The Sword And The Dragon (31 page)

Loudin forced himself to leave the lizard skin behind, and go with Hyden. It was hard, but after Mikahl had assured him that he would protect it with his life, the hunter relented.

In the darkness, the Skyler Clan village was nearly invisible to the naked eye, and had Loudin not been there before, he would’ve missed it entirely. He found he was glad that they had happened upon Hyden and his group. Without them, he might never have found the place, and would’ve had to listen to Mikahl’s chastising forever. 

Though the clans-folk were all inside their dwellings, enjoying the warmth of their hearth fires, not a speck of light could be seen from outside. Their homes and common areas had been carved into the sides of the valley ages ago by the giants. Huge scallops of earth had been scooped deeply out of the rock, and then squared rooms were constructed out of stone slabs. The rubble and scree had been piled back over, covering them completely. The same had been done with the long, winding entry tunnels that led from the outside world into the rooms. The natural shape of the valley, had been restored over the halls and dwellings, and after a few seasons of growth, it appeared, to the unknowing eye, as plain and empty as any other valley in the area. Well placed wooden doors, which the clansmen hung to keep out the weather, sat a dozen or more feet inside the entry shafts. The only way anyone who didn’t know where they were would ever see one of them, was to wander into one of the dark overgrown cave like holes that pocked the sides of the valley. Some of the underground rooms were so vast, that the clans-folk housed herds of rams and goats in them during the harsh winter months. At night, only the smell of cooking, and the occasional noise that escaped up through the many hidden ventilation shafts, would give them away. It was different during the day. In the light of the sun, the valley crawled with life. A life kept joyous and peaceful by keeping the kingdom folk and the elves out of it. 

Hyden knew that someone would be watching them approach from one of the many hidden nooks and precipices along the ridges. They would signal his location with tiny mirror flashes that seemed to be no more than flighty fire bugs in night. It came as no surprise to Hyden when a sudden light pierced the darkness ahead of them. It was Harrap, Hyden’s father, and he was standing in the entry tunnel that led to the Elders’ council chamber. By the way the shadows moved about in the swathe of steady blue light that spilled across the valley floor, he could tell that his father wasn’t alone. The Elders had been waiting for him. 

Harrap made a piercing whistle as they came upon him. His look was quizzical, as he recognized Loudin. He looked at his son, and a dozen questions swam across his eyes. Talon came flapping down out of the sky and landed on Hyden’s shoulder. That alone seemed to answer many of the questions, but it was obvious that his father wanted to know what had happened to the elf and the Westland kingsman.

“Take our guest,” The word guest was stressed. “To the gathering room, and feed him,” Harrap commanded to the darkness.

Out of the gloom, Hyden’s slightly older cousins, Tylen and Sharoo, stepped up on each side of Loudin.

“Make a comfortable place for him to sleep.”

Harrap turned and faced the hunter then. 

“Well met Loudin Drake. The business that we have with my son will take some time to finish. I apologize for the rudeness.”

Before Loudin could reply, Harrap gestured for Hyden to enter the tunnel he had been blocking, and a moment later, closed the deeply set door behind them. 

The medium sized room seemed over-crowded to Hyden. In its center, the huge skull of a dragon sat. The top of its brain cavity had been long removed, and inside the brain pan, a torrent of magical blue flame raged wildly. 

All of the Elders were there, sitting anxiously around the frightening looking horned skull. Hyden could tell that something was amiss. Their faces all looked grim as they reflected the eerie blue light. 

Talon shivered on Hyden’s shoulder. Hyden could sense the bird’s fear, or maybe he could sense the bird sensing his own fear. He wasn’t sure. The one thing that was certain, was that he and Talon both were both afraid.

As Mikahl slept, less than a mile beyond the rim of the valley of the Skyler Clan, the creature from the blackness stopped hunting his dreams. The evil things still imprisoned in the Nethers howled their jealousy as the beast left them behind. It was coming now, and getting closer. It had broken free of the horrific nothingness that had held it before. The hulking evil that had let it loose, laughed at his accomplishment. Something was coming for Mikahl in this world now, not in the dream world. It knew where he was, and it was coming quickly.

When Mikahl woke, he seemed to know these things. When he took Ironspike from Windfoot’s saddle this night, he found that it was of little comfort. He knew that his nightmare had somehow come to life, and that one of the creatures from his dreams would be coming for him soon. He had to let the others know. It was only right to let them know the risks they faced by helping him go deeper into the Giant Mountains. He would understand if they chose not to accompany him. It was their right. He wasn’t really sure why any of them seemed to want to help in the first place. Alone or together, either way, he would have to stand and face the beast that was coming for him. What other choice did he have? For a long time, he watched the dying flames of the campfire, and pondered that very question, but no answer came to him.

In the days that had passed since they crossed the Everflow River into Wildermont, Gerard Skyler had seen a hundred wonders, each more amazing to him than the last. As he lazed in the morning sun, on the foredeck of the riverboat Shaella had chartered, he thought about the past few days and the sights he had seen. 

They had been lucky at High Crossing. The Redwolf soldiers had only wanted to talk with them, to question them about the Summer’s Day Festival. A lone rider had come across the bridge before them and told the soldiers that some sort of bloody skirmish had broken out under the Spire. Shaella’s party had apparently left before it had started, so they had nothing to offer the bridge guard. What Gerard couldn’t figure out, was how the rider had passed them on their way south. Shaella reminded him that they had followed the river, not the wagon road, and that he had slept all of a day recuperating from the saddle soreness of that first night’s ride. After being reminded of that deep, dreamless sleep that Shaella’s potion had brought on, he had to concede that a dozen riders could have passed them without his knowledge.

As Shaella had promised, that first night in the northern outskirts of Castlemont City, they had gotten a room at an inn. She had made love to him there, and it had been breathtaking, to say the least. 

The following day they rode toward Castlemont proper. It was an entire day of traveling, down a crowded, building-lined road, just to get to the heart of the city that had been built in the shadow of King Jarrek’s palace. The buildings, near the inn they had stayed in, had been single and double storey affairs of wood and crude stonework. They were widely spaced, with large, fenced pens full of goats, chickens, and sometimes squealing children. Most had wooden slate roofs and dingy exteriors. Some were decorated with signs advertising their particular type of business: taverns, leather works, bakeries, and so on. 

As the day’s journey wore on, the size of the buildings grew, while the spaces between them shrunk away to little more than alleyways. The crude construction gave way to more solid and symmetrical brick and mortar block work. The roofs were steeper, and some were shingled with colorful baked tiles. A picket fence surrounded a home here or there. The air was full of the smell of hot steel, and the sound of smiths’ hammers clanging away could be heard from behind many a door. 

The road wound its way through the foothills of the Wilder Mountains. The small mountain range rose up out of the earth on the eastern bank of the Leif Greyn River. While the roadside along the riverbank was packed with building after building, the lush, green hillsides were dotted with larger stone structures. Long dry-stone walls, snaked over the dips and rises of the rolling landscape, penning large herds of cattle or sheep. Some of the larger buildings were crenellated, and had squat, round towers built up alongside of them. “Strongholds,” Shaella had called them. 

Gerard was amazed by all of this. Berda’s stories had told of cities and towns, but Gerard had only been able to imagine a larger version of his village, with huts and shacks, instead of underground burrows. The idea of three and four level structures, built of carefully fitted together pieces of rock, was astounding.

About midday, when they had come upon the first real towered stronghold, Gerard thought he was seeing a castle. He hadn’t seen the formidable stronghold at High Crossing because they had crossed the bridge at night. If he had, then the one they had looked at that afternoon might not have seemed so massive. 

From there, the streets had grown more crowded, with both people and structures. It became hard to see the surrounding lay of the land. The smell of refuse, and the press of the populace, had been overwhelming. That evening, when they came to the center of Castlemont and stood in the city’s wide open square, Shaella pointed up and to the east, and showed Gerard what a real castle looked like.

Wildermont was easily the richest kingdom in the east. The small mountain range was full of iron and copper deposits. Nearly all raw iron ore, and the majority of worked metal products in the entire realm, came from here. Brackets, axles, fittings for wagon building; banded hinges, frames and latches for construction; swords, steel spear and arrow tips, and armor all came from Wildermont. It was no wonder the ancient kings had built into the side of the mountains a monstrous palace-like structure that dwarfed any other kingdom seat in the realm. 

Half the mountain was bricked, blocked, tiled and arched, all in the same pale gray stone. Half a hundred towers reached into the heavens, while in their shadows, twice as many more tried to do the same. A dozen wide crenellated walls, with wagons, and groups of people scurrying along the tops of them, snaked across the mountainside. Here and there, huge wooden gates were set in the sides of them. The tiny colorful specks of a thousand different banners flickered in the breeze. All of this seemed to glow dully in the evening as the sun slowly set. 

As darkness slipped over the world, Gerard’s amazement grew a hundredfold. Thousands of window-arches and doorways began to glow golden, as torches and lamps were lit all over the palace. Large barrel fires blazed forth from along the tops of the walls and bridges, making them all look like elevated roads that floated in the air. It was a sight to behold.

They had gotten an inn again that night, but Shaella hadn’t come to him. She had other business, she had told him. He didn’t complain. He drank a mug of dark ale, in the common room with Greyber, while a bard sang a ballad about a pirate who had his entire ship snatched from the sea by an angry blue dragon. The pirate’s lover was so stricken by the loss that she rowed a skiff out to sea, and was never seen again. 

Later, Gerard went back to his room and fell fast asleep. His dreams were full of the wonders that the rest of the world might hold for him to see. Only a small portion of his dreams concentrated on the fact that soon, he was going to be very close to a dragon himself.

The next morning, they rode further south. The familiar Leif Greyn River found the road again and flowed along beside it. Here, the river was so wide that he could barely make out the opposite shore line. Westland was over there. The roadway was wider here too. Carts and horse-drawn wagons came and went, three abreast. They passed, but didn’t cross, the incredibly huge bridge that led over into the Westland City of Locar. 

“Locar Crossing,” Shaella called it. She paused, and studied the impossible span for quite some time. 

The bridge was colossal: four wagon lanes and a pedestrian lane. Gerard watched, as a barge slipped under one of the seven arches that the viaduct made on its way across the river. The center arch was bigger than the others. At its top, the bridge seemed to be impossibly thin, yet it held fast as three fully loaded wagons, five horses, and a large huddle of squealing pigs went across it at the same time. 

While Shaella studied something that was further across the bridge, Gerard studied the diverse types of fashion he saw people wearing. Here was a pair of men in red robes, and over there, was a peasant in rags. A lady, in a fine yellow dress on horseback, being led by a fully armored knight, had the crowds parting before them, as if they had the plague. A man in baggy silk pants the color of emeralds hurried past, a long, shining cape wavering after him. The variances were endless. But almost everywhere he looked, there was at least one uniformed man sporting a red wolf’s-head patch.

After finally leaving the crowds of Castlemont behind them, they came to yet another river bridge. This one was called Low Crossing. It spanned a small river that came out of the Wilder Mountains, just before it joined the main flow of the Leif Greyn. The town there, also called Low Crossing, was full of warehouses, and seedy looking men who wore the garb of river men.

They didn’t cross this bridge. While Shaella secured them a room for the night, Cole and Flick spoke with some workmen near a dock, where several barges full of wooden crates were moored. Gerard saw Cole pass a pouch to one of them, but didn’t concern himself with the matter. Shaella was returning, and he could tell by the look on her face, that she was going to spend this night with him. They didn’t make love, but instead, stayed up late kissing, laughing, and talking of the sights and wonders that had amazed Gerard. Eventually, they fell asleep in each other’s arms. 

When they had left there this morning, they did so by boat. The horses had been left behind. This fact concerned Gerard as much as getting onto the boat did. He had never been on a boat before. Shaella explained that their destination was deep in the southern marshes, and horses couldn’t travel there without sinking.