The Dragonstone

CHAPTER 65

As shouting Chun battled the blaze in the main building and other Drik and Ghok scrambled down the switchbacks toward the sail-fired dhow, Ordrune strode along the buttressed walls to enter the tower. Inside, the dark Mage made his way to the spiral stairs leading to the chambers below. Down he wound and down, until at last he came into the shadows of a room of manacles and chains and straps and tables and racks and hooks and knives and other such, a room filled with echoes past of agony and terror, a room where astral blazes were wrenched from tortured souls and twisted to malevolent ends.

Crossing this horrific chamber, Ordrune trod toward an iron door barred with three massive metal beams, a door from which emanated the sound of slow monstrous breathing and the stench of carrion. As the dark Mage approached the heavy portal, something massive thundered into the iron, juddering the panel and rattling the bulky hinges and bars… and angry skreighs shrieked forth.

Ordrune mouthed a silent word, quelling the sound and fury on the opposite side. Then he raised each of the heavy bars in turn and opened the door and stepped into the reeking fetor beyond.

There he faced a monstrous winged thing from elder days, its flailing pinions leathery and black, a single scimitarlike spur jutting forth from the forward bend of each wing, its long beak filled with jagged teeth, the large piercing claws of its feet hooked and clutching and grasping. And it skrawed and clacked and lurched among a litter of bones, bones gnawed and crushed and cracked and splintered for their marrow.

Ordrune looked into one of the creature's glaring yellow eyes and reached up to stroke its long neck. Then the dark Mage smiled and said, "I have a mission for you, my pet."