The Grieving Tree: The Dragon Below Book II (39 page)

Tzaryan stopped and turned to look down at Singe. His lips drew back from his square black teeth. Dandra caught her breath. Holding back Tetkashtai’s frightened ravings, she reached out to brush her mind against Ashi’s and Orshok’s.
Stay alert!
she warned them.
Something is going on here!

Tetkashtai lunged for the mental opening of the
kesh. It’s not Tzaryan!
she shrieked.
Listen to me—

Ashi flinched at the presence’s sudden outburst. Orshok’s hand tightened around his hunda stick. Dandra cursed and hauled back on Tetkashtai, reining her in like a runaway horse.
Tetkashtai, be quiet!

The warning and Tetkashtai’s outburst had taken scant heartbeats. Tzaryan still stared down at Singe while the wizard did his best to look strong yet optimistic. Tzaryan’s eyes flickered. “After dinner,” he said finally. “Let us discuss the matter after dinner like civilized folk.” He stood straight.

Singe took a long breath and stood straight as well. He nodded slowly. “Certainly, my lord.” Tzaryan held out his hand, gesturing for Singe to continue along the hall. The wizard bent his head and the pair resumed their progress. The need to reach out to Singe with the
kesh
and offer him her warning as well burned in Dandra, but she didn’t dare. Tetkashtai’s ravings had become a desperate, mad struggle that took all of her concentration to maintain. She shouted at the presence, but Tetkashtai seemed beyond hearing.

The long hall ended in a pair of tall doors as green as the columns. Two orcs stood ready beside the doors. Tzaryan beckoned one forward. “Go to the dungeon,” he told him. “Tell the shifter that Ekhaas is safe and that he is summoned to dinner. Guide him here.” He frowned. “If you see the General, tell him that he is summoned to dinner as well.”

“There’s no need.” Robrand came striding out of one of the corridors that opened onto the hall. Chuut was close behind
him. Robrand’s face was set in a stony mask. He marched up to Tzaryan and dropped down on one knee. “Lord Tzaryan, I’ve just come from the dungeon. Ekhaas and the shifter are both gone. He helped her escape.” He glanced sideways at Singe and added, “Whatever trust you had in him, he broke it.”

Singe’s body stiffened as if someone were holding his feet and his neck and stretching them apart. His eyes opened wide, staring at Robrand with an angry intensity. His lip curled. He trembled. “No,” he breathed—then he flung his head back and screamed, “Twelve bloody moons! Geth, you hairy traitor!”

Abruptly, everyone was talking at once. Robrand was on his feet, explaining to Tzaryan how he’d gone down to the dungeon only to find Ekhaas’s cell empty and that a preliminary search of the keep had turned up nothing. “I doubt they’re even here any longer,” he said. “Ekhaas probably used magic to get them past the guards at the gate. I’m organizing patrols now. We’ll find them.”

Singe was ranting, stomping back and forth in the hall, his hand clenched around the hilt of his rapier. “I’ll kill him!” he spat, his voice seething. “This time I
will
kill him. Devourer take him, I knew I couldn’t trust him.”

Orshok and Natrac leaped forward, trying to calm Singe down and defending Geth. “Why would he do it?” Orshok asked. “If he ran, it was because you drove him away!” shouted Natrac. Nothing they said had any effect beyond, however, making the din in the hall even louder. Singe thrust them aside and stormed up to Robrand and Tzaryan, demanding a place in any hunt. Tetkashtai was still wailing and pleading in Dandra’s head, adding her penetrating voice to the chaos.

Dandra pressed her hands over her ears and clenched her teeth. A hand touched her shoulder. Dandra whirled to find Ashi standing at her side, her pierced lips drawn tight in concern.

“What’s wrong? the hunter asked.

“It’s too much,” Dandra choked. “I can’t think. Tetkashtai’s gone—”

“Enough!”
roared Tzaryan. His bellow rolled through the hall, silencing Singe and Robrand, sending Natrac and Orshok flinching back, bringing Chuut to stiff alertness, and tearing a frightened shriek out of one of the orc slaves. Even Tetkashtai
seemed shocked into a quiet whimper. Tzaryan’s black-eyed gaze raked them all. His fingers stabbed out, pointing at the orcs. “You,” he said, “leave us.” The orcs fled as if pursued by hounds. Tzaryan turned to Chuut. “You—find a patrol and join it.” The ogre nodded and turned for one of the other side corridors.

Tzaryan looked to Robrand and Singe, standing together with near identical expressions of cold anger on their faces, then to the others. “All of you—” He tugged on his robes, straightening them. “—will join me for dinner.”

“With respect, Lord Tzaryan,” Singe said, “unless you’re serving roast of shifter, I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Silence!”
Tzaryan’s hands jerked as he shouted into Singe’s face. The crimson fabric of his robes tore under his grip, leaving everyone staring at wide rips through which blue-green showed like bone through a bloody injury. Tzaryan’s teeth ground down. Slowly and deliberately, he pulled the ruined garment back together. “Dinner,” he said with a horrible calm. “Now.”

He stepped up to one of the doors at the end of the hall and gestured for the General to take the other, then stared at Singe. The wizard drew a harsh breath, then bent his head in grudging submission. Tzaryan glanced at Robrand and the old man nodded obediently. Tzaryan’s grip tightened on the handle—

—just as Tetkashtai’s voice rose in a howl above the silence of the moment.
Open yourself, Dandra, you stupid
dahr!
Think like a kalashtar for once and listen to me!
Her light coalesced, then burst across Dandra’s mind like a slap in the face.

Dandra jerked, startled, and for an instant the walls she had erected in her mind to blot out Tetkashtai shivered and thinned—and Dandra felt the questing touch of another presence against her mind. It wasn’t an active, probing touch like that of Medala or a mind flayer, but rather something passive, like the pull of waves on an ocean. She wanted to go to it, to enter the waves even though they could be her doom.

She knew the feel of that presence. She knew what had kept Tetkashtai on edge in Tzaryan Keep. She understood what Tetkashtai had been trying to warn her about—and why Tzaryan was so insistent they accompany him. Dandra gasped and grabbed Ashi’s arm with a desperate strength. “Ashi, run! It’s—”

The warning came too late. The green doors were moving,
swinging wide, to reveal a courtyard entirely open along one long side to the fiery sky of evening. In the courtyard sat Dah’mir, the setting sun turning his scales copper and gleaming on the Khyber dragonshard—now restored—that was embedded in the center of his chest. There was nothing of the weakness that Geth had described seeing in Zarash’ak about him. He looked strong and fit. Along the wall of the courtyard, black herons perched like a crowd gathered to watch an execution.

“Finally,” said Dah’mir, “I thought you’d never come.”

Tetkashtai’s wails rose into a piercing scream as the power of the dragon’s presence enveloped them. Dimly Dandra saw Orshok raise his hunda stick, saw Singe rip his rapier from his scabbard. She strained, fighting against the fascination that dug into her mind, straining to find some thought or power that would shield her, but Dah’mir’s presence was overwhelming—

Strong, lean arms wrapped around her, snatching her off the floor, throwing her over a tanned shoulder. Long hair woven with wooden beads whirled around her, and feet pounded the floor in long strides as Ashi seized on her warning and ran.

Dah’mir’s howl of startled rage followed them.

A
grunt and rapid footsteps were all the warning that Singe had. Dah’mir’s gaze focused past him and the dragon roared in frustration. Herons rose into the sky in a flurry of black wings. Up so close, the sound was deafening. Singe staggered against it, but managed to twist around in time to see Ashi dart down one of the side corridors that opened off the long hall, carrying Dandra—dazed from even the brief exposure to Dah’mir’s awe-inspiring presence—over her shoulder. The hunter had the right idea. Singe’s rapier felt like a toy in his hand, the most powerful spell at his disposal a candleflame.

“Run!” he shouted at Natrac and Orshok.

But it was already too late for them. Dah’mir’s roar fell silent and even over the ringing in his ears, Singe heard the rasp of the dragon’s inhaled breath. Dread pierced him. Dah’mir’s head whipped forward and his mouth opened. Singe whirled, trying to cover his face as if that would protect him from the dragon’s acid venom. Except that no acid came—instead of searing liquid, Dah’mir’s breath billowed around them, warm and wet. The taste of copper seeped into Singe’s mouth and nostrils and across his tongue. Abruptly the air seemed thick. It dragged on him, impeding his every sluggish move. He turned back, looked up.

Orshok and Natrac had been caught in the dragon’s strange breath as well. They moved with such agonizing slowness that it looked almost as if they were swimming. By comparison, Dah’mir’s movements were fluid and lightning fast. Even his voice crackled in
Singe’s ears, bellowing frustration turned sharp and staccato.

Further down the hall, Chuut and half a dozen other ogres burst out from one of the side corridors, weapons drawn and alarm on their faces—alarm that only grew deeper at the sight of Dah’mir in the courtyard. One of the ogres gave a yelp of terror and staggered back, but Tzaryan was already shouting terse orders in the ogres’ deep language. Chuut recovered himself with the discipline of House Deneith training. Slapping at his squad, he drove them on across the hall and toward the corridor down which Ashi had turned.

Herons were settling back onto the walls of the courtyard. Robrand was still standing frozen against the door he had opened, staring at Dah’mir in shock. His mouth worked in silent motion before he managed to force out words. “Dol Dorn’s mighty fist—!”

“Collect yourself, General!” said Tzaryan. “Dah’mir is our guest.” The ogre mage turned to the dragon. “My ogres will bring them back. They won’t escape.”

“See that they don’t.” Dah’mir’s head turned. “Don’t just stand there. This lethargy won’t last long. Seize them!”

To Dah’mir’s left, two figures emerged from the shadows to reach for Natrac and Orshok. One was Vennet, though the half-elf’s bloodstained clothes and bright, mad eyes scarcely matched Singe’s last glimpse of him. Behind him was Chain, freed from his cell in the dungeon. And to Dah’mir’s right …

A cold sweat broke out on Singe’s skin. At first all he saw were licking, flickering flames and glowing embers, stark against the night, then he saw past the brightness. He stared at a burning corpse, risen from ashes. And not just any corpse. Tongues of flame took the place of tendrils and tentacles. Charred flesh marked hollows in an eyeless face. Below them, a thin mouth twisted in hate.

“No,” Singe croaked. “You’re dead.”

Hruucan lunged forward, fiery shoulder tentacles lashing through the air. Singe tried to raise his rapier. He could feel the sluggishness inflicted by Dah’mir’s breath already starting to pass, but Hruucan had been faster than him before and now he seemed to move like the wind. One extended tentacle whirled past Singe’s face. The wizard lifted his rapier higher—and the other tentacle slammed across his belly.

The ring that he wore on his left hand glittered greedily, devouring the heat of the flame before it could burn him, just as it had protected him from the fiery spell he had used to kill the dolgaunt. There was more than fire in Hruucan’s blow, though. The tentacle punched into his gut and seemed to wrench something out of him. A sudden flash of weakness that he felt in his very core sent him staggering back. Hruucan’s tentacles whirled up for another strike.

“Hruucan!” snapped Dah’mir. The dragon’s wings flapped and furled, sending a gust of wind across the courtyard. His herons stirred in an echo of his irritation. “I said seize, not attack!”

The dolgaunt froze like a serpent. “I’ve waited, Dah’mir! Give me my revenge!”

“Wait a little longer,” Dah’mir said.

Singe saw Robrand swallow, then dart forward. With swift efficiency, he grabbed Singe’s arm before anyone else could. Still reeling from the dolgaunt’s attack, Singe couldn’t put up any resistance. Robrand seized his arm and twisted it in a lock—for a moment bringing his lips close to Singe’s ear.

“I didn’t know about this!” he whispered quickly. “Dol Arrah’s oath, Etan, I swear it!”

Singe forced himself to suck in breath. “Help us!” he answered in a soft gasp. When Robrand reached for his rapier to disarm him, he let him take it.

“I have this one, my lord,” the old man said out loud. Tzaryan nodded his approval. Hruucan hissed, but backed down.

Chain had Orshok in his grasp and the druid’s hunda stick was on the ground. Vennet held Natrac at the end of his cutlass. His eyes flashed merrily. “Like old times, Natrac,” he said. “I like the knife. Very ingenious.”

“Da ga shek erat,”
Orshok snarled.

Vennet’s face hardened. “Watch your tongue. I’d be happy to set you up for a matching set of cutlery.”