Ferret always considered the Dragonstone a treasure, one to be sold to the highest bidder.”

“How can you say that?” Delon’s words gritted out through clenched teeth. “She has been loyal to the end.”

“I’m sorry, Delon,” replied Egil, “and if I’m wrong I apologize. But in Pendwyr, if you recall, they named her Queen of All Thieves.”

“But she was innocent,” protested Delon.

“Or so she said,” declared Aiko.

“Mayhap she is injured below and cannot climb back up the way,” suggested Arin, pointing toward the crevice at the back of the cavernous hollow in the mountainside.

Delon began gathering up his climbing gear. “I’m going down in.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Burel.

Arin turned to Egil. “I know the way and will go as well, but thou,
chier,
thou shouldst remain and recover from thy trial.”

“Hold,” hissed Aiko, drawing her blades, “my tiger whispers of peril.”

“Where?” asked Egil, grasping his dagger, his axe long lost ’neath the rushing waters of the abyss far below.

“Somewhere near and nearing,” replied Aiko, stepping toward the rear of the ledge.

All now held weapons in hand and followed Aiko as she strode toward the entrance to the passage below, the silent hissing of her red tiger growing with each step.

And now from ahead they could hear a scraping, and the gasp of heavy breathing, and from the darkness of the cave there shone a glimmer of lanternlight and came a panting call: “Well, isn’t anyone going to help me with this bedamned heavy thing?”

“Ferai!” shouted Delon, running forward, as she came dragging the silver chest out from the crevice. The bard swept her up in his embrace and kissed her soundly, as the others, grinning and laughing, stepped toward her, all but Aiko and Burel.

“The peril, my love!” said the big man, raising an eyebrow.

“Stronger than ever,” replied Aiko, peering about in the long shadows of the setting sun.

“Perhaps it is the Dragonstone,” he suggested.

Aiko took a prolonged breath and stared at the chest, then looked up at Burel uncertainly.

“Adon, but I’m glad to see you all,” said Ferret. Then she turned to Arin and Egil. “Especially you two. I thought you both done for—slain by the Krakens.”

“I take it there was no Kraken waiting for you,” said Egil.

“No,” replied Ferret. “It seems two were enough, or so Ordrune thought. But I was frightened, let me tell you, and almost couldn’t bring myself to touch this charmed silver box. —And another thing: it was damned hard lugging that millstone up all alone…especially over the ice—I almost dropped it a dozen times. The farther I went the heavier it got, or so it seemed—it started out ’round seventy pounds but must scale a thousand by now.”

“Nevertheless, love, you brought it after all,” said Delon, casting Egil and Aiko a significant glance.

“Where’s the Dragon?” asked Ferai, looking about.

“In the many arms of his two lovers, luv,” replied Delon, gesturing toward the sea.

“Then let’s see what’s inside,” said Ferret, her eyes glittering as she knelt beside the chest and took her lockpicks from her small belt pack. She turned to Arin. “Is it yet charmed?”

Arin looked at the chest, then said, “No. The glow is gone.”

“Hmm, it probably went away when I opened the lock on the chain. And by the way, that latch was very tricksy—I had to lock it twice altogether just to get it open.”

Ferret carefully examined the chest and the keyhole on its hasp. At last she inserted a pick, and a look of deep concentration fell on her features.

click!

She slid to one side and, using the pick, cautiously raised the hasp and waited. Satisfied, she edged the lid up an inch or so and again waited. Finally she opened it steadily until it lay all the way back.

Aiko gasped. “My tiger. The peril.”

Again Burel said, “The Dragonstone?”

“Perhaps.” Aiko looked about, sighting no one or
nothing standing near, nought, that is, but enshadowed boulders and Alos beginning to stir and the open chest at hand.

Ferret looked inside, then drew out a leather bag. She set it down and untied the thong wound tightly ’round its neck. Then carefully, cautiously, she reached in and withdrew a large, egg-shaped, melon-sized, translucent, pale green stone, lustrous and faintly glowing with an inner light, and she held it up for all to see.

“Just as in my vision,” breathed Arin, reaching out to take it. The Dylvana cradled the jadelike ovoid in two hands and looked at the others. “This, my friends, is the Dragonstone.”

Through the bloodred sunlight hurtled a tumbling glitter, and glass shattered at their feet, and a yellow-green gas billowed upward, as from behind there came a sharp command—
“Akoúsete me! Peísesthe moi!
And move not!” Egil tried to turn but found he could not move, his body unable to respond.

“I thank you for recovering my prize,” hissed a voice—followed by soft laughter.

And then stepping ’round Arin and taking the stone came stalking the Wizard Ordrune.

O
rdrune held the pale jade ovoid to the sky and laughed as the crimson sunset bathed the translucent orb, casting glints to the eye like luminous drops of blood. “At last you are mine once more,” cried the Mage, then he whirled ’round in a gleeful dance.

Of a sudden he paused and looked at the ensorcelled band behind, entranced by his arcane words of binding, their resistance lowered by his vaporous concoction. Rage boiled behind their eyes, yet they could not move, for he had so commanded. “Ah, my fools, I thank you for obtaining that which was beyond my grasp. —What’s that, you ask? If I hid it in the first place, could I not retrieve it? I suppose since you redeemed it for me, I owe you an explanation before you perish.

“Walk with me and I’ll tell you the tale as we stride toward your doom.”

Ordrune passed among the six of them, strolling slowly for the lip of the precipice. Completely enslaved and unable to help themselves, woodenly they followed, though their features were filled with fury.

“Heed: long past when Black Kalgalath and Daagor and lowly Quirm stood before me at the portals of Black Mountain, then did I know that I had to possess this most puissant token of power.

“But I knew if I took it then, I would be hounded by the fools cowering inside, hounded by the Mages who ultimately swore the oath.

“And Quirm, ineffectual Quirm, the weakest of the lot, it was he I subverted there before the very gates when the Dragonstone was revealed. It was deep in his mind that I discovered a perfect hiding place for the stone—the place from which you so neatly extracted it.”

Ordrune paused in his steps and gazed into the stone, his ensorcelled captives pausing with him.

“Unlike those who were expelled from Black Mountain, I but pretended to swear to the oath of binding, and I bided my time. Then I went on a long sabbatical—to study the world, I claimed. But in truth it was to prepare my strongholt, the one you so foolishly assaulted.”

Ordrune took up his stroll once again, and unable to do otherwise, the six trod after, for so their enslavement demanded, and even Aiko, with her red tiger ward, could not break the spell, though low in her chest was a rumble.

“I waited until Quirm stood sentinel here on Dragons’ Roost, and I stole back into Black Mountain and took the green stone from the deep vaults within. I knew that when they ultimately discovered it was gone, the fools in that Mageholt would comb the world, and I didn’t wish for them to find a trace of the stone within my tower, though the chances of any of those dolts doing so were virtually nonexistent. And for such a token, well, who can blame me?

“I brought it here in its chest of Dwarven silver and passed by Quirm to chain it in the cavern below, and I summoned Krakens as wards—binding two of the creatures so that at least one would always be on guard. It took much astral to do so…yet I spent it willingly, having sacrificed many prisoners to make it so.”

Again Ordrune paused and held the spheroid up in the crimson rays of the bloodred sun.

“Isn’t it delicious? The Dragons themselves along with their mates were unknowingly guarding that which they feared so.” Ordrune turned to the six. “Who else would have been as clever as I? Those idiots in Black Mountain, or those on Rwn? Ha!”

Again he strolled toward the brim of the great ledge, his thralls in a ragged line across, plodding a pace or two behind.

“But then Quirm disappeared—slain by a rival or drowned by a mate, who knows? And with him gone, my access to the stone was eliminated. My own trap kept me from reaching that which I had so cleverly obtained, that which I had so cleverly concealed.

“Though I knew full well where it was, I had almost
given up hope that I would ever see it again, that I would hold it in my hands once more…until you fools came along and I discovered that you were driven by a rede, a rede so well explained by that drool lying back there. Because of the rede, there was a chance—albeit a slim one—that you would actually succeed, and so I bound that drunkard to your cause and allowed you to escape, sent my fell beast to track you from above to make certain you didn’t take the news of the scroll to my illustrious doltish brethren, those imbeciles at Rwn and Black Mountain.”

Ordrune came to the lip of the precipice and stopped, as did the six. He looked out at the Great Maelstrom turning in the distance.

“Pah, the mindless power of that hole in the ocean is as nothing compared to that which I will control, for I will take the stone and unravel the secrets it contains, learn how to command the Drakes, learn…but why am I telling you all of this when you are about to plunge to your deaths? Besides, my Hèlsteed chariot awaits below in Gron and I must hasten ere Modru begins to wonder at my business here in his realm.”

Ordrune stepped back from the lip, and holding the Dragonstone on high, he said, “Farewell, my unwitting allies. I thank you for retrieving my treasure, and now I believe it is time for all of you to march to your—”

“Yaaaahhhh!”
From the shadows nearby, Alos charged at the Mage, the old man shrieking, “Unlike before! Unlike before!” And then Alos slammed into Ordrune, knocking the Dragonstone loose to fall to the ledge as the oldster’s charge carried him and the Mage over the rim.

Their eyes wide with horror, the six enspelled companions stood as would statues, unable to move, listening to Ordrune’s shrieks interleaved with Alos’s screams of “Shipmates…shipmates!”

…t-thmp, t-thmp, t-thmp, t-thmp…
frantically beat Egil’s racing heart…

…as if marking the passage of frozen time…

And slowly, slowly, the green stone rolled toward the lip of the precipice, toward a thousand-foot fall…

…t-thmp, t-thmp, t-thmp…

…down through the air they tumbled, cloaks fluttering about them, the old man yowling and clawing…

…t-thmp, t-thmp…

…Ordrune tried to sketch an arcane rune and speak words in the tongue of the Black Mages…

…t-thmp…

…but Alos’s claws raked down the Wizard’s face, upsetting the casting….

…t-thmp, t-thmp, t-thmp…

…and the green stone rolled…

…t-thmp, t-thmp, t-thmp, t-thmp…

…and still the comrades could not move…

…t-thmp, t-thmp…

…in the frantic span of but eighteen racing heartbeats, Alos and Ordrune plummeted from the verge of the precipice to the sea below, spinning and tumbling down through the air, bloodred with the setting sun, the old man clutching and clawing and shouting of shipmates, Ordrune shrieking and trying frantically to cast a spell…

…t-thmp, t-thmp…

…and then they struck the water…

…and the companions could move…

…and the green stone rolled to the edge…

Ferret shrieked and dove forward and slid on her stomach across the stone of the great ledge and managed to grab the jadelike ovoid just as it fell beyond the lip, but then, screaming in terror, she, too, slipped over the brim of the thousand foot fall—

—only to be caught by an ankle in the grip of mighty Burel, the big man grunting with the strain.

Now Delon grabbed on, and Egil, too, and they hauled shrieking Ferret back up over the lip and onto the ledge above, the Dragonstone yet held in her white-knuckled, two-handed grip.

S
haking with terror, Ferret wept in Delon’s arms, the bard stroking her hair, gently rocking, softly humming. Ann and Egil stood at the rear of the ledge, the Dylvana replacing the Dragonstone in its leather bag, preparing to put it once more in the silver chest. Aiko and Burel stood on the lip of the ledge looking down at the Boreal Sea. There was no sign of Alos, nor of Ordrune, nor of the Dragon Raudhrskal, for that matter. Of a sudden, Aiko turned and clutched Burel and began to weep softly.

“What is it, my love?” asked the big man, holding her close.

She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face. “Alos—he was like the man my father became in the year after I was revealed, in the year I awaited banishment. And in that year when he lost all honor, my father became
yadonashi, yopparai.
”

Burel looked down.
“Yadonashi? Yopparai?”

“Outcast. A drunkard,” replied Aiko. “I loathed what he had become. Even so, I loved him still.”

“I am sorry, my love. —Oh, not sorry you loved him, but sorry he came to be someone you did not know.”

Aiko wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands and looked again down into the sea. “Alos was someone like that…someone I did not know. And I think I loved him too, at least a little. He died an honorable death.”

They both fell silent and stood gazing out on the moonlit waters, but at last Aiko turned and looked toward Arin and Egil kneeling at the silver chest. “My tiger now does not whisper of peril, though she is uneasy in the presence of the
Ryuishi,
of the Dragonstone, as if she doesn’t…trust it.”