Redemption

Chapter Three The Sinking Lan

The sea embraced Dhamon Grimwulf. Dark and turbulent, the water filled his lungs, and a wave rose up like a giant fist to pound him under the surface. In that instant—when everything was black and overpowering—he achieved a sudden lucidity. He realized that it would be easy to stop fighting. Just let the ocean pull him in deeper, suck in another few gulps of water, sink into oblivion with Rig—with Jasper, Raph, Shaon, and the others—people who had considered him a trusted comrade and who had died in his presence. This was his opportunity to join them. Perhaps his duty to join them.

He would suffer no more pain from the accursed scale, no more torment from the dragons that dominated Krynn and vanquished all hope. No more pain from losing friends, no more deaths on his hands. The scale on his leg was killing him anyway, each bout with it was worse than the one before.

Give up, he told himself. Everyone dies sooner or later. Just take the easy way, and die now. He started to relax and surrender, felt an odd chill overtake him, then an uncomfortable pressure against his ears. The water was doing its job, suffocating him. But as the pain increased, some part of him began to fight back.

Save Fiona and Ragh, he thought. Think of someone else for a change.

At the very last moment, when he felt his consciousness slipping away, he railed against the storm and the sea. He frantically kicked his feet, drove his arms down to his sides, and propelled himself upward. The scale would kill him soon enough, he knew, but he couldn’t die today. He had comrades to save and important things he still must do.

His head broke the surface. He coughed to clear his lungs. The taste of the saltwater was strong and sickening. Battered by the wind-whipped waves, he strained to see through the foam and the rain, all the while fighting to gulp precious air. The water was nearly as dark as the sky, but flashes of lightning occasionally turned it green-gray.

“Fiona!” he screamed. “Ragh!” He prayed to the vanished gods that his companions were by some miracle alive, that he hadn’t brought death to two more friends. “Fiona!”

The only response was an echoing boom of thunder and the mournful wailing of the wind. Dhamon bellowed again and again, between the times when he was washed under by the waves. It was a continuous battle to keep his head and shoulders above water, to peer through breaks in the swells, to see something… anything.

“Fio…” Dhamon’s voice trailed off. He felt certain he’d heard something. He taxed his senses, determined to pick up faint sounds through the crashing of the waves and booming thunder. The noise was loud, the sea cold and bruising.

There! He did hear something. A voice? Concentrating, Dhamon closed his eyes. Was it a hissing? By the Dark Queen’s heads! Were there spawn still searching for him?

“Find the man!”

“Lisssten! I hear him. The man isss shouting!”

“Mussst find the man!”

“Heard him!”

“Filthy spawn,” Dhamon muttered. “Pitiful, damnable creatures.”

“Man! Where isss the man?”

He briefly entertained the notion of taunting the spawn, purposefully trying to lure them closer and taking one or two of them with him to a sweet death beneath the waves. I n the end he didn’t want to give the black dragon’s forces the satisfaction.

How long Dhamon bobbed about in the sea, gulping air when he could, trying to remain hidden from the spawn… he couldn’t say. Finally he could hear no more hisses, and he guessed the spawn had given up and flown back to Shrentak.

His arms and legs felt impossibly heavy from the effort of treading water, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his sore eyes open with the constant pelting of saltwater. Still, he refused to be defeated, and he forced himself to resume swimming.

More sounds! Fiona? Or had the damn spawn returned? Had Ragh survived?

Dhamon held his breath to listen and once more tried to sort through the storm’s cacophony to define what he had just heard. Not words. A flapping noise, but not wings. The groan of wood? A ship? Yes, there was repeated creaking, shouted orders—a few nautical terms he remembered Rig using. The creaking grew louder, then ended in a sharp snap! There was a muted splash of something hitting the water, then screams and more shouted orders.

“What? Help!” Dhamon shouted. Was it truly a ship? It had to be! They were men’s shouts, panicked men, and he didn’t detect any spawn hisses. The groaning persisted. Timbers protesting the storm! How big a ship? Could the men on deck see him floundering in the water?

“Help! Help!” he yelled, the words bitter and foreign to him. He waved one arm wildly. “Over here!

Help! Help us!”

No response.

“Over here!” His shouts faded as he ran out of breath. “Here!”

Still nothing.

The groaning of the ship became fainter, then vanished entirely. The frenzied orders of the sailors became whispers, drifting off into nothingness. Long minutes passed, and Dhamon finally stopped shouting. He was certain the ship had sailed away, and he was equally certain Fiona was dead. Though she was a formidable warrior, the sea was a brutal, unfamiliar foe.

He struck out in the direction he thought the ship had gone, though he couldn’t be sure his strokes were actually making any progress. After several minutes something brushed against him, and he instinctively reached for it, hoping it was wooden debris fallen loose from the ship that would help him stay afloat. Instead, his fingers closed on scaly flesh.

“Ragh?”

The draconian coughed a reply and thrust something at him.

“Fiona!” Dhamon said. “By all of the gods of…”

“She’s alive,” Ragh returned, gulping air before sinking, then rising slowly again. “Barely. I can’t hold her up anymore.”

“How is she?” Dhamon felt her face. She was breathing irregularly, and a flash of lightning revealed a deep, swollen cut on her forehead and bad scarring from the spawn’s acid.

“She’s tough, for a human,” Ragh said. “Not the type to give up. I held onto her all the way down, never let her go. But the fall knocked her unconscious.” Ragh went under again.

Dhamon cupped the back of Fiona’s head, doing his best to keep her mouth and nose above the waves. He put his arm around her and pulled her away from Ragh.

He could tell that the draconian was struggling worse than him. His ungainly body was not made for swimming.

“Probably good for her she’s unconscious. Won’t feel anything. We’re going to die here anyway, you realize,” the draconian gasped, surfacing again. “We will die, and Nura Bint-Drax will go on living.”

“I heard a ship!” Dhamon shouted.

Ragh sank below the waves again, and this time it took him much longer to push his way back up. “I heard it, too. Can’t see it, though, and it can’t see us.”

“It can’t have gone too far!” Dhamon insisted. He grabbed Ragh with his free hand and used his great strength to swim and keep them all afloat. He blinked to clear his eyes, trying to see something other than night-dark water. “Ragh, if we can get to the ship, together we might be able do something to attract its attention….”

A wave slammed the draconian hard against him. “No ship could survive this!” Another wave crashed against them, loosening Dhamon’s grip. The draconian sank again.

“We’re not giving up!” Dhamon said. He started tugging Fiona toward what he guessed was a northerly direction. If at all possible he would find the ship.

“Ragh! Follow us!” He saw the draconian break the surface again and begin to swim, struggling to catch up.

Long minutes passed. Dhamon strained to hear the creaking of the masts and the bark of sailors, and he prayed that he might spot some trace of the ship when the lightning next arced overhead. “By all the gods of Krynn,” he breathed, finally spotting the ship, or rather a part of it. A section of the vessel floated on a wave in front of him, jagged-looking as though it had been dashed against a reef. The ship had been wrecked.

He struck out for the wooden section, just as the water rose like a mountain beneath him and another fist-like wave surged above him and pushed Fiona and him under the sea. Fighting to the surface, he flailed about with his free hand, grabbing onto the edge of the wooden section before it could float out of range and pulling Fiona and him toward it. He strained to raise her up out of the water and lay her across the makeshift raft. Then he scanned the violent waves in search of the draconian.

“Ragh!”

The thunder boomed, and the wind offered a shrill retort.

Exhausted, Dhamon called out only a few more times before he pulled himself partially onto the wood, his hips and legs still dangling in the water. He didn’t want to risk capsizing the thing by climbing on board, so he wedged his fingers into a crack between two boards and held on. When the lightning next flashed he saw that the draconian had somehow found the raft, too, and was holding fast to the opposite side.

“Solid ground, Dhamon,” Ragh muttered weakly. “I told you we should have fought the spawn on the ground.”

The draconian said something else, but Dhamon didn’t try to make out the words. He closed his eyes and despite the chaos that surrounded him, he gave in to his fatigue. The world faded to gray, and he drifted between sleep and wakefulness, his aching fingers clinging to the wood. He regained full awareness just as a large wave pushed the raft onto a sandy shore.

The storm had finally ended. Stars winked down from between gaps in the thinning clouds. The wind was still strong, but nothing compared to what it had been earlier. From the color of the sky, Dhamon could tell dawn wasn’t terribly far away.

Ragh crawled on his hands and knees until he was farther up on the beach. Finally satisfied he was beyond the wash of the tide, the draconian lay down on his side and retched, then flopped onto his back.

“Drowning wouldn’t’ve hurt as much as this,” he said. One clawed hand held his side. “Solid ground, Dhamon Grimwulf.”

Dhamon managed to push himself to his feet, then bent down and grabbed Fiona and carried her to the draconian. He set her down, carefully prodding the wound on her head. It was probably infected, but at the moment he had nothing to treat it with. He carefully felt her ribs and stomach, satisfying himself that there were no more serious injuries.

“Wonder where we are,” Ragh said.

“Certainly not where we were headed,” Dhamon answered.

“So this isn’t Southern Ergoth.”

“It isn’t the Qualinesti forest either.” Dhamon turned to gaze out to sea, wondering if any of the sailors from the ship had made it through the storm.

The draconian propped himself up on his elbows. “You have no idea where we are, do you?”

Dhamon brushed the sand off what was left of his trousers and studied the beach. Coarse white sand littered with pea-size pebbles stretched as far to the north and south as he could see. To the west was a high, rocky ridge. He could see no trees, no sign of other people, not even a hint of wildlife, no other wreckage washed up from the ship. Dhamon took a few steps away from Ragh and Fiona and shook out his arms.

“Dhamon!” Ragh called. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Dhamon shrugged. “For a start, I’m going to try to find out where we are, see if I can find a stream, some source of drinkable water. I’ll be along after a while. Keep an eye on her, won’t you? If she wakes up, don’t let her go anywhere.”

The cool air had dried Dhamon by the time he crested the ridge and discovered a wide trail on the other side. The trail paralleled the ridge, running almost straight north until it curved west at the edge of his vision. From its width and the shallow ruts, he could tell wagons used to travel this way, but that was some time ago, as the path was covered with scabrous grass and seedlings. He knelt to examine the ground more closely, wishing it was daylight so he could see better. Maybe he could spot some footprints.

He guessed it was more than a few years since a wagon came this way. He stood and stretched and worked a kink out of his neck. He should still be tired, after their strenuous ordeal. He should want to rest with Fiona and Ragh, should ache from the battering he’d taken. Instead he felt curiously strong, as if he’d just arisen from a full night’s sleep.

He scanned the horizon, visible now in the dim light of predawn. There were no signs of anything except a few long-dead trees. The distant cawing of a crow gave him a little hope—there was some life here… wherever here was.

“Not in Southern Ergoth. No snow. Not cold enough. Not in Qualinesti.” Dhamon had been to the latter land, and he knew it to be lush and stirring with growth no matter what time of the year. “We can’t be far from Southern Ergoth,” he told himself.

He started down the trail to the north, first at a walk, then at a loping run. It felt good to stretch out, the running freed his mind. As long minutes passed, then an hour or more, the sky lightened further, but he still saw no signs of people. The trail had become overgrown with scrub grass.

When he heard another crow, he spun to the west, picking up two birds gliding to land somewhere behind a ridge of rocks. He noticed other ridges and wondered if they had been engineered by men rather than nature. They looked a little too uniform. Deciding to take a closer look, he jogged toward the next ridge, only to stop in his tracks before he’d crossed a quarter of a mile.

The pain started with a brief hot stab in his right leg, which quickly became pulsing waves radiating outward from the scale. It raced up into his chest and down his arms until no part of him was spared.

Within moments, he felt as if he were being boiled alive. The intense heat brought him to his knees, and he opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. He pitched forward, oblivious to the sharp rocks biting into his face and bare chest.

The piercing cold waves started next. His teeth chattering, he shivered involuntarily and curled into a ball. Wracked with agony, he feared he would pass out at any moment. Normally he welcomed the sleep forced on him by the dragon scale, but not this time, not when he was lost in an unknown land and too far away from Ragh and Fiona. Digging his fingernails into his palms, he focused on staying awake and riding out the alternating icy and fiery jolts. Over and over he reminded himself why he needed to stay alive.

There were things he had to do before he died, he knew. He had to deliver Fiona to the safekeeping of the Solamnic Knights, and he had to find Maldred. Dhamon felt certain his friend was still alive in Shrentak or being held prisoner somewhere in the surrounding swamp. He owed it to Maldred to find him and get him out of there.

Above all, there was the matter of Rikali and his child. He pictured the half-elf the last time he had seen her, slight and pale-skinned and very pregnant. He’d traveled with her for many months, enjoying her company but unwilling to make a deeper commitment. They’d parted ways for a time—Dhamon’s decision—and when she came back into his life, it was on the arm of a young husband who thought the child she carried was his. However, Rikali confessed to Dhamon that he was the real father. Somehow he knew she was telling the truth. Dhamon couldn’t let the dragon scale defeat him until he found Rikali and saw his child, made sure they had enough wealth to keep them safe in this dragon-infested world.

After a long time, the intense heat receded, and the numbing cold became a faint memory. This painful episode had lasted, he guessed, a half hour; that was the longest yet. The episode left him weak and nauseous, and he lay still for several minutes until he could catch his breath. Slowly he got back up on his feet.

“In the name of the Dark Queen!” he cursed. He glanced down at his right leg. It was completely covered in new, small scales emanating from the large one. His chest tightened—how long did he have left before the damnable dragon-magic consumed him?

He balled his fist and slammed it against the large scale. He tried to cover up the scales with his trouser leg, but the material was so tattered it scarcely covered anything. He continued trudging toward the ridge. He hadn’t a single coin, but maybe he could persuade someone to give him some clothes when he found the nearest town—provided the townsfolk didn’t run from him in terror, thinking him a monster.

“Clothes and water,” he said aloud. Fiona and Ragh must be thirsty and hungry too.

He reached the first ridge and, finding nothing there, continued to the next. In the distance now he could see signs of civilization. Dhamon turned and retraced his steps to the beach.

It was early morning before he returned to Ragh and Fiona. The draconian stared at the scale-covered leg and opened his mouth to say something. A sharp look from Dhamon cut him off.

Fiona had regained consciousness and was absently twirling her fingers in her hair. There was no hint that she realized that Dhamon had saved her life or that he had been gone for hours. Dhamon passed by Ragh and joined her warily.

He inspected the unsightly purple welt on her forehead. “How are you feeling?”

She frowned. “Hungry.”

Dhamon knew she was feeling other things, too. She had to be feeling pain, judging by the bruises on her arms and by the way she favored her left side.

“I found a town, Fiona. It’s some miles to the west. Do you feel up to a long walk?”

For the first time since leaving Shrentak she looked at him as though she heard him and brightened.

He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and gave a gentle tug. “Let’s go, shall we? There’s bound to be some food and water there.”

Dhamon led her over the ridge and down the trail. Ragh followed at a short distance. It was past noon by the time Dhamon brought them to the place from where he’d seen the town. Clumps of weeds tumbled across a hardscrabble expanse. It was bleak and chilly in this strange desert. Autumn had settled deeply over the land. The ground was cut here and there by narrow, rocky ridges pocked by shallow, bowl-shaped depressions. The dust in the air settled in Dhamon’s mouth and aggravated his thirst.

“Ugly,” Ragh observed, spitting out some of the grit. “This is an ugly place.”

There wasn’t a trail leading to the town that Dhamon could see, and as they walked, he looked for any tracks. Outside of prints from a single wild pig, all he discovered was a nest of beetles and a coarse dirt that blew across the ground.

Fiona fell back, keeping even with Ragh.

“How did he get them?” the draconian asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

“All those scales?” Fiona did nothing to keep her voice low. “The large one came from Malystryx, the red dragon overlord.”

“But it’s black scale, not a red one.”

“It was stuck on the chest of one of her Dark Knight agents, whom Dhamon bested. As the Knight died, he pulled the scale free and shoved it against Dhamon’s leg, where it became embedded. Somehow she controlled the Dark Knight through the scale. Dhamon became Malys’ puppet, too, until a shadow dragon, working in concert with a silver dragon, broke her control.”

“But it’s…”

“Black,” Fiona finished. “The scale turned mirror-black in the process. Probably because the shadow dragon used its black blood for the spell to free him.”

Ragh suppressed a shudder.

Dhamon stopped, turned, and faced them. “It was just a few months later that all the pain began, if you must know. It was some months after that when the smaller scales began sprouting. To tell you the truth, I think they’re killing me.”

The draconian stared at the back of Dhamon’s leg. The small scales were mostly black too, but a few were cerulean blue and the shade of smoke. He spied a few more that had cropped up around the ankle of Dhamon’s other leg.

“Dhamon… Those scales…”

“Aren’t your worry.” Dhamon pointed toward the horizon. “Not too many miles to the town. A couple of hours’ walk at best. We’ll get there by early afternoon, find an inn.”

“What are you going to buy dinner with?” the draconian asked testily, as he thumped his stomach.

“Certainly not with your charm.” Ragh’s gaze again dropped to the scales on Dhamon’s legs.

“Someone will feed us,” Dhamon promised.

“When we get to that town,” Ragh said, “I’d better not go in with you two.”

“Good idea.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t either,” the draconian added, glancing at the scales again.

A crow sprang up from behind them, something dangling from its beak. Fiona went back for a closer look, then waved Dhamon and Ragh away.

“A skeleton,” she told them. Then she resumed her march to the town.

Dhamon paused to inspect the skeleton, though. The man had been dead for weeks, he guessed, most of his flesh picked clean by the crows. There wasn’t enough there to show how the man died. However, he could tell the man hadn’t been poor and that he was slight in build, likely either an elf or a half-elf.

Though his tunic had been ripped by the birds, Dhamon knew it had been expensive material, with polished metal buttons and braid trim. He looked for a sword or dagger but didn’t even find sheaths. The boots had been fine polished leather, now pitted by the blowing grit. The heavy coin pouch that hung from the skeleton’s side and the silver chain that dangled around its neck quickly found their way into Dhamon’s pocket.

“That’ll buy dinner,” Ragh said appreciatively. The draconian dallied a moment to see if anything else valuable had been missed.

“Hopefully it will buy us a way out of this place and passage to Southern Ergoth.” Dhamon started west again.

When Dhamon caught up with Fiona minutes later, she was waist-deep in silt and struggling to get out. She stood in the middle of a depression.

“The ground disappeared!” she sputtered angrily, reaching a hand to Dhamon.

He stepped forward to take her hand but found the ground opening up beneath him as well. He thrashed about, trying to grab something to hold onto, but his frantic motions only served to send him down faster.

“Quicksand!” he cursed. This unusual quicksand didn’t feel wet and gritty. It was dry and powdery, and in the span of a few seconds Dhamon stood up to his chest in it, and was somehow being pulled farther down. He told himself not to panic, to relax and try to swim out of the stuff. He looked anxiously at Fiona, who was up to her shoulders now, trying desperately to extricate herself, and getting nowhere but deeper into the muck.

Dhamon tried to relax, and this seemed to slow his descent somewhat. “Ragh!” The dirt spilled over his shoulders now and was starting to creep up his neck. Despite his great strength, he could not pull himself out. “Ragh, get over here now!”

The draconian hurried up to them but cautiously kept his distance. His darting eyes took in Dhamon and Fiona’s predicament. He cautiously crept closer to Dhamon, clawed foot outstretched and tentatively testing the ground with each step.

“Her first!” Dhamon said. “Save Fiona first!”

Ragh shook his head and stretched a hand out to Dhamon.

“Save her first, Ragh!”

The draconian snarled and moved over toward Fiona, still worried about the firmness of the terrain.

Laying down on his stomach, he reached his arm toward her. “I save her first, Dhamon, if you will swear to help me slay Nura Bint-Drax!”

“Aye,” Dhamon quickly agreed, anger flashing in his eyes. “I swear.”

The silty quicksand had reached Fiona’s jaw, and she had to tilt her head back to breathe.

“Pull your arm up, Fiona,” Ragh instructed. “It’s the only way I can help you! Be quick!”

At last Fiona managed to raise her arms. Half of her face was covered with the gritty dirt, which spilled into her mouth. She stretched her arms toward Ragh. The draconian grabbed her wrists and pulled her toward him until she was on solid ground.

Fiona spat and spat. “Thank you, sivak,” she said.

Ragh turned his attention to Dhamon. His scaly hands clasped Dhamon’s and began to pull. “You swore,” Ragh reminded him.

“Aye.” Dhamon said, as he crawled away from the silty hole, then turned around to watch as it whirled in agitation. “I swore. I will help you slay Nura Bint-Drax.”

“Before those scales consume you.”

As they watched from a safe vantage point, the depression grew deeper and the dirt swirled in its bottom like a whirlpool.

“What in the name of the Abyss is that thing?” Dhamon asked.

“Sinkholes,” Ragh answered. The draconian indicated a few more within their line of sight. “Look there.” As they watched one sinkhole shuddered and during the next few minutes filled itself up, then overflowed, spewing gravel and leaving behind one of the narrow ridges that dotted the land. “Means there’re some underground cavities beneath this land, maybe caverns or rivers. The spaces expand, and there isn’t enough support for the ground on top. So the land collapses in sinkholes.”

“But that one filled itself up,” Fiona said, cautiously gazing at the expanse of land they had yet to cross to reach the town.

“Probably means the caverns underneath are filling up. Strange. I’d say this whole area is unstable.”

This time the draconian took the lead, eyes trained on the ground and looking for any disturbance in the soil. Their pace slowed considerably, as they circled around a half-dozen sinkholes that were churning or erupting. They reached the edge of town just as the sun was touching the horizon.

“I think I’ll go into town with you two after all,” Ragh announced, casting a last look at a large sinkhole forming only several yards away from them. “I’ll take my chance with the local folks instead of the landscape. Maybe they won’t mind our scales too much.”