The Ruin Part 3

They found the priest snoring in the tattooed arms of the female warrior. By the time he pulled on his clothing, Brimstone had gathered the others by the wagon.

"So," hissed the smoke drake, "the Nars proved informative."

"We're not sure," said Will. His mouth gaped wide in a yawn. "Eavesdropping, were you?"

Brimstone didn't deign to answer the question directly. "I couldn't hear everything they said."

"Then you missed a diverting tale," said Taegan, running a comb though his black, silky hair. The bladesinger's comrades generally kept a certain distance from Brimstone, but as usual, Taegan lounged within easy reach of the drake's fangs and claws. "In the foothills of the mountains to the west, the hobgoblins breed like maggots in the belly of a dead cow. But there's one patch of land where they never venture. Thereon dwells a mysterious ent.i.ty so sagacious as to approach omniscience. Alas, it's also thoroughly malevolent and reclusive-hence the appellation 'the Hermit'-traits that disincline it to share its wisdom with others.

"In times past, people in desperate need of answers used to seek it out," the avariel continued. "They carried treasures with them in hopes of striking a bargain. But only one ever returned, and as a warning to others, the Hermit sent him back with an affliction, an ungovernable craving for the blood of his kin. He wound up killing his entire tribe."

Will grinned at Brimstone. "Sounds like someone we know."

The vampire's eyes flared brighter. "I've killed the equivalent of many tribes."

"I have every confidence," said Taegan. "But have you heard of the Hermit? None of us has, not even Kara."

"No," Brimstone said. "But like the rest of you, I've never visited Narfell before."

"Many people across Faerun," Pavel said, "have legends of all-knowing oracles, but it's questionable that any such seers exist. Even individual G.o.ds don't know everything, though perhaps they do in the aggregate."

Perched on the seat of the wagon, tail flicking, Jivex made a spitting sound. "We don't need the Hermit to know 'everything,' just how to wash the dirt out of my head."

"Fair enough," Pavel said, "but the details of the Nars' legend make me doubt the Hermit truly exists at all. Which is to say, it's possible some dangerous creature dwells in the hills, but it may not be a learned sage. Because, if it kills everyone who enters its territory, how would anybody ever find that out and pa.s.s the report along?" He frowned. "Though it's possible that over time, some of the tale has been forgotten, and the missing piece explains what seems nonsensical."

Will snorted. "Thank you, bookish idiot, that's very helpful. Say no with one breath, yes with the next."

Pavel sneered. "It's better to be able to think two contradictory thoughts than none at all."

"So," said Raryn, tufts of his silvery mane sticking out every which way, "it comes down to this. Maybe the Hermit is real, maybe it isn't. The only way to know is go look."

"If we think the trip worthwhile," Kara said, "and I do. I suspect we've learned all we can on these steppes."

"And 'all,'" said Will, "wasn't much. But we could swing south. Head toward the Great Dale."

Taegan grinned. "At least it would be warmer. We could enjoy another taste of genuine summer before the season pa.s.ses away. But the one thing we know about the ancient elves' citadel is that it stands somewhere in the far north. We're more likely to find clues to its whereabouts if we poke around in the same vicinity."

"I agree," said Dorn.

"Sounds like we're all of the same mind," said Will. "Go hunt the Hermit, and if it turns out we're dropping our bucket in a dry well, we'll just have to hope Azhaq, Llimark, or one of our other partners finds the lost castle, or whatever the place turns out to be." He glanced toward the eastern sky, where black was beginning to lighten to gray. "No point trying to go back to sleep now. Want to start breakfast?"

"We're not done conferring," Brimstone whispered. "When you reach the hills, I'll start traveling with you. Obviously, that will require you to journey by night and rest by day."

"No," Pavel said. "It's too dangerous for us to have you lurking around all the time. You proved it by attacking the Nars."

Brimstone spat sparks and acrid smoke. "You traveled with me before and took no harm, and if the Hermit is as dangerous as the nomads claim, you may well need me."

Dorn turned to Pavel. "I don't trust the thing, either," he said, "but he can be useful. If he turns on us, you and I will just have to kill him."

Pavel smiled crookedly. "I'll hold you to that. Now, if you'll all excuse me, I have a sunrise to celebrate."

He walked a few paces away, to a spot where he enjoyed an un.o.bstructed view of the eastern horizon, spread his arms wide, and started to chant. Perhaps he flashed a grin when the sacred words made Brimstone hiss, spread his dark gray wings, and fly away.

25 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons The hobgoblins had left signs, white stones arranged into glyphs on the ground and symbols hacked into tree bark, for those able to interpret them. Raryn could, but didn't need the warnings to sense the blight infecting the wooded hillsides, though most of the manifestations were subtle.

The trees weren't monstrously deformed, but a little stunted and twisted, and already dropping their leaves as if resigned to the advent of autumn. Night birds fluttered from limb to limb, and animals scurried in the brush, but not often, and when Raryn caught a glimpse of one, it had a starved and mangy look. The gray mist hanging in the air was similarly unsettling. The chill it carried couldn't bother him, but it felt slimy as well as wet.

Of course, even if a traveler missed all that, the horses' refusal to proceed beyond a certain point had been the final giveaway.

Yes, something inimical had taken root there. The question, though, was whether it was the Nars' Hermit or something less exotic. Offhand, Raryn could think of several creatures whose mere presence acted to corrupt the air, earth, and water in their environs. He and his partners sometimes earned their pay hunting them, and as often as not, it was Raryn's job to range ahead of the others, looking for sign, spying out the lay of the land, and making sure they didn't all blunder into danger in one clump.

He was performing the same function while Taegan and Jivex scouted from the air. With luck, somebody would spot something informative before they all probed too much deeper into this nasty place. It was giving him a headache.

He glanced back, making sure he wasn't outdistancing his comrades on the ground. They were at the limit of his night sight, but he had little trouble making them out.

Or at least, such was the case at first. Gradually, though, the fog thickened, until Taegan and Jivex swooped down to join him.

"If we keep flying," the avariel said, "we're liable to lose track of the rest of you. The mist obscures you."

"I suspect," Raryn said, "it's hiding something else, too. Because it can't be natural, coming on like this. The weather's wrong. We'll wait here and let the others catch up. We should all be one group again."

So they stood, turning, peering into swirling, billowing murk, listening to silence, for what felt like too long a time. Then, finally, shadowy figures appeared.

Raryn felt a jolt of alarm, but for an instant wasn't sure why. By the time he realized the advancing party didn't include a dragon in its true form, and that the enormous Brimstone with his luminous eyes ought to be visible if anyone was, Jivex was already flitting forward to greet the new arrivals.

"What kept you?" the faerie dragon asked.

No one answered. Instead, the white-haired thing masquerading as Kara snarled, baring its fangs, and pounced. As it attacked, some glamour fell away from it and its companions. No one could mistake the animate corpses for the bard, her friends, or anything alive. The stench of their rotten flesh burned in Raryn's nostrils even from several paces away.

Caught off guard, Jivex simply hovered as the Kara-thing lunged at him. Raryn nocked an arrow and let it fly. The shaft streaked under the little dragon to bury itself in his a.s.sailant's torso. Possibly more troubled by the enchantment bound in the point than by physical trauma, the creature stumbled and fell backward.

The other undead charged, and with a snap of his wings, Taegan sprang to meet them. He rattled off a charm as his sword darted left and right, and several phantom duplicates sprang into existence around him. Jivex whirled through the air, raking at the foes' crumbling faces and gla.s.sy eyes as he shot over them.

Raryn exchanged his bow for his ice-axe and advanced to join the melee.

The bloated, hulking thing that had impersonated Dorn bashed at him with the branch it was using for a makes.h.i.+ft warclub, and he sprang inside its reach to avoid the blow. He struck at its knee, half severing its lower leg, and the undead toppled forward. He stepped behind it, poising his axe for a chop at its spine.

But that move brought him face to face with the little Will-thing, lurking behind its ally. Maybe it was a dead halfling. The decay, some patches wet, others dry and crumbling, made it impossible to be certain.

It sprang at him with a rusty dagger in either fist. He swept the axe around in a block that barely succeeded in deflecting both stabs, then split the creature's skull.

As he strained to free his weapon, the Dorn-thing rolled over and reached for him. Taegan lunged, drove his point into its torso, and its upper body flopped back onto the ground.

"That's the last of these," the bladesinger said, "but there's still no sign of our friends."

"Then we'll have to go find them," Raryn said.

They hurried back the way they'd come, until they exited the fog nearly as abruptly and cleanly as if they'd stepped out of a house. Plainly, it was a creation of magic, and one of their comrades had cast a counterspell to scour a section of it from existence. It seemed evident, too, that the vapor must m.u.f.fle sound, for since it no longer clogged Raryn's ears, he heard Kara's battle anthem, and other sounds of combat, clearly enough.

His missing friends stood in a circle with shambling corpses and floating, lunging shadows attacking from all sides. Brimstone and Kara-in dragon form-met the threat with spells and flares of their respective breath weapons. Pavel invoked Lathander's red-gold light. Will slung stones and Dorn loosed arrows when they had the luxury, but they mostly used their swords when one foe or another charged into striking distance.

"Kara!" Raryn bellowed. "We need a way in!"

The song dragon turned in his direction and spat a bright, crackling flare of vapor. It blasted some of the undead into oblivion and left others floundering in what sufficed them for pain.

Raryn, Taegan, and Jivex raced forward, across the ground she'd cleared. Though it wasn't entirely clear. A charred husk on the ground grabbed Raryn's ankle, and he had to jerk free. Another corpse-thing shambled at him, and he veered to avoid it. A wraith in the form of a woman, luminous, transparent, body rippling like a banner in the wind, congealed out of empty air to bar the way, and together, he and the avariel chopped and slashed it from existence.

They rushed on into the circle, then turned to stand with their friends against a horde of foes that, for a time, seemed endless.

Raryn swung his axe again and again, until it grew heavy in his hands, the breath rasped in his throat, and his heart hammered in his chest. He knew that Will, cutting with his hornblade; Taegan, fighting by turns on the ground and in the air; and even Dorn, despite the indefatigable strength of his iron parts; must have been growing just as weary. The spellcasters were undoubtedly running short of magic, too.

But at last they were visibly thinning the ranks of the enemy. They only needed to keep fighting a little while longer, then all the undead would be gone. It was going to be all right.

Or so he imagined. Until he noticed the long shape crouched on the crest of a hill.

He wasn't sure this was really the first time he'd caught a glimpse of it. Maybe it simply hadn't registered before, as, amid the frenzy of battle, he'd mistaken it for the fallen tree it resembled in the misty dark. But he realized the hulking shape hadn't been there when he'd first studied the ground ahead. It was something animate that had crept to its present position. Something powerful enough to command a horde of undead, which it had used simply to soften the searchers up for the kill.

A final ghoul sprang at Raryn, and he smashed its skull with the axe. Jivex crowed, "I win again!" Then the Hermit floated straight up into the air.

"Bright spirits of melody," Kara breathed. "It's a linnorn. A corpse tearer."

Will s.n.a.t.c.hed the warsling from his belt. "That's a problem, isn't it?"

As he scrambled to ready his bow, Raryn was certain the halfling was correct. The reptile was colossal, maybe even bigger than Malazan, with patches of mold and lichen encrusting its dark, slimy scales. It had no wings, or hind legs either, and must move along the ground with a strange combination of striding and slithering. Still, it was plainly some sort of wyrm, ancient and accordingly wise and powerful.

Raryn struggled to draw what comfort he could from the fact that he had two-three, if you counted Jivex-dragons on his side. Then, without warning, Brimstone wheeled, lashed his wings, and sprang at Pavel with outstretched talons.

Flying several yards above the ground, Taegan caught a glimpse of sudden motion below. He looked down. As if the situation wasn't dire enough, Brimstone had evidently gone mad and decided to destroy the "sun priest" he so despised. Meanwhile, Pavel was gawking at the hovering linnorn like everybody else. He hadn't even noticed his death hurtling through the air.

Taegan dived.

He couldn't scoop up the human and fly away with him. His wings weren't strong enough. So he simply slammed into Pavel and knocked him to the side. Brimstone crashed down on the spot his prey had just occupied and wheeled to attack anew. His sweeping tail tore through brush and tossed rotting leaves into the air.

Pavel had fallen to his knees and was plainly still befuddled. It was up to Taegan to thwart the smoke drake once again. He touched down and whirled, interposing himself between Brimstone and the cleric. The vampire struck at him, and he sidestepped. As the huge fangs clashed shut, he drove Rilitar's sword into Brimstone's jaw.

Brimstone pivoted and raised a forefoot high to rake or trample. Taegan beat his pinions, trying to take to the air, but the wyrm s.h.i.+fted, spreading and interposing one of his own gigantic bat wings to cut him off. Taegan had no choice but to touch down once more.

Claws flashed at him. He dodged, tried to cut at the vampire's foot, and missed. Jaws gaping, Brimstone's head shot forward- Red-gold light warmed the night and gilded the drifting tendrils of fog. Brimstone screeched and recoiled. Holding his glowing amulet high, limping slightly, lean, intelligent face resolute, Pavel advanced on the drake. Evidently he hadn't used up all his daily allotment of miracles fighting the ghouls and specters, and thanks be to Lady Firehair for that.

With Brimstone balked, at least for the moment, Taegan had the chance to glance around and see just how badly everything else was progressing. The Hermit hissed foul-sounding syllables, no doubt the opening words of an incantation in some devilish language. Wings pounding, Kara and Jivex soared toward the floating creature, even though its immensity dwarfed them both. Indeed, by comparison, the faerie dragon looked tiny as a gnat.

"Please!" Kara called. "There's no need to fight! We only want to talk to you!"

The corpse tearer continued its conjuring.

"Kill it!" Dorn bellowed, loosing an arrow. "Don't let it finish the spell!"

Kara managed another flare of bright, sizzling breath. Jivex optimistically spat his own glittering, euphoria-inducing exhalation at the Hermit's snout. Arrows pierced mossy scales as big as a man's hand. Will's skiprocks battered their mark, one after another.

The hara.s.sment didn't seem to bother the linnorn in the slightest. It certainly didn't hamper its recitation. It growled three final rhyming words, and a cloud of dark vapor billowed into existence around it. Caught inside the murk, Kara and Jivex floundered in flight, and their hides blistered. Jaws spreading wide, the Hermit lunged to seize the dragon bard in the moment of her incapacity.

Dorn drove an arrow straight into one of the black pits that were the corpse tearer's eyes. Even that didn't make the creature react as if it were truly experiencing any pain, but perhaps it annoyed it, for it left off rus.h.i.+ng at Kara to glare at the half-golem and spew black, roiling fumes from its mouth.

Taegan caught a whiff of the nasty-smelling stuff, and for a moment, his muscles twitched and shuddered. The bulk of the Hermit's breath washed over Dorn, Will, and Raryn. All three staggered, but only the human and halfling caught their balance again as the fumes dissipated. Raryn collapsed and sprawled convulsing on the ground.

Meanwhile, Brimstone stopped retreating before Pavel's advance and Lathander's light. Eyes squinched nearly shut against the glow, he crouched, then charged forward into the aura of holy power like a man trying to smash down a door. Wings pounding, Taegan rushed to help his comrade stand against the drake.

Fighting Brimstone and keeping him away from the folk busy shooting and slinging at the Hermit left Taegan little opportunity to watch the rest of the battle unfold, but the few glimpses he caught suggested a catastrophe in the making. The linnorn possessed a seemingly inexhaustible store of spells, and no matter how everyone tried to hurt and hinder it, it cast them one after another.

A flying, rotating cylinder of blades s.h.i.+mmered into being in midair, shearing into Kara's flank before she spun clear.

Flame streaked down from the sky to engulf Dorn, burning his human half and igniting his clothing. He flung himself on the ground and rolled to extinguish the blaze.

Jivex summoned a gigantic owl to fight for him, but with a single snap of its jaws, the Hermit annihilated the bird before it even finished materializing. The faerie dragon next attempted to blind his foe by conjuring a whirl of colors before its eyes. The linnorn seemed simply to will the illusion away, and it vanished. The Hermit then lifted its prodigious talons, and would likely have ripped Jivex from existence just as easily if Kara, still singing despite the b.l.o.o.d.y gashes in her side, hadn't hurtled forward to distract it.

As he dodged a potentially bone-shattering flick of Brimstone's tail, Taegan struggled not to panic. He and his friends had stood against chromatic dragons, a dracolich, a sunwyrm, demons, and plenty of other formidable foes. Surely they could defeat the linnorn, too.

But no matter how he tried, he couldn't make himself believe it. Some other night, perhaps, but not then, when they were already spent and luck was running against them.

Unless ...

He turned to Pavel and cried, "You have to hold Brimstone back by yourself!" He looked up at Jivex and Kara. "Flee! Get as far away as you can." He beat his wings and leaped closer to Dorn, Will, and Raryn, who, though still shaking, was struggling back to his feet. "Keep shooting! Hurt the thing!"

"What do you think we've been trying to do?" snapped Will, spinning his warsling. "Treat it to a sausage and a jack of ale?"

"Make the Hermit focus on you so Kara and Jivex can get clear," Taegan continued.

Dorn loosed an arrow. "What's the plan?"

"Just trust me." Taegan rattled off one of the few spells he hadn't already expended.

The world flickered and leaped around him and he was flying above and behind the Hermit's colossal head with its writhing hairlike cilia and encrustations of fungus. The reptile's neck was like a twisting highway beneath him.

Back on the ground, tiny with distance, Pavel, his mystical abilities apparently utterly exhausted, battled Brimstone with his mace alone. Hornblade drawn, Will scrambled to help him. Dorn and Raryn kept shooting at the Hermit and had likewise taken up Taegan's cry, bellowing for Kara and Jivex to get away.

The dragons were trying, but the corpse tearer wouldn't allow it. Ignoring the barrage of arrows, it pressed Jivex and Kara so hard they couldn't escape. Neither could turn tail without inviting a rear attack.

Taegan had hoped to put his own stratagem to the test before the Hermit even realized he was hovering nearby, but plainly, it wasn't possible. Kara and Jivex wouldn't break away unless he helped Dorn and Raryn distract the corpse tearer. He furled his wings and dived, hurtling at the linnorn's eye.

Up close, the Hermit smelled foul, not with the rotten stink of a dracolich, but a stale, musty reek suggestive of inconceivable age. From instant to instant, its eye looked like black emptiness or a plate of obsidian large as a tabletop, depending on how the moonlight struck it. A few arrows jutted from the dark surface, moisture seeping from around the tips. Taegan's sword made similar wounds, narrow punctures and cuts that only oozed fluid instead of gus.h.i.+ng it.

Still, he succeeded in capturing the Hermit's attention. The dark, enormous head at the end of the flexible neck jerked away, then straight back at him, jaws spreading wide to engulf him. He lashed his wings and flung himself clear an instant before the stained fangs clashed together.