Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two (22 page)

He wasn’t sure whether the Traveler had really appeared to him in a dream. He had been inclined to dismiss that apparition as the product of a fever. But her persisent question—he had always thought of the Traveler as her, though others described him as male in sometimes vulgar myths—that question had lingered with him: “Who are you?” It galled him that he hadn’t yet come up with a satisfying answer.

So it was her image that Kauth fixed in his mind as he began to read the scroll, as she had appeared to him in that dream, wearing the face of the martyred paladin Dania ir’Vran and bathed in argent light. Perhaps Kalok Shash would smile on that mental image of silver fire and favor Vor because of it.

He reached into the scroll with his mind, gingerly touching the magic bound in each letter, amplified in each syllable, straining against the bonds of each word. One by one, he wrapped his mind around the knot of magic in each word and felt the knot loosen as he spoke. Magic streamed from the letters on the page, dissolving the ink it left behind, and poured from his mouth like sound. A cloud of divine power swirled around him like a brewing storm.

In that shadow of that storm, he felt infinitesimal, and he felt infinite. He felt himself dissolved in divinity, stretched across the universe and beyond, as though if he looked he could see everything and if he thought he could know anything. But he was far
past sight and thinking. He was a tiny mind and a feeble hand reaching to touch a far greater power, speaking words that hallowed his tongue, daring to command the power of the gods.

It seemed to him, for a fleeting instant, that the gods deigned to be commanded, as he felt the power of the divine storm break and pour into Vor’s body. He was empty, every mote of energy scoured from his body and mind. A shimmer of silver ran over the fallen orc, and some part of his mind heard Zandar next to him gasp, then hold his breath.

There was a moment of perfect silence. No one breathed, no waft of wind stirred the dusty ground, nothing moved. They hung suspended in time.

And then the sky rumbled with thunder somewhere in the distance, the gravel shifted and crunched under Sevren’s foot, and the last flicker of silver faded from Vor’s blood-soaked armor.

Nothing. There was nothing. His failure was complete.

Zandar couldn’t bear the thought of Vor’s body becoming a feast for whatever carrion feeders might crawl through the Demon Wastes, but there was no wood to build a funeral pyre. So he and Sevren collected rocks and piled them in a cairn over Vor, hoping that would do the job but not really believing it. Kauth sat alone as they worked, trying to recapture some of what he’d felt as he read the scroll and agonizing over his failure. Against the magnitude of that failure, turning his back on his mission and the Royal Eyes seemed paltry.

One other problem nagged at Kauth’s mind—how to tell the others they were turning back. He had told them their mission was to scout the Demon Wastes for sign of an imminent invasion of the Eldeen Reaches. Something told him that Sevren and Zandar would want to complete that mission to honor Vor’s sacrifice. He considered telling them the truth—that their true mission was to stir up an invasion and lose their lives in the process. He wasn’t confident they’d be understanding. Somehow, he had to figure out how to prevent the rest of them from meeting the same fate as Vor.

Zandar and Sevren finished their work before he came near a solution to that problem. With some hesitation, Sevren took up the sword Vor had carried, the one they’d found in the serpent’s lair, surrounded by the words of Prophecy. It was more fitting, Zandar had argued, to lay Vor’s greataxe over his chest, the weapon he’d wielded in battle for years. Sevren initially handled the sword as though it were tainted by Vor’s death, but after giving it a few trial swings he clenched it more tightly, evidently pleased with its heft. Then he looked between Kauth and Zandar.

“Onward?” the shifter said. “Vor said we should clear the Labyrinth today.”

Kauth looked at Zandar, hoping he would be the first to suggest they turn back. The warlock was staring at the ground. No help from that quarter.

“Do you think you can get us the rest of the way through the Labyrinth?” Kauth asked Sevren.

“I have about as much chance to get us out on the far side as to take us back the way we came.”

“Couldn’t you follow our tracks back to the mountains?” Zandar asked. Good—the warlock was considering turning back.

“It’s possible. This gravel doesn’t show much sign of our passing, though. And the ground here has a tendency to change. Kauth, what do you think? This is your job, after all.”

“My job got Vor killed. I’m about ready to damn it.” And Kelas, he thought.

“I can see that,” the shifter said, scratching his head. “On the other hand, if we turn back now we don’t even get paid for our trouble.”

“Five thousand galifars split three ways,” Zandar said. “That’s what? Sixteen sixty-something? I suppose that’s the upside of Vor’s death—an extra four hundred gold.”

Kauth stared at the ground. Zandar was making a valiant effort at regaining his cynical mask, but no one believed it.

“If we survive,” Zandar added.

“I think we need to find our way out of here,” Kauth said at last.

“Zandar?” Sevren asked.

The warlock nodded, staring at Vor’s cairn.

“I don’t know how well I can follow our tracks,” Sevren said, “but at least I know we start going that way.” The shifter pointed a sharp claw in the direction they’d come.

For a moment, no one seemed willing to move. Zandar’s eyes were wet, and Sevren watched him. Finally Kauth took the first step, and the others trailed behind. Zandar kept looking back at the cairn until the canyon turned and shut it off from his view.

Each time they reached a branch in the canyon, Sevren examined the ground, sometimes ranging a hundred yards in both directions in search of any sign of their prior passing. More and more each time, it seemed to Kauth that his final decision was little more than his best guess. Kauth kept turning around, hoping the canyon would look familiar from the other direction, but there were no clear landmarks, the canyon all looked more or less the same, and he hadn’t really been paying close attention the first time around. He began to wonder if they might not end up on the far side of the Labyrinth after all, in a cruelly ironic trick of the Traveler.

They made camp early, to ensure that Sevren had enough light to look for their tracks. His hope was that sometime the next morning he’d find some sign of the camp they’d made the previous night, indicating they were still on the right track. But Kauth couldn’t help noticing the uncertain tone in his voice.

The night passed in deathly silence, their third night in the Labyrinth. Kauth wondered how many travelers had survived three nights in the Labyrinth before. Perhaps it was many—travelers who managed to avoid the Ghaash’kala and any monsters that haunted the Labyrinth, only to die of starvation, hopelessly lost in the maze.

The next morning was slow going. Sevren stopped more than usual, looking for signs of their previous camp, and spent longer at each branch. As the day wore on, the shifter grew increasingly tense, snarling at any interruption of his concentration. He was beginning to believe he’d led them astray. Shortly after the sun passed its zenith, he threw himself on the ground.

“What was it Vor said?” Sevren said. “Something about abandoning hope?”

“Abandon all hope for your body or your soul,” Zandar said, crouching near the shifter.

“We should have done that days ago.”

Kauth sat to rest his legs, a little away from the others, and stared at the ground. Days ago, he thought, I should have realized that I couldn’t lead these men to their deaths. Now it’s too late.

Wrapped in his thoughts, it took a moment for his mind to register what his eyes had seen. In a tiny spot beside him, there was a disturbance in the sea of gravelly ground. Larger pebbles cleared away to the sandy soil below. And in the soil, the faint memory of a pattern—a pattern traced by Vor’s finger!

“We’re here!” he shouted, startling Sevren to his feet.

“We’re where?” Zandar said, looking around the canyon walls.

“This is where we camped the night before last. Look—Vor was tracing his finger on the ground while we talked that night.”

Sevren crouched beside him and examined the ground. He threw his head back and laughed. “Well,” he said, “it’s taken the better part of a day’s travel, but I’ve finally managed to retrace a half-day of our journey. Only a day and a half to go!”

“Excellent,” Zandar said, his old grin returning to his face. “We should be out of here by the middle of next month.”

Despite Zandar’s affected gloom, their mood was high as they continued their journey. Sevren chose their path with more confidence, and from time to time pointed out other signs he remembered from their earlier course—a place where Zandar’s foot had slid in the gravel, a particularly large boulder Sevren had scrambled on top of to get a sense of the land. Kauth almost dared to believe they might all get out of the Demon Wastes alive—and he could carry the guilt of only this one last death, Vor’s death, back into the Eldeen Reaches.

As Sevren pointed out what might have been one of Vor’s heavy footprints, though, a terrible ululating cry arose from the cliffs around and above them, gripping Kauth’s heart with icy fear. By the time he could pull his mace from his belt, warriors
were running down the steep canyon walls like a swarm of insects, continuing their eerie wailing.

“The Carrion Tribes,” Sevren said.

They were filthy and wild, matted hair jutting from beneath their battered helms and old blood staining their leather armor. They swung their weapons—clubs and spiked chains—in whirling arcs as they charged. Their rush was so chaotic that many tumbled down the steep canyon walls, only to be trampled under the feet of the barbarians behind them. They numbered in the dozens.

“Back to back,” Sevren said.

Zandar took his position close to the shifter, each of them facing out to the onrushing horde. Kauth completed the triangle, glad to feel his companions so close, but acutely aware of Vor’s absence.

H
aldren pulled Cart aside while the soldiers broke camp. “What’s your assessment of our position?” he said. Cart thought a moment. “We’re making an assault into an enemy territory we haven’t scouted, trying to secure an objective we haven’t identified. We have no idea of our enemy’s numbers, and very little sense of their capabilities. And we have eight soldiers, in addition to ourselves, Ash—Lady d’Cannith, and the wizard from Arcanix. We’ve already lost one-seventh of our original force.”

Haldren listened and nodded. “And in our favor?” Cart thought longer. “Very little. Your spells seemed effective against them, so your magic is a strong weapon in our arsenal. Lady d’Cannith is able to keep wounded soldiers alive. I didn’t see what the wizard—”

“Caylen.” Haldren said, a note of disdain in his voice. “What Caylen accomplished during the attack, but I assume he’s competent.”

Haldren snorted.

“Perhaps not,” Cart continued. “But I count him as a mark in our favor, however small.”

“Anything else?”

Cart shook his head. Put in those terms, their situation seemed grim indeed.

“We’ll begin, then, by rectifying our weaknesses,” Haldren said. “We need to scout the land, determine our objective, and assess the strength of our foes.”

Cart ticked off the problems he’d listed for Haldren. “And reinforcements?” he said.

“We avoid any further engagements with the enemy until the soldiers marching from Fairhaven arrive,” Haldren said. “Pick two of our soldiers and scout ahead. Take Caylen with you,” he added, almost an afterthought. “He should at least be able to help you find the canyon we’re looking for.”

Cart gave a sharp nod.

“Don’t let the worgs catch you,” Haldren said. “And keep those two soldiers alive. Dismissed.”

Those two soldiers, Cart thought, striding away from the Lord General. He evidently doesn’t care if Caylen survives.