Betrayal

Chapter Three Glittering Promises

The inn fire crackled softly behind Dhamon Grimwulf, tinging the air with the sharp smoky scent of too-green birch and the more welcome fragrance of slowly roasting pig. Both scents were more pleasurable than the other odors present: ogre sweat and the unidentifiable smell of food and drink that had been spilled who knew how long ago and never wiped up.

“Dhamon, it’s much too hot today to have a fire going like that.” The grumbling came from Maldred, a giant of a man with a shock of sun-lightened hair that spilled low over his brow. Beads of sweat liberally dotted his bronzed skin. He sighed, shook his head, and pulled his chair a few inches closer to the table—and thereby a few inches farther away from the flames. “Hot,” he repeated, the word sounding like a curse. “I ought to tell the proprietor to douse this fire. It’s just too damned hot.”

“Aye, my friend, this end of summer is a particularly spiteful beast. But I fancy having some of that pig for dinner, and so I’ll tolerate a little extra heat. Besides, the firelight’s being more than a little useful.” Dhamon gestured to a map it illuminated. The parchment was stretched across the top of a weathered table, four empty mugs holding the corners and keeping it in place. “You’re the one who said we needed a place where we could stretch out this supposed treasure map and get a better look at it. You picked this hole. And this table.”

Maldred grumbled an unintelligible reply. A moment later he added, “You’re the one who needed someplace to rest—after this afternoon’s bout with the scale on your leg.”

Dhamon kept his eyes on the parchment. “Finding the pirate treasure you say this map leads to will help my pockets, but it isn’t going to do anything to help my problem with the scale.” Dhamon’s words were barely above a whisper, meant for himself rather than for his companion. “I’ve no hope of a cure. Ever.”

The big man replied anyway, keeping his voice low so the other patrons couldn’t hear. “I think you might be wrong, my friend. I think, if my memory of folklore serves me, the treasure at the end of this map will solve everything.”

Dhamon’s eyebrows rose, then he lifted his gaze to take in their surroundings. They were in the far corner of a squalid tavern, a long day’s travel from Blöten, the capital of the ogre lands. They were as far away as they could get from the dirt-streaked window through which strolling ogres glanced. There were ogres inside the tavern, too, a quartet of them a few tables away, all drinking and gambling and occasionally looking hostilely in Dhamon and Maldred’s direction. Dhamon knew there would be more ogres soon when the sun set in an hour or so, signaling for any race a traditional time for drinks and fellowship.

“We’re out of place here,” Maldred said. “Haven’t seen a human walk by the window. Bet there isn’t one in this entire town. There were more humans in Blöten.”

“We’re out of place?” Dhamon repeated with a laugh. “No, my friend. I’m out of place here. These are your people—though they wouldn’t know it from the looks of you. They can’t see beneath that magical shell you’ve painted. No matter, we’ll be away from this tavern and town soon enough. A few more days and we’ll be blessedly out of ogre country. Forever.” He stabbed a finger at the map.

“Now, about this treasure. The map looks different than when we saw it at your father’s. Don’t you think?”

Maldred leaned over the parchment and gave a nod. “Different. But there’s something about it….”

It was old, the ink faded so badly in places most of the words couldn’t be discerned. Even some of the features the firelight caught were so pale from age that Maldred and Dhamon had to guess whether the blotches were meant to indicate forests or lakes.

Maldred’s finger hovered above a swatch the color of dried blood. “The valley,” he breathed. “I had forgotten about the valley.” He shook his head, drops of sweat falling on the map. “The Screaming Valley it’s called, one of the few things about the land that didn’t change after the Cataclysm.”

Dhamon’s expression told him to continue.

“You’ll see it for yourself soon enough, my friend, when we get deep into the Plains of Dust. I’ve never been to the valley, but I knew someone who had stepped into the place. Said he couldn’t go all the way through it. Said it was driving him mad.”

“But we will, make it through—if that’s the fastest way to the treasure. Besides, I don’t have much faith in ogre tales. Any tales for that matter.” There was a quiet strength in Dhamon’s words. “I think it would take too long to go around the valley, if the treasure’s down here, like you think.” He pointed to a spot by a river. A straight line to the treasure is the way we’ll go.

“No matter where we travel, the land’ll look different than what this old map shows. I’ve never set foot in the Plains of Dust, but I know it—and every place in Krynn—has changed since this was drawn. The Cataclysm. The Chaos War. Even this Screaming Valley of yours has to have changed.”

“Perhaps.”

Dhamon glanced at his friend, noting the big man’s eyes were locked on the center of the map.

“You were to the Plains before, weren’t you, Mal? A few years back? I remember you telling me something about howling spires and…”

Maldred didn’t answer, raising a finger to silence Dhamon, then lowering it to the map. A heartbeat later he was running his fingertips across the surface of the parchment, his eyes flitting now from edge to edge, then settling on a river that emptied into a sea to the south. His skin tingled slightly as his index finger passed over faint marks and smudges that at one time might have been labels for towns or important geographic features.

“There’s magic in this,” Maldred stated finally, after several minutes had passed.

“Aye, you cast….”

The big man shook his head. “No. This magic is nothing I did to the parchment. The map itself seems to carry an enchantment. Very old magic. Strong. I get a hint of Red Robe sorcery.” The summer’s heat and the fire all but forgotten, Maldred allowed himself to be consumed for another several minutes by the ancient map, turning his body so he didn’t obstruct the firelight. The soft glow from the few lanterns that hung about weren’t enough to properly illuminate the map. Dhamon cleared his throat to get his friend’s attention and nodded in the direction of a pair of ogres who entered the inn and selected a table only a few yards away.

“I think I can access the map’s magic,” Maldred said, ignoring the new patrons.

“Maybe you should do it someplace else,” Dhamon suggested. The pair of ogres were watching him, noses wrinkling and eyes narrowing to show their contempt for humans.

“No.” Maldred was oblivious to the ogres, entranced by the possibilities of the map. “I want to see what this is about. I’ll wager my father didn’t know that not only did he have a treasure map, but he had a very magical one.” He placed his palm over a symbol at the bottom that served as a compass. It was faded, like everything else, but the North and South arrows were the clearest of anything on the map.

Dhamon worried that his friend’s sweaty hand might smudge what they could read. He looked at the pair of ogres, who were becoming increasingly curious about what Maldred was doing. “Don’t you think…?”

Maldred dismissed Dhamon’s words with a gesture. He closed his eyes, and his lips formed silent words that helped his enchantment. “The key,” he murmured softly between strings of arcane words. “What is the key to this wondrous map? The key… there.”

Suddenly the map took on its own light, pale and yellow-gold, instantly drawing the attention of Dhamon and the two nearest ogres. The latter leaned closer but kept their seats.

“The key,” Maldred repeated, his voice no longer a whisper. “Show us the pirate port of ages past, the port from before the time of the Cataclysm, from the time when the Plains of Dust were filled with freebooters and glittering promises of gold and more and… ah!”

An image formed on the map and above it, transparent but rendered with incredible detail. The tabletop looked like a sea, bright blue and shifting, the whorls in the wood becoming frothy waves. The ale mugs shimmered, looking now like ships, one three-masted with billowing ghost-white sails fluttering in a breeze that seemed to surround the table and cut the heat of the fire and the summer. There was a cry, soft and sharp, of a gull, and in response the map’s features became sharper and more focused. Names sprang up all over, of towns and woods, flowing script marking trails and rivers. The colors became intense and hypnotic and held Dhamon and Maldred’s attention as firmly as any vise.

“The pirate port. The spot where they kept their stolen treasures,” Maldred said, smiling when a spot on the map grew brighter still. It was a clamshell-shaped mark a few inches up from where the river spilled into the sea. “The pirate port as it was ages past,” he stated, “and about as it is now. The port as it rests at this very moment.”

The parchment glittered and the waves disappeared, the breeze vanished instantly to be replaced by the heat of the tavern, the snap of the sails replaced by the crackling of the fire behind them. The map’s features were still distinct, but they were different from what it had displayed a heartbeat ago. The sea at the southern edge of the map was gone, in its place a glacier. The Plains of Dust were different, too, the river gone, though the shell-shaped mark indicating the pirate port was still there. The port looked to be in the middle of a dry stretch of land.

“It’s buried,” Maldred said. “The port’s buried by earth and time. Can’t tell how deep the pirate’s treasure is. No matter. We’ll find it. There has to be treasure.”

In response the air sparkled like a shining diamond above the shell-shaped mark.

“Definitely treasure.” He moved his free hand across the surface, brushing away the image of the land. “Now show us the sage, map. The Sage of the Plains.”

Dhamon opened his mouth to say “What?” but the word didn’t come out. Awe of the magic constricted his throat.

A circle glowed, shiny black and with an inner light. It was miles north and west of where Maldred’s pirate port was. The circle gleamed and grew tall to represent a tower, stones black and reflecting unseen stars.

“The tower of the Sage of the Plains,” Maldred began, his voice cracking. “I remembered my folklore correctly. Grim Kedar, that old ogre friend of mine, told me of a human woman who was said to be able to cure any ill and find a remedy to any problem. A healer. Grim wanted to meet her. We’ll meet her for him.”

Dhamon snorted. “Cure any ill. Remedy any problem.”

“Your scale is both an ill and a very definite problem, Dhamon. It might cost you your life. I wonder if she might be the answer.”

Dhamon shook his head. “You’re looking at a map centuries old, Mal. Humans don’t live so long. You know that. Though I appreciate your gesture, and though I very much desire to be free of this thing, I… what’s this?”

“The Sage of the Plains today.”

The map changed, as Maldred brushed his hand across the surface once more. It showed the land as it looked now—no sea, a glacier at its southern border again, the river the pirates had sailed gone. The image of the tower remained, though it was no longer glossy, and stars were not reflected along its edges.

Maldred cupped his hand near the tower image, and a figure appeared hovering above his palm. It was a woman, in black robes, features too small to tell much else about her.

“The Sage of the Plains,” he announced.

The image nodded to him, then disappeared. The map shimmered. They stared at it silently for several moments.

Dhamon finally spoke. “So this sage who you think can cure ills, and who you think might have lived through all these centuries, do you think she can…” he searched for the words. “Cure me?” A moment later he drew his lips into a thin line, his eyes still fixed on the wavering image of the tower. “No. Such a person couldn’t exist. Not then. Not now. And it’s wrong to give me such hope.”

Maldred, too, had his gaze still fixed on the parchment. “She existed then. Grim Kedar’s tales are true. She exists now. I know it. Dhamon, it’s why I selected my father’s map of the Plains of Dust. Though in truth I didn’t know it capable of magic. I remembered Grim’s tales. I remembered the sage. I remembered the tales of the pirate port and their horde of booty.”

“The pirate treasure,” Dhamon coaxed. “You want it. I want it.”

Maldred nodded, the gesture lost on Dhamon. “We need it. Grim said the Sage of the Plains could work wonders but that her every feat was costly—the wealth of a prince she could demand for her magic. There ought to be plenty in that pirate hold to satisfy her.”

“If she’s still alive,” Dhamon whispered. “If she ever existed.” He dropped his hand to his thigh, feeling the dragon scale beneath the fabric of his trousers.

“Worth our trying,” Maldred said. “She ought to cure you for such ancient wealth. Perhaps magical wealth.”

“Aye, worth it,” Dhamon replied. “And if the sage is nothing but an old ogre’s tale, we’ll still have some pirate loot.”

“Loot.” The word was in the human tongue, though it came from an ogre who’d moved up silently and who was now leaning over the map. “Want loot. Want map.” He grinned, showing a row of broken, yellowed teeth. A second ogre joined him.

“Map,” the other fellow stated. “Want it.” He jabbered in Ogrish, as Maldred rose and rolled up the map, directing him in Ogrish to keep back.

Dhamon drew his sword, which bought Maldred time to replace the map in the tube and stuff it in a deep pocket.

“The map’s ours,” Dhamon stated.

Maldred punctuated the statement by slamming his fist into the nearest ogre’s face. The two humans fled the tavern.

“So much for your roast pig dinner,” Maldred said as they rushed down the narrow dirt street. Dhamon shrugged. “I wasn’t that hungry. Besides, I didn’t care much for that town. There’s got to be one on the way out of this damnable country that has a few humans in it. Preferably the female variety.”